Popular Science Children's Review - More Murderous Maths

Home Authors Books Subjects Events Software Features Links Newsletter Gifts Blog Write Review What's New

Review - More Murderous Maths - Kjartan Poskitt

The original Murderous Maths book took on the basics, mostly in and around arithmetic. With that under his belt, Kjartan Poskitt was able to soar into some of the more fun aspects of maths while keeping things basic.

We start off with dimensions, including area and volume and other good stuff, but also with a bit of fun contemplation of what it would be like to live in one or two dimensional spaces. We then move onto speed, but bounce off onto a spot of topology - to be specific Möbius strips. After some fairly painless geometry (not a QED in sight) and a couple of other numerical manipulations like pyramids of numbers (with a reference to Gauss's trick when at school to quickly add up all the number between 1 and 1,000 (I'd always thought it was 1 and 100)), most of the rest of the book is either a running story about the power of maths featuring rather dumb criminals or mathematical games and puzzles.

In fact in many ways this book is rather like a junior version of one of Martin Gardiner's excellent books of mathematical puzzles and diversions - and none the worse for that.

Just a few niggles. Philip Reeve's illustrations are mostly excellent, but there's one where he clearly wasn't quite awake. It's illustrating the measurement needed to work out how much water is need to fill a pond and, erm, the pond is already full of water (so the answer should have been none at all). A little later Poskitt tells us that numbers like the square root of two are called irrational, but doesn't bother to point out why. This is a great example of where knowing why (an irrational number is one you can't make out of a ratio of two whole numbers) makes it much easier to remember the obscure terminology.

Finally, there's one example where the need to be jokey overcomes sense. He comments that making a square of exactly the same area as a circle is "supposed to be impossible, but don't let that put you off. After all ancient mathematicians couldn't programme a video or microwave chips, so maybe some things have changed." This is rather worrying. Firstly ancient mathematicians didn't know it was impossible, which makes the implication that these days we might be able to do it a strange comparison. Secondly we now know that it definitively isn't possible because of the nature of pi. It doesn't matter how good you are at programming the video - and that makes that text downright misleading.

Only in paperback. May not be available in the US (check Amazon.com), but can be shipped from the UK for a few dollars more.

Reviewed by Peter Spitz

* Our age range recommendation is an estimated guide, but individual readers outside the range could still enjoy the book!

DISCLAIMERS

This site has no connection with Popular Science magazine or other sites and publications with a similar name.

Much of the content of this site is written by popular science writers or friends of popular science writers. Inevitably many of the reviews in such a small community are written by or about someone we know. We always aim to be impartial in our reviews, but there is a connection which we need make clear, as there is no intention to deceive. The content of any review or article is solely the opinion of the author and should not be read or understood on any other basis. The site exists to promote popular science writing and popular science authors and for this reason should be considered promotional material, just as the editorial reviews in an online bookshop or the blurb on the back of a book should be considered promotional.

The website should not be eaten or used where it can come into contact with water.

Disagree with our review? Want to comment on a feature? Contact us at info@ popularscience.co.uk - have your say!

Part of the site