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Review - Mathmagicians - Johnny Ball

Over the years, Johnny Ball has introduced some of the wonders and fun side of maths to many young viewers on UK television. In this large format book, he really succeeds in putting across the importance of measurement and the associated use of maths in our life.

I particularly like the way he ties his story in with the history of science/maths - something not all children's books bother with, but Ball's approach gives an excellent grounding in where our ideas of measurement and maths come from, particularly valuable as young readers are often fascinated by the stone age and ancient Egyptians.

The slim book (92 pages plus index) is divided into three sections - the ancient world, the age of discovery (loosely the renaissance) and modern measurement. I found the ancient world section perhaps the most fun, with measurement of time and angles featuring large. Ball manages to make trigonometry both obvious and appealing, which isn't easy to do. I actually found myself thinking 'Oh, yes, that's it,' about something that clearly never quite sunk in when I was at school - that's wonderful. In the centre section we've got quite a chunk on gravity and navigation. And the modern section is more of a mixture, with a big chunk that's really physics (heat, energy, electricity, light and so on), then a rather more fun bit that's on big, small and weird and wonderful numbers.

The book is in the usual Dorling Kindersley, heavily illustrated, two page spread format. The illustration is good, though I found the page designs sometimes a bit hard on the eye - too much contrasting background. Although the illustration is good, I didn't really understand the way that some, but not all, portraits had silly eyes drawn on them. (Or why it was felt necessary to add a fig leaf to da Vinci's Vitruvian Man.)

The weakest part of the text was the physics, which, perhaps reflecting Ball's maths focus, tended to be more a string of facts, without as much personality. Light is just presented as a wave, an approach that's a touch Victorian. (Oh and, at least one factual inaccuracy creeps in - we're told that Newton fled London to avoid the plague in 1666. Actually it was Cambridge in 1664.) However, such decidedly minor imperfections don't stop this being a cracking good book on measurement and the importance of number for young readers that should go down equally well in schools and as a present. Nice one, Johnny.

Fancy doing some Mathmagic yourself? You can download a free Mathmagicians resource sheet courtesy of Dorling Kindersley.

Only in hardback

Reviewed by Brian Clegg

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

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