For those of you who know Paulos's work, this is a follow up book to his New York Times bestselling Innumeracy. Paulos is a mathematician who is passionate about being being "mathematically literate" and his first book covers a lot of the common misconceptions of the average layperson when it comes to mathematics.
His next offering was this little number (if you'll pardon the pun), an "uncommon dictionary of mathematics" to quote the front page. And it is just that, it is a journey through a whole host of mathematical concepts ranging from Area and Volume through Calculus, Trigonometry and Pi to more abstract concepts such as Fractals, Human Consciousness and Platonic Solids.
This is a man who loves mathematics and wants other people to love and understand mathematics too. That is never a bad thing in my book, maths is not as scary as people make it out to be. Well, most of maths actually is frightening but the day-to-day stuff is fascinating, useful and not all that difficult.
Anyway back to Paulos. This book is a dictionary and so naturally the concepts are arranged in alphabetical order. This is the logical way to arrange things but I find it means the level of understanding required for a partial topic jumps around a lot. I guess this is by no means a bad thing, it just means it is not the sort of book you can "work your way into" as such.
You might find some of the earlier concepts pass you by a bit if you aren't from a certain school of mathematical thinking. This is definitely not a "mathematics for dummies", nor was it ever intended as one. I have a pretty decent standard of maths as a baseline and there were some of the ideas that outfoxed me completely.
However it is worth persevering with because there are some fascinating sections and Paulos's love for his subject shines through. Everyone who reads this will be a little bit better at understanding mathematics and how it interacts with and influences the world around us, which is definitely no bad thing.
Verdict: 4 stars out of 5
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