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Title: One to Nine: The Inner Life of Numbers
ISBN: 039306641X
Author:
Andrew Hodges
Publicate Date: 2008-05-19
Publish: 2008-05-19
List Price: $23.95
Average Customer Rating: 2.5
Format: Hardcover
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Amazon Lowest New Price: $8.75
Amazon Lowest Used Price: $8.35
Amazon Merchant Price: $11.61
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| Customer Review: |
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1: Not good.
I enjoy reading books on mathematics and number theory and thought this would be a good choice from the library for my next read. Unfortunately, it was much less than expected.
First, the author has what I would term, an 'elitist' writing style. Mathematical concepts are hard enough to grasp for a lot of people - and the matter is made worse when difficult to understand English is employed in explaining it.
Second, many of the examples presented lack solutions, or even a thorough explanation of the problem.
Finally, the book really goes astray with interspersed, and largely irrelevant political, religeous (read: anti-Christian) and pseudo-science commentary (man made global warming, etc...). These comments are irritating and distract the reader tremendously from the stated goal of the book. By Chapter 4, I had read enough of these comments to lead me to return the book without finishing it.
In summary the book seems to be nothing more than a tome representing the intelligence and stature of the author. He is smarter than you - and it becomes evident very early on.
Not recommended.
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2: target audience is unclear
As a math / non-fiction fan and a real fan of Hodges' "Alan Turing" bio, I was really looking forward to "One to Nine". The promise was not met. The material is all over the place and, at times, I had little idea what he was talking about. As a simple example, the relationships among the harmonics in music mean nothing to me. Should I know that background information? Sorry, I don't.
Thus, who actually will buy the book? It's certainly not popularized enough for the general public and it's not heavy enough for a serious math guy. The niche is unclear and probably not large. "Zero: The Biography of a Dangerous Idea" and "It Must Be Beautiful: Great Equations of Modern Science" are better.
Some of the material is indeed quite enlightening and a pleasure to read. Hodges clearly enjoys the ideas and wants to spread the excitement. Through the first half, there were enough moments to keep me going. The second half clicked better, perhaps because it is actually less about numbers and more essay-like about general math and science. Hodges' venture into familiar territory with Turing machines and computers and such has little to do with the specific numbers for the containing chapters, which serve as a vague hook. That was fine with me, as some of that material was quite good.
I wish Hodges had provided answers for some of the many posed problems. Most of them were out of my league and I may not have understood the answers, even if short enough to provide. For several others, I really would have liked to know.
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3: 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.
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4: Great idea, but disappointing
Granted I'm only about halfway through the book, but there's a reason for that. The idea, as presented by the NYT book review, is good: relate the math you learned in school, from memorized formulas to more difficult abstractions, to its much more interesting real-life applications, all while illustrating how those memorized relationships and hard-to-grasp concepts underpin so much of what you already take to be fact without attributing the reasons to mathematical relationships. But the prose is just not that enjoyable to me. Perhaps it will improve as I get more into the author's rhythm, but this isn't what I was looking for.
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5: Interesting, Yes, But Way Over My Head
I have always enjoyed math and use numbers constantly in making illustrations about everyday events. I won't tell you not to try this book as much of the material is fascinating! However, in spite of my mathematical background, I found that most of the material was too abstract for my feeble mind. I had trouble comprehending some of the concepts that were presented as being fairly simple. Hopefully, you are smarter than I am and will enjoy this book. If you struggle with numbers to begin with, I would suggest something more basic.
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