Reviews for Introductory mathematics for the clinical laboratory

The average rating for Introductory mathematics for the clinical laboratory based on 2 reviews is 4.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2017-12-18 00:00:00 Glenn Murphy There are many interesting things in this book, that is for sure. If you are interested in reading some well-written anthropological studies about certain aspects of Native American culture then this book is a good place to go. That said, I have two pet peeves that kept holding me back from truly loving this book. They may or may not be fair and other readers may or may not share them, but I thought I would share them with potential readers: 1) The typesetting. It certainly isnt fair to criticize a collection of academic essays from the 70's for looking like it was typeset in a pre-computer age, but I would be lying if I said that it didnt hurt my eyes to read. Yes, I am a LaTeX snob. 2) This book has an EXTREMELY narrow definition of what "Mathematics" is. It would more accurately be titled "Native American Number Systems", as the vast majority of the articles are exclusively concerned with what symbols the various tribes used and what bases they counted in. This is interesting as far as it goes, but Mathematics is about much more than just what words we use to count, and I would have liked to learn more about the other aspects of their mathematical thinking -- I find it hard to believe that Native American societies were THAT far behind similar cultures in Africa and Asia in their mathematics.

Review # 2 was written on 2014-11-05 00:00:00 Levy Bergman This book by Michael Closs is a classic in the area of cultural mathematics (which also goes by the name Ethnomathematics). The idea of the book is to present mathematics of indigenous groups of the Americas. There are many wonderful connections between culture and mathematics, and reading 'Native American Mathematics' allows us to see differences between how mathematics is perceived in Western culture and how it is perceived in non-Western cultures, specifically of the Americas. For example, in the first chapter on counting and number systems, there are many examples of creative ways interpreting numbers, by people of different cultures. Descriptions include how some cultures count using subtraction or multiplication, such as to describe the number nine in terms of 'ten minus one', or the number twelve as 'four times three'. In other chapters, one can learn about different kinds of calendars, such as those of the Nootka, the Aztecs, and the Maya, as well as cultural interpretations of numbers by cultures such as the Ojibwe and Inuit cultures. There is also a very good description of Inca mathematics by Marcia Ascher. There is a lot interesting information in this book, and it is not just formulas and equations - most of the book can be easily understood by reading it leisurely.