Mathematics Made Difficult

by Carl E. Linderholm

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• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0529045524
• ISBN13: 9780529045522
• Release Date: January 1972
• Publisher: World Publishing
• Length: 207 Pages
• Weight: 1.25 lbs.

Customer Reviews

A hilarious book that just might teach you something

I found this book while browsing my university library 25 years ago. In a sea of titles like "Mathematics Made Easy/Simple/etc." this book stood out from the crowd. Now, my mathematical background would probably be categorized as "moderate" - the ordinary math taken by an engineering student, 3 years of calculus and differential equations. Advanced algebra, group and set theory, and topology are all beyond my understanding. Since really understanding this book more or less depends on a knowledge of all of these, one might expect it to go above me. What I found instead was, in addition to enjoying the delightfully witty writing, I actually learned something about all these topics. Not that I remember much now, of course - but probably no less than I remember from most subjects I was actually enrolled in. Example: Early in the book, he reproduces an imaginary Q & A in which the questioner relates that when he meets a mathematician at a party and he says "Well, I guess we've come a long way since 1+1=2", the mathematician makes a wry face. The author then, in answering the imaginary questioner, takes an entire chapter explaining exactly how complicated 1+1=2 really is. You have to start with what does "1" mean, for example. This leads to mathematical constructs I had never dreamed of simply to understand what numbers and counting are. In summary, this is a wonderful book for anybody with at least an ordinary college-level understanding of math, and I hope somebody reprints it.

Categories for the Non-Working Mathematician

This book is a wonderfully humorous satire of the project (possibly pushed by Mac Lane, Lawvere, Grothendieck, and others, though never as far as one might think) to reformulate all of mathematics on category-theoretic foundations. As such, many of the jokes will be lost on a reader with no familiarity with the language of category theory. But there are plenty of other jokes that even a high schooler should be able to appreciate. There's also some entertaining national stereotypes of French mathematicians and others that probably date the book a bit. Highly recommended for a math graduate student who needs distraction from work.

REISSUE THIS!!!

I am mainly writing a review to see is someone will notice enough to reissue this book. Ya gotta love something that deconstructs counting ('So You Think You Know How To Count?').

hard to find but worth it

The jokes are hysterical, although the book may require some smidgeon of knowledge of math past high school trig...

Brilliant Humor

One of the funniest books I ever read. Brilliant, on many levels. You also learn a lot about abstract algebra and topology.