In this interview we sit down with author and mathematician Derrick Niederman to discuss his engaging, recently published book about the first two hundred natural numbers, ‘Number Freak: From 1 to 200, The Hidden Language of Numbers Revealed’. 1. Some of our readers are likely familiar with your...

Misconceptions about probability theory and statistics have major repercussions on society. From seemingly minor things like the excessive sensationalism of some headlines, all the way to the jailing of innocent people based on “statistical evidence”. One of the most common misconceptions is the...

Last weekend I had a chance to read Math for Moms and Dads, which I received from Kaplan as a review copy. This book aims to providing a friendly guide for parents of children ages ten and up, who are struggling with mathematics. Many parents face the challenge of helping their children with math homework,...

Imagine a rope that was just long enough to wrap tightly around the equator of a perfectly spherical earth. Now imagine that the length of that rope is increased by one meter and again wrapped around the earth, supported in a regular way, so as to form an annulus. Doing things in this way will form a certain...

1. The Tenth Dimension 2. Outside in (Turning a sphere inside out) 3. Flatland the film (Trailer) The full movie is available on DVD, and of course, you can also get “Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions”, dirt cheap (a classic geek novel for less than 4 bucks). If you prefer, you could...

I love books with the ability to inspire readers. Many non-mathematicians consider mathematics as something abstruse and complicated, suitable only for ‘nerds’. Often I highlight the unfounded nature of this prejudice, but nothing is more effective at disproving this stigma than a good book. I...

About 50,000 people read my article 3 awesome free Math programs. Chances are that at least some of them downloaded and installed Maxima. If you are one of them but are not acquainted with CAS (Computer Algebra System) software, Maxima may appear very complicated and difficult to use, even for the resolution...

Last week “Digg effect” had quite an impact on my hosting provider. So much so that they kindly (sic) pulled the site off the web after 10 minutes of Digg love, without even bothering to send me a warning or any notification. When I complained they told me, “let us know when you are off...

In my first article “The most enlightening Calculus books”, I argued the importance of maintaining high standards for mathematics education and suggested deep and inspiring calculus books for those of you who are interested in pursuing the joy of learning mathematics. The feedback has been...