One to Nine: The Inner Life of Numbers

by Andrew Hodges

Book Overview

What Lynn Truss did for grammar in Eats, Shoots & Leaves, Andrew Hodges has done for mathematics. In One to Nine, Hodges, one of Britain's leading biographers and mathematical writers, brings numbers to three-dimensional life in this delightful and illuminating volume, filled with illustrations, which makes even the most challenging math problems accessible to the layman. Starting with the puzzle of defining unity, and ending with the recurring...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0393337235
• ISBN13: 9780393337235
• Release Date: November 2009
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
• Length: 330 Pages
• Weight: 0.40 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 5.4" x 8.0"

Customer Reviews

One to Nine and a lot more

I am enjoying the book a lot, but bewarned--you may not get a lot of the references he makes if you don't a some math background. I have undergraduate degrees in math and physics and I needed that to understand some of the details. Hodges discusses a lot more than just the numbers. For example he uses the number eight (one byte) as an excuse to discuss a lot about computers and computing with many (interesting) references to the ideas of Alan Turing (about whom he wrote a book). Many of the other chapters also wander into areas you might not have guessed were related to that number--but that's not a bad thing. I recommend the book to readers who haven't forgotten all their algebra.