![]() Strogatz has clearly worked hard to make sure his explanations are understandable for someone with a moderate mathematical ability but willing to spend the time carefully thinking about what they are reading.Īnd this is, of course, what we as teachers should be expecting and encouraging our students to do. The heart of the book is the development of differentiation and integration, and how these ideas have been ever since (for example, in the iPhone). Periods of social distancing can therefore be very productive, no matter how difficult they may appear at present. In Newton’s case, his work was carried out in isolation at his mother’s home in Lincolnshire following the closing of universities due to the bubonic plague. Strogatz also makes the interesting point that, as the Greeks regarded mathematics as something existing completely separate from the real world, they were never able to make the connection between curves and rates of change that had to wait several centuries for Newton (and Leibniz!). Strogatz describes some of the ideas that Archimedes had around calculating the area of a parabolic segment using techniques that, in modern terminology, we would simply call passing to the limit. The book starts by looking at the ideas about infinity, in particular, the work of Archimedes. How could it be that a theory originally about shapes ultimately reshaped civilisation? “Infinite Powers” seeks to answer this question. The second paragraph of the book’s Introduction suggests that Strogatz would agree with me on this point: It’s a curiosity of history that the world was changed forever by an arcane branch of mathematics. ![]() I do have a slight bias here as the book is about the area of mathematics which I think is the most interesting and has had the greatest impact, namely Calculus. My choice would be “ Infinite Powers” by the Cornell University mathematician, Steven Strogatz, which was published last year. If a KS4 or KS5 student asked you to suggest a book on mathematics to read, what would you recommend? You would no doubt want to choose something that was accessible, challenging, stimulating and, perhaps, most importantly, inspirational.
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