Submitted by Gerti
This
book was recommended to me by the mother of another teenaged boy, and
I read it, thinking it might be something my son could read with
interest, since he’s not a big fan of mathematics. I’m not a big
fan either, but I must say, this book taught me a thing or two, and
one of those is not to trust everything you read!
I
won’t call this a good book, but “The Number Devil” is a book
full of strange and unusual facts about numbers and math. I enjoyed
the drawings and the various exercises and games the author included.
But some of the book just seems to be a weird translation of a
European text. Since Hans Enzensberger lives in Germany, I assume it
was originally written by him in German, and there are some times I
wish I could have read it in the original, because the translation
just seems so awkward! I wonder if the person who translated it from
German to English was a native English speaker, or just someone who
studied English in school! It seems like the latter was the case.
That
criticism aside, I fully related to the story of Robert, the
elementary school student who doesn’t like math (or his math
teacher – the humorously portrayed Mr. Bockel). I like the book’s
format, where each new topic in math is taught in the guise of a
dream, and each chapter is called by the night Robert dreams about
that mathematical concept. What I like least about the book is that
until the end, I as the reader didn’t realize that the terms I was
learning (like Bonacci numbers, for example) were made up. Bonacci
numbers are actually Fibonacci numbers, and the difference in terms
to me is slight, so I don’t understand why the author couldn’t
just have used the real terms if his intention was really to teach
people about math. It bums me out that a math hater like myself
actually went to the trouble of trying to learn some of these
mathematical terms, only to find out that the words the author used
for them was wrong. It’s a bit of a cruel trick.
So,
is this book worth reading? Yes, probably more for a math teacher
(who knows what the real terms are and would find their
approximations amusing). As for me, I would prefer another person to
translate this story from the original text, and for that translator
to use the actual terms and names for famous mathematicians instead
of using the clever (but inaccurate) substitutions the author makes.
It’s not an easy read for an English major, and finding out at the
end (where the glossary of “real” terms and names resides) that I
have been deceived is the literary equivalent of sitting in the
corner with a dunce hat on. It makes me appreciate that math is
practical and its many tricks were discovered by clever people
throughout history, but it makes me dislike this author who was more
clever than practical if he was really trying to give his readers a
math lesson. I think it’s the author who’s the devil in this
work.
No comments:
Post a Comment