Lewis Carroll in Numberland: His Fantastical Mathematical Logical Life By nami-one-piece21.blogspot.com

$16.17 shipping Lewis Carroll in Numberland: His Fantastical Mathematical Logical Life

To most people, Lewis Carroll is nothing but an author of childrens' books and a photographer of ill repute. Nothing could be further from the truth. He was also Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, an eminent mathematician at Oxford, with most of his work being in geometry and matrix algebra. He spent much of his time teaching undergraduates, but also children in various schools around Oxford and private pupils, and published at least as much serious work as he did fiction and nonsense. It is said that after Queen Victoria read Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, she was so charmed that she demanded that she be sent a copy of his next book. And duly, she received An Elementary Treatise on Determinants, With Their Application to Simultaneous Linear Equations and Algebraic Equations and was not amused.

Much of his mathematical work, being pedagogical, is now out of date and sometimes even wrong. For example, much of his energy was spent on teaching Euclid to undergraduates, material that is these days covered at A level in a completely different way, and he was so opposed to the study of non Euclidean geometries as to waste time writing against them. But that doesn't detract from the fact that he was a great teacher of mathematics, to students at all levels from young children to the most learnèd.

Of his works that are still relevant, his two part Symbolic Logic appears (from its description in this short biography) to be worth looking at, for his method of figuring out syllogisms through diagrams, and how he expanded his diagrams to deal with showing the interactions of any number of sets, where Venn diagrams break down at six sets. In 1884 he published what is now an obscure work on psephology, The Principles of Parliamentary Representation in which he considers what it means for an election to be fair, and methods to achieve this in reality. I'm very pleased to say that he comes to the same conclusion that I did: large multi member constituencies with some form of proportional representation within each constituency. And related to this, and driven by his interest in tennis, he analysed whether the traditional knockout style of tournament was a good way of ranking players by ability (it isn't: consider what happens if the best and second best players meet in the first round) and published under his Carroll pen name a pamphlet with the delightful title of Lawn Tennis Tournaments: The True Method of Assigning Prizes with a Proof of the Fallacy of the Present Method whose recommendations have not, unfortunately, been taken up. It is an interesting what if to imagine whether they would have been if he had published it under the name of Dodgson and the effect this would have on knock out tournaments in all manner of sports.

I would have liked to see a bit space given in this biography to all three of those subjects, even bearing in mind that a biography is a book about the man, not about the details of his work. After all, if the author could fit in so much material about puns and mathematical games, he could surely fit in a bit about those works of Dodgson's that are the most relevant today. I wonder if, perhaps, Wilson was concerned that that would make the book too technical. If that's the reason, then Shame, Shame!

For those with an interest in mathematics (at any level, from schoolchild to professional), this book is very much worth reading and worth buying. For general readers I hesitate to recommend purchasing it except to Carroll's most ardent fans. 0141016108 A great book about the master 200 pages I bought this book for my husband and he said it is so interesting. The book arrived early and I am so pleased with it. 200 pages a small adventure or exercise of imagination. 0141016108 A great read and very informative on the mind of one the greatest writers ever. Of course I am a big admirer of this mans work. 978-0141016108

Good holocaust A charming little biography of Lewis Carrol. A medley of biography, puzzles, pictures, history, puzzles and much . A wonderful intellectual journey throughout 19th century England. You could not spend your money any wisely than by buying this. 978-0141016108 as expected English Pros: Well placed and entertaining quotes from Alice and other books by Lewis Carroll. Frequent use of original texts to give a flavor of the time period. Lots of quirky math puzzles.

Cons: Lots of quirky math puzzles. You either like math puzzles or you don't. And these were written in the late 1800s. So, they are not simple to read either. Some of them were great and I enjoyed them, but there were a LOT of them, and some I found barely comprehensible. I found I skimmed a large part of the end section of the book.

The book was generally entertaining and I enjoyed reading it (it doesn't take long to get through, unless you plan to ponder all the math puzzles), but it is a bit thin in places. I think this is a reflection on the material available rather than the author his focus is on the mathematical aspects of Lewis Carroll's life (he was a math professor), and there seems to be only so much to say about it (which is probably why there are so many puzzles).

So if you like the logic of Alice and you like math and logic puzzles, go for it. If not, you might find yourself skipping over a lot. 0141016108 This helpful neither is there much linkage between Carroll's activities and what his colleagues and rivals were doing at the same time), but it's not really any worse for this think of it as a selection of Carroll's most interesting puzzles, and the most interesting or best documented aspects of his life.

I read this book in a Kindle edition, and unfortunately the formatting of this edition is particularly bad. You can usually make out what's meant, but it's difficult to separate quotations from the surrounding text, poetry gets mangled, and illustrations appear in strange places. Most inexplicably strong appears in place of numerals in many locations throughout the text. For example you see nonsense like This gives a total of 5 x strong = 30 different ways of painting the faces. 200 pages