Things to Make and Do in the Fourth Dimension

October 15, 2014
Guardian and Telegraph writer and comedian Parker aims "to show people all the fun bits of mathematics."For starters, take out paper and pencil, compass, straight edge, maybe a balloon or a bag of oranges, because the author will challenge you to tackle puzzles, whether it's cutting a pizza in equal slices so some pieces never touch the center or passing a quarter through a nickel-size hole. Parker begins with the easier elements like number systems, primes and the polygons of Euclidean geometry. But his approach has the acceleration of a Ferrari, so readers are quickly racing into higher dimensional space. Parker explains how a square becomes a cube in 3-D and a hypercube (a tesseract) in four dimensions or a doughnut (a torus) becomes an object called a Klein bottle. This branch of math is topology, but in arriving there, Parker makes forays into subfields like tiling (think bathroom floors), packing (how to ship oranges efficiently) and knot theory. Some readers will lose their way-the visualizations alone are tough. Also, by this point, it's clear that the author does not aspire to create a math-for-dummies handbook. Instead, he provides one man's take on the history of math, emphasizing the puzzles that led to profound discoveries or to tantalizing conjectures that remain neither proved nor disproved. But this one man is also a dedicated denizen of the digital universe, and some of the best parts of the book are Parker's explanations of how computers work. This includes the feat in which he and math colleagues set up a field of thousands of dominoes to demonstrate how a computer adds two binary numbers. Parker goes on to explain how smartphones digitally code a photo and why a text sent across the globe arrives error-free despite all the relays along the way. Parker should be commended. He may not convert all readers to loving math, but he does provide a glimmer of understanding of how it works.

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Starred review from October 1, 2014

If you don't believe that mathematics can be fun you should read this book. Parker, a mathematician and stand up comic, takes the reader on an entertaining voyage through many recreational topics. These include some more or less familiar aspects of number theory but also polygonal numbers, packing problems, graph theory, and computer logic and algorithms. The fascinating excursions into geometry and topology including discussions of noncircular wheels, knot theory, and the geometry of four-dimensional objects are especially noteworthy. Throughout the text, subjects are enhanced by clever problems that immediately grab one's attention. The writing style is friendly, humorous, and relaxed as the author reveals the problems' solutions. Parker makes it sound easy, even when it is not, and some of the material can be pretty heavy going. However, most important, he reveals the social aspects of the field, describing his interactions with other mathematicians as they bounce problems around, challenging one another's imaginations. VERDICT This is the best book on recreational mathematics since Martin Gardner's My Best Mathematical and Logic Puzzles.--Harold D. Shane, Mathematics Emeritus, Baruch Coll. Lib., CUNY

Copyright 2014 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

January 1, 2015

Gr 8 Up-For readers who haven't balked at Stephen Hawkings's A Brief History of Time (Bantam, 1988) or Robert P. Crease and Alfred Scharff Goldhaber's The Quantum Moment (Norton, 2014), this sustained ramble through the thickets of mathematics offers similarly lucid but challenging insights into our universe's deeper patterns and principles. Building not on a chronological but a conceptual framework outlined in the opening chapter, "Zeroth Chapter," the author explores the historical evolution of mathematical tools, conjectures, and concepts from numbers and geometrical shapes to primes, knots, algorithms, multiple dimensions, computers from the Antikythera Mechanism on, probability, "ridiculous" (i.e., negative, transcendental, surreal, and the like) numbers, and infinities of diverse flavor. He adds lots of small diagrams and photos to illustrate his topics, but appends no index or, aside from follow-up comments on scattered posers, back matter. A stand-up comedian as well as a trained mathematician, Parker lightens the intellectual load considerably with zingers ("That's the problem with binary jokes: they either work or they don't") and everyday examples from bar bets to dating algorithms. Still, even confirmed math geeks will find this pleasurable but not casual reading.-John Peters, Children's Literature Consultant, New York City

Copyright 2015 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.