review:
I received this book as a birthday gift from a dear friend. Incidentally, I had recently read "A Brief History of Mathematical Thought", so I was more surprised and amused at having received this. Math books are not something my friends would think I'd be interested in, quite the oppposite. I failed math in college. Good, clean, practical engineering maths. Because I absolutely hated the way it was taught. I always thought math is more philosophical, it is supposed to represent the way we think, or change the way we look and understand things. Instead, I was always taught math as a series of take-it-or-leave-it lectures that made me memorise formulae and their application.
When I accepted this book, I was sceptical - how much math stuff would I *not* know. I've finished high-school, I've finished an engineering college (where despite my failed math exams, I always did know how to do math), and a PhD in computer science. Turns out the answer was - there's always more I don't know, including the exactness of mathematical concepts, or why they are the way they are, or how they associate to the way I'm supposed to be thinking. It reminded me something about another book - "Thinking in Systems: A Primer", which also was about fundamentals and building a thought process that was close to what we're used to in terms of language and comprehension.
A good read, a good topic, and a good gift!,