Orem Library

"Delightful . . . easily digestible chapters include plenty of helpful examples and illustrations. You'll never forget the Pythagorean theorem again!"—Scientific American
Many people take math in high school and promptly forget much of it. But math plays a part in all of our lives all of the time, whether we know it or not. In The Joy of x, Steven Strogatz expands on his hit New York Times series to explain the big ideas...

Presents an accessible, in-depth look at the history of numbers and their applications in life and science, from math's surreal presence in the virtual world to the debates about the role of math in science. "Have you ever wondered what humans did before numbers existed? How they organized their lives, traded goods, or kept track of their treasures? What would your life be like without them? Numbers began as simple representations of everyday things,...

Robert Sneden explores the great mathematical breakthroughs in history. Over time, our knowledge of mathematics has progressed in response to our desire to make life easier. Initially, the first breakthroughs were motivated by very practical problems, but as our understanding of theory advanced, a desire to solve more abstract problems has led to some incredible discoveries. Each chapter opens with a helpful overview and timeline of events, putting...

Wouldn't it be great if all school teachers (from kindergarten through high school) would share the joy of mathematics with their students, rather than focus only on the prescribed curriculum that will subsequently be tested' This book reveals some of the wonders of mathematics that are often missing from classrooms. Here's your chance to catch up with the math gems you may have missed. Using jargon-free language and many illustrations, the authors-all...

Introduces recipes and fun math facts including, Fibonacci snack sticks, tessellating two-color brownies, and variable pizza pi.

Millions of people visit xkcd.com each week to read Randall Munroe's iconic webcomic. His stick-figure drawings about science, technology, language, and love have a large and passionate following. Fans of xkcd ask Munroe a lot of strange questions. What if you tried to hit a baseball pitched at 90 percent the speed of light? How fast can you hit a speed bump while driving and live? If there was a robot apocalypse, how long would humanity last? In...

Julian Havil is a retired former master at Winchester College, England, where he taught mathematics for thirty-three years. In addition to Nonplussed!, he is the author of Gamma: Exploring Euler's Constant (both Princeton). In Nonplussed!, popular-math writer Julian Havil delighted readers with a mind-boggling array of implausible yet true mathematical paradoxes. Now Havil is back with Impossible?, another marvelous medley of the utterly confusing,...

The mathematical savant uses personal stories and everyday examples to describe the way numbers and equations form the basis of our lives, from snowflakes to Anne Boleyn's extra finger.