I've read a lot of enjoyable and informative books this year, both fiction and non-fiction. When it came to thinking about my favourite though, Alex Bellos' book was a stand-out winner. This is one of the few books I actually bought this year rather than borrowed from the library. I was browsing in the popular science section of WHSmith and happened to pick up this book - I think I was attracted by the distinctive white and red cover (well done marketing people!). After reading the contents and a few pages of the first chapter I decided that it was a bit unreasonable to actively avoid the 510 - 519 section of the library and that maybe I was missing out.
After the pain of school maths with the accompanying fear of failure and feeling like a failure; I haven't read about, or even thought about, maths since the 1990s. But, on this occasion, the Daily Telegraph are right, reading this book "will leave you hooked on numbers". The most interesting sections of the book for me dealt with: the numerical abilities of animals, innate mathematical abilities of humans, the 12 base number system or 'dozenal', the golden ratio and vedic mathematics.
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