Reviews for Mathematics for Practical Use - Kaj L. Nielsen - Paperback

The average rating for Mathematics for Practical Use - Kaj L. Nielsen - Paperback based on 2 reviews is 3 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2019-01-10 00:00:00 William Smock This book didn't quite fulfill my expectations of it. The cover flap promises much Although mathematics developed along with civilization to help solve practical problems, many people also found that numbers and shaper were fascinating in themselves and began to play with them for pleasure. It goes on to say that this book explores this more recreational side of mathematics. The book however gets bogged down in defining numbers, telling where they come from, defining odd and even numbers, defining squares and rectangles, explaining that multiplication is commutative and by that time your half way therough the book and there hasn't been much recreation going on. A strength of the book is that it encourages children to write simple computer programs to do a bit of recreational number theory. This part, I think, is great. I wish that the author had put more emphasis on this sort of thing: running numerical experiments, making guesses about things, making simple arguments to convince oneself that something is true (proofs, but not rigorous ones) and asking their own questions. Another fault of the book is that there is technical jargon where it is unnecessary. For instance: "...the odd numbers in their proper order." Why doesn't he just say "the odd numbers in order."? In the end I really like this book, but it I wish that it delivered better on it's promise: skip all the technical definitions. Show some fun examples of things and encourage kids to do mathematical experiments, ask questions for themselves and think about shapes and numbers and patterns for fun. This is a tall order, but I believe it's doable. See also my blog entry:

Review # 2 was written on 2015-02-14 00:00:00 Edward Brooks I think this book can be used to explain a lot of different math concepts. This book can be in a classroom as a resource for students, but I think that students would never pick this book up to read for fun because of it's dictionary like structure. This book also contained a lot of math history!