Bellos A. The Grapes Of Math

We depend on numbers to make sense of the world, and have done so ever since we started to count. In fact, perhaps the most surprising feature of mathematics is how extraordinarily successful it has been, and continues to be, in enabling us to understand our surroundings. Civilization has progressed as far as it has thanks to discoveries about simple shapes like circles and triangles, expressed pictorially at first, and later in the vernacular of equations.
Math, I would argue, is the most impressive and longest-running collective enterprise in human history. In the following pages I follow the torch of discovery from the Pyramids to Mount Everest, from Prague to Guangzhou, and from the Victorian drawing room to a digital universe of self- replicating creatures. We will meet swashbuckling intellects, including familiar names from antiquity and less familiar names from the present day. Our cast includes a cravat-wearing celebrity in India, a gun-toting private investigator in the United States, a member of a secret society in France, and a spaceship engineer who lives near my London flat.
As we roam across physical and abstract worlds, we will probe well-known concepts, like pi and negative numbers, and encounter more enigmatic ones, which will become our confidants. We will marvel at concrete applications of mathematical ideas, including some that actually are made of concrete.–––CHAPTER ONE
Every Number Tells a StoryCHAPTER TWO
The Long Tail of the LawCHAPTER THREE
Love TrianglesCHAPTER FOUR
ConeheadsCHAPTER FIVE
Bring on the RevolutionCHAPTER SIX
All About eCHAPTER SEVEN
The Positive Power of Negative ThinkingCHAPTER EIGHT
Professor CalculusCHAPTER NINE
The Titl of This Chapter Contains Three ErorsCHAPTER TEN
Cell MatesAPPENDIXESPICTURECREDITSA NOTE ON THE AUTHORASSUMPTIONS, CLARIFICATIONS, REFERENCES AND NOTES