Professor Stewart's Incredible Numbers

I loved this book. Nothing new here. However just having a litany of number curiosities in one easy to read book is fantastic. Just the chapters on Complex Numbers and Infinite Numbers makes this well worth the price. Darn it, wish I had this in middle school.

I assigned this paperback as an inexpensive text for the college class I am teaching: "Mathematical Ideas for Liberal Arts Students" aka "Math for Poets". I love that it encompaases some of the most fascinating ancient AND current mathematics well-known to Mathematicians but that most Laypeople are unaware of, such as: Ancient Numeration, Primes, Infinitude, Binary Codes, Cryptography, Fractals, The Four Color Theorem, The Birthday Paradox etc etc… The book WILL require my in depth explanations supplemented by other readings and exercises, since the proofs are highly condensed and do not have the usual array of examples in a standard textbook.For anyone who wants to dip their toe into The Math Pool this is a wonderful book, but be ready to call a math prof or tutor if the calculations become too deep.\!

This book was more technical than I expected, and not quite as much fun. Could have used better editing and clearer explanations of some concepts. Prof. Stewart obviously know his stuff, but the writing seems to assume that readers have more math knowledge than is likely.

A fun book for a mathematician (like me) but the average reader will need to tread carefully and will probably give up by the time they get to the zeroes of the Riemann Zeta Function - if not sooner. Not for the faint of mathematical heart! Conversely, the book often gets overly simplistic for the mathematician. It's as if the author could not decide for whom the book is intended.

I liked most the equation of (-1/2)! and the concept of sphere packing. Both of them is connected with Pi. I like this transcendent number and the primes even more than before.

You really have to be interested in numbers and mathematics - but the book is great for those who are!

If you love numbers you will like this. And if you have a kid who doesn't like numbers, you may use interesting tidbits to intrigue them & trick them into learning...

I enjoyed the chapter layout; some important numbers or patterns and some not so important.The not so important numbers or patterns were cool none-the-less.

Rather than explain how numbers contribute to modern theoretical physics, which is what I expected, this book is largely an anthology of dozens (hundreds?) of conjectures, theories and thought about numbers themselves. If thats what you want, go ahead. I am afraid I found it dull!

Great Book ... very funny at times.

inoformative tour of numbers

cant beat it

I love this Book . In facrt all four books by Prof Ian Stewards which I have in my library are masterpieces..incredibly superb!