Alex's Adventures in Numberland: Dispatches from the Wonderful World of Mathematics

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The record for pi memorisation whilst juggling is held by Mats Bergsten (Sweden) who has recited 9778 digits while juggling three balls. Mathematical ideas underpin just about everything in our lives: from the surprising geometry of the 50p piece to how probability can help you win in any casino. To usher the reader into the 20th century Bellos explores the ideas of Georg Cantor and David Hilbert on infinity.

Mathematicians have explored ever more abstract worlds and geometries, floating in dimensions that may or may not exist and finding symmetries and patterns in hard-to-imagine shapes.

I also liked that Bellos does not revert to hyperbolic fan's zeal to inspire the same passion in the reader. I might be the ideal audience for this book - turned off Maths at school, yet still mildly interested, bed bound and unwell , with limited reading choices, however I found it largely uninteresting built up of clusters of not particularly memorable anecdotes which I have, a few months on entirely forgotten.

Statistics therefore became important for states, for economists, and to discover and understand climate change. g. there are no straight straight lines passing through the north pole and that are parallel to the equator). All the people in this book have been treated as creative artists and their work has been explored with childlike wonder.Alex explains the surprising geometry of the 50p piece, and the strategy of how best to gamble it in a casino. If nothing, you should read this book to learn about an encyclopedia of sequences (that also converts them into music), to see the unbelievable impact of the invention of the electronic calculator, to imagine a world of rivalries between human equation solvers and where human calculators would indulge in math duels! What ensues is both a historical tour and spontaneous encounters with some of the most eccentric people currently operating on the fringes of mathematics. After studying mathematics and philosophy at university I joined the Evening Argus in Brighton as a trainee reporter.