The Number Devil: A Mathematical Adventure

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This behavior came from a fear of having anything to do with the number 666, which some Christians have connected to Satan and see as a symbol of evil. On the twelfth night, Robert and the Number Devil receive an invitation (which names the Number Devil as Teplotaxl) to Number Heaven, as Robert's time with the Number Devil has finished.

The Number Devil: A Mathematical Adventure (PDF) The Number Devil: A Mathematical Adventure (PDF)

Download The Number Devil: A Mathematical Adventure by Hans Magnus Enzensberger in PDF EPUB format complete free. For instance, exponentiation takes the term hopping, and the fictional term unreasonable numbers was coined for irrational numbers.

He was also challenged by the necessity to use simple English words appropriate for the target audience of The Number Devil—that is, children aged eleven to fourteen. On the ninth night, Robert dreams he is in bed, suffering from the flu, when the Number Devil appears next to him. This is his first book for kids, and if he was trying to make the book both interesting and fun at the same time, he has well and truly succeeded. While it’s certainly got lots of inspiring maths in it, to do with logic and the mathematical way of thinking, I have to say it’s a hard slog.

666 Meaning - Is This Number Evil Or Just Misunderstood? 666 Meaning - Is This Number Evil Or Just Misunderstood?

The generous and strategic use of color, however, provides the biggest boost: even mathematical equations look festive here, hand-printed in warm muted tones. On the first night, the Number Devil appears to Robert in an oversized world and introduces the number one. In The Number Devil, he brings together the surreal logic of Alice in Wonderland and the existential geometry of Flatland with the kind of math everyone would love, if only they had a number devil to teach it to them. It’s a collection of very small, independent sections on all sorts of topics, gathered together in chapters linked to single digits. Off the beaten track, Mathsemantics is probably my favorite book that no one else has ever heard about.Clearly, since the book is from 1997 or so there are a lot of things not mentioned there but there are plenty of belters. Of the ones I know well enough to recommend, I think Hofstadter’s Gödel, Escher, Bach, Knuth’s Surreal Numbers, Conway and Guy’s The Book of Numbers and Gardner’s Hexaflexagons, Probability Paradoxes, and the Tower of Hanoi are our best bets. I can’t say I followed more than a small amount, but it made an impression on me, and it might complement some of the “pop maths” suggestions since it does actually prove things, rather than just mentioning famous puzzles or people.