Monday, October 19, 2015

The Number Mysteries: A mathematical Odyssey Through Everyday Life

Photo credit- Amazon.com
    You want to be a teacher? You want to be able to answer that annoying question of "Where will I ever use this?" This book is an interesting read that will help you answer your students. It will help you see where these topics show up in the world and how they are important they are to what we know today.

   Not only did this book explain out the thinking behind the topics and cover in detail different examples but it gave online resources for you to continue your learning of the topics that you didn't understand. The five chapters in this book relate to:
  1. The Curious Incident of the Never-ending Primes
    1. Fibonacci number
    2. Golden ratio
  2. The Story of the Elusive Shape
    1. Finding length of coast line
    2. Snow flakes 
  3. The Secret of the Winning Streak
    1. Rock paper Scissors
    2. Lottery
  4. The Case of the Uncrakable Code
    1. Morris Code
    2. Semaphore
  5. The Quest to Predict the Future
    1. What hits the ground first a feather or a soccer ball
    2. Chaos vs Laminar Flow
    It is a very interesting they way that so many seeming unrelated topics are actually all interconnected is a very cool way to look at math and I think that it would be awesome to incorporate this into our everyday teaching method. If we get our students to be interested then we will see them understanding and actually enjoying what they are learning more.


   Marcus Du Sautoy the Author is an experienced mathematician and for many different topics one of the most known is his work with group theory and number theory. He put this book together and it shows that math is a very deep part of what our lives are and what we do on a daily basis. 

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