Math readers

I've had some fun building this page about math readers, or "living math" books for my main site. The list is not terribly long yet, but it will grow, I'm sure.

I discovered that Amazon has all kinds of new "widgets" available to promote their products. What do you think of this? It is a slideshow featuring MathStart readers by Stuart J. Murphy. Hover your mouse over it:



Math story books offer children an interesting way to learn math concepts, to get interested in mathematics, and to explore some fascinating topics outside of the main curriculum. It is one way to bring math to "life". Kids are almost sure to enjoy it.

On my page, I list for example Cryptoclub, a fascinating storybook that teaches how to encrypt and decrypt secrete messages, or The Adventures of Penrose - THE MATHEMATICAL CAT, in which you will encounter many fascinating mathematical topics from fractals to tessellations, or many books for little kids.

I was thinking putting all of that on a blogpost, too, but it's just "duplicate content". Maybe I'll feature a few of them here soon.

I realize not everyone can buy many math readers on top of their regular school books, but try find some of these books in your local library!

Carnival of math

You might not have heard about it, but there exists a blog carnival for math, too. I submitted my rainbow entry into the latest one.

Not all of the entries there are higher math, by the way, such as MathMom's Calculator rant or Puzzler puzzled from JD2718.

If interested, go check it out: Carnival of math, edition 17!

Humorous short history of mathematics

Enjoy:

A Very Short History of Mathematics

This is how it starts:

MATHEMATICS is very much older than History, which begins* in +1066, as is well known; for the first mathematician of any note was a Greek named Zeno, who was born in -494, just 1,559 years earlier. Zeno is memorable for proving three theorems: (i) that motion is impossible; (ii) that Achilles can never catch the tortoise (he failed to notice that this follows from his first theorem); and (iii) that half the time may be equal to double the time. This was not considered a very good start by the other Greeks, so they turned their attention to Geometry.

continue here...

Hat Tip to Let's Play Math.