On Sun, 06 Jul 2008 11:44:08 GMT, Short Wave Sportfishing
wrote:

Today's NYT Science Section.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/06/bo...lenberg-t.html

Numerology

By JORDAN ELLENBERG
Published: July 6, 2008

My cousin, bound for a top liberal arts college in the fall, was
amused when I told her I was reviewing a book about big ideas in
mathematics, from the classical to the contemporary. “Don’t they
already know everything about math?” she asked. “You know, there’s
algebra ... and then calculus ... and that’s it, right?

Andrew Hodges, a fellow at Oxford and the author of the lively new
book “One to Nine,” would have been horrified, but not surprised. My
cousin, in his view, is a victim of the pedagogical tradition that
presents math as an eternally fixed array of computations, to be
memorized and repeatedly executed without motivation or explanation.
The result, he writes, is a “legacy of fear and anxiety generated by
schools, which leaves most of their victims with a lifetime of
mumbling apologetically about ‘my worst subject.’”

Haven't seen it, but it sounds interesting. I probably won't read it
though. It sounds like it would make a good textbook for, "Intro to Math
for the Liberal Arts Student", especially with the anti-Bush rhetoric.

But, four is an interesting number, as Hodges points out. One other
interesting factoid about the number four is that every prime number after
two is either one more or one less than four.

Another good book, which I *have* enjoyed is, "Nature's Numbers" by Ian
Stewart.