Here's Looking at Euclid

Alex Bellos

Jun 2010 · Simon and Schuster

About this ebook

“[A] remarkable foray into the realm of numbers. . . . Intellectual entertainment of the first order.” —Booklist

Math gets a bad rap—it’s dry! it’s difficult!—but it can also be inspiring and brilliantly creative when you go beyond the surface of the blackboard. Alex Bellos has traveled the globe and plunged into history to uncover fascinating stories of mathematical achievement, from the breakthroughs of Euclid, the greatest mathematician of all time, to the creations of the Zen master of origami, one of the hottest areas of mathematical work today. Taking us into the wilds of the Amazon, he tells of a tribe there who can count only to five, and he reports the latest findings about the math instinct—including the revelation that ants can count how many steps they’ve taken. Journeying to the Bay of Bengal, he interviews a Hindu sage about the brilliant mathematical insights of the Buddha, while in Japan he visits the godfather of Sudoku and introduces the brainteasing delights of mathematical games.

Exploring the mysteries of randomness, he explains why it’s impossible for the shuffle setting to truly select songs at random. In probing the intrigues of pi, he visits two brothers so obsessed with the elusive number that they built a supercomputer in their Manhattan apartment to study it. Throughout, you’ll find a wealth of illustrations, such as the clever puzzles known as tangrams and the crochet creation of an American math professor who suddenly realized that she could knit a representation of higher dimensional space that no one had been able to visualize.

Whether writing about how algebra solved Swedish traffic problems, visiting the Mental Calculation World Cup to disclose the secrets of lightning-fast calculation, or exploring the links between pineapples and beautiful teeth, Bellos is a wonderfully engaging guide who never fails to delight even as he edifies.

“A delightful worldwide tour of the most interesting and weirdest in math.” —The Daily Beast

“Lively writing . . . helpful charts and graphics.” —Publishers Weekly

“A smorgasbord for math fans of all abilities.” —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

Ratings and reviews

The positive thing about this book is that it's very easy to read. It's almost too easy. I was trying to figure out how to describe this book, and the only analogy that I could come up with was the guilty pleasure of watching "The Kardashians". You might enjoy watching the show, but you won't necessarily brag to your friends about it. This might be a little harsh to the author that did a lot of research, but the end result was a collection of facts, and factoids that, although interesting, didn't challenge me in any way. I was trying to go to the website that the author refers to in the book, but it seems the site was hacked, and I couldn't access the more detailed proofs.

love math, love this book

About the author

Alex Bellos has a degree in Mathematics and Philosophy from Oxford University. Curator-in-residence at the Science Museum and the Guardian’s math blogger, he has worked in London and Rio de Janeiro, where he was the paper's unusually numerate foreign correspondent. In 2002 he wrote Futebol, a critically acclaimed book about Brazilian football, and in 2006 he ghostwrote Pelé's autobiography, which was a number one bestseller. Here’s Looking at Euclid was shortlisted for the BBC Samuel Johnson Prize and was a Sunday Times bestseller for more than four months.