The Man Who Counted – A Collection of Mathematical Adventures

Beautifully written in the style of a middle eastern adventure. I've loved reading this with my children (aged 10 - 11; the rich vocabulary and sentence structure may be a challenge for them to read on their own) and working out the equations; we tend to read the story together in the evening and work out the maths over breakfast!

Capturing something of the flavour of the 1001 nights and mixing in a healthy dose of mathematics. The maths is never hard in the sense of requiring deep knowledge of difficult stuff, rather it plays with logic and applications of basic arithmetic, so that you find yourself having a stab at the puzzles (I especially liked the find the liars, find your coloured disk, and divide your camels).I'd recommend this to anyone with a taste for the fiction of the orient and an enjoyment of puzzles.

A lovely book. I first heard about it while listening to a radio programme (More or Less) and was intrigued. I bought it for my maths-mad 10 year old son and we really enjoyed reading it together.

I came across a very battered copy of this book while I was looking for something to read on holiday in someone else's house. I was spellbound from the very first chapter. I had to get one for myself, it is magic!It takes you away from a stressful world of petty problems you have to get on with but hardly ever solve properly, to another land where someone manages to solve evrything so beautifully and cleanly just by thinking using numbers, fractions, equations, logical deduction, etc. Never thought maths could do that so well. We should all have a man who counted in the neighbourhood. And it is soooo relaxing, pefect for a holiday.

This book is great fun as well as a great filler for maths lessons. I have read it for my personal enjoyment as well as using it in maths lessons for those moments when one needs a break from the ordinary grind, but also wants to keep the lesson in the maths area. It can also be used in other lessons, as tales of intriguing situations, as an introduction to middle eastern culture or just for fun. I thoroughly recommend it to everyone, even if you don't like maths or find it difficult; maybe especially in these circumstances (the maths is easy and you can ignore the numbers if you like and just enjoy the stories).

Lovely story ... wish there were more translations for this author. It gives some very interesting stories about numbers and mathmatical reasoning.

An excellent read and great value book for those who have an enquiring mind and are fascinated by puzzles. I would recommend this to anyone.

Fun present