Reviews for Mathematics for Liberal Arts

The average rating for Mathematics for Liberal Arts based on 2 reviews is 4 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2019-09-05 00:00:00 Patrick Day I enjoyed getting the survey of math. I've been kind of trying to get a better understanding of how different branches of math fit together and I think walking through the history of the development of math was helpful. I know other people have noted that the book is a little western-centric in their reviews but I mean it's written by some old white man in the 60's. I would just take everything he says, especially about the history of math, with a grain of salt. I wonder if there's some updated book I could read on math that surveys math and the different branches. I feel like a lot of what was covered in the book was stuff I learned already in school, especially high school. I do think it's worth a read for people who don't know much math and I think the exercises are pretty basic/accessible. Math really doesn't change much especially something like Euclidean Geometry. A 3.5 stars from me.

Review # 2 was written on 2014-09-02 00:00:00 Erick Maillard For a long time, I’ve been searching for a book exactly like this one. Somewhat embarrassed by my ignorance of math, I wanted to relearn what I had forgotten in college, and perhaps go further. But I didn’t want to simply learn math; I wanted to learn its history, how it shaped and was shaped by the cultures in which it grew. This is a tall order, requiring both historical and mathematical understanding; but Kline is equal (or, perhaps, almost equal) to the task. Before I get into the positive qualities of this book, I should note its flaws. As another reviewer pointed out, Kline’s beginning chapter on history is inept, even offensive. He heaps praise upon praise when describing the accomplishments of the Greeks, and dismisses the contributions of the Arabs, Babylonians, Egyptians, and Indians with a wave of the hand. He even relays the story of the Muslims destroying the Library of Alexandria, which historians have seen fit to doubt as far back as Edward Gibbon. For Kline, mathematics made a brilliant beginning with the Greeks, and then stayed more or less the same until the Enlightenment. The extent to which that is true, I know not; but it at least seems unlikely to me. Thankfully, the book gets markedly better after that. (One shouldn’t judge a book by the cover, or even the first chapter, apparently.) For, whatever Kline lacks as a historian, he makes up as a pedagogue. Kline doesn’t simply move from arithmetic to geometry to algebra to trigonometry, but instead situates every subject within a specific historical period and practical problem. For example, he teaches trigonometry by using the kind of problems that the Alexandrian Greeks, such as Ptolemy and Eratosthenes, were tackling: the distance from the earth to the moon, the radius of the earth, the establishment of longitude and latitude. Every chapter comes with biographical sketches of the major thinkers involved, as well as some practical problem that the mathematical theory would solve. Following this procedure, Kline manages to take the most abstract of all abstract subjects, and to make it exquisitely human. In school, we are taught trigonometry by showing us how to plug numbers into a calculator. Kline shows us that trigonometry allows us to chart the earth, and to map the skies. We encounter Newton measuring the refraction of light, and Galileo plotting the course of cannonballs. We learn how sinusoidal motion allows us to quantify time, and how the Renaissance painters invented projective geometry in their attempt to create realistic perspective. In sum, Kline shows mathematics for what it is: a tremendously exciting intellectual endeavor—one that has expanded our knowledge of the universe immeasurably. Math is not born of the dreams of philosophers (at least, not exclusively), but has been, and continues to be, integral to the solution of everyday problems. It’s curious that something only accessible to the mind allows us to make sense of our senses. In short, Kline has given me the greatest gift a teacher can give—not knowledge, but curiosity.