Easy as Pi - A Feature

While at the hospital my husband handed me a bag of books that had come in. One of the books was Easy as Pi The Countless Ways We Use Numbers Every Day by, Jamie Buchan.

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Brushing Up on Math is Easy as Pi
By Jamie Buchan,

"World War II? I don't know much about it. You've lost me. I'm sorry, I was always terrible at history. I just don't have the brain for it!"

I don't know much about it. You've lost me. I'm sorry, I was always terrible at history. I just don't have the brain for it!"

Few people would willingly admit to this level of ignorance about key events that shaped the world. But when it comes to math -- which shapes not only the world but the entire universe -- many otherwise highly intelligent and educated people will happily proclaim ignorance. In many cases, there's the implication that math is boring and difficult -- the exclusive domain of the severely geeky.

This may seem merely frustrating for mathematicians and scientists in social settings, but it has serious and wide-ranging consequences. On an everyday level, a lack of confidence about math makes it hard to split a bill, work on a spreadsheet, or help a child with homework (and this can easily become a vicious circle, since anxiety about math can be passed on to the next generation).

If you feel like you're math averse, be not afraid: the book Easy as Pi can help. Math itself is based on a limited number of very logical rules and, whether we like it or not, it surrounds us in everything we do. As Pythagoras (the guy behind the famous Theorem) remarked: "Number is the ruler of forms and ideas, and the cause of gods and demons." The head of a sunflower has evolved with mathematical precision into a double-spiral pattern that packs the most seeds into the smallest available space. The computer on which you're reading this, and every electronic device -- from cheap digital watches counting seconds and minutes to NASA's Columbia supercomputer, which simulates the collisions of entire galaxies -- is powered by a vastly complex system of ones and zeros, which only works at all because they can be interpreted mathematically.

Just like our explorations of science, humanity's understanding of math has advanced amazingly since we were counting how many mammoth hides it takes to wallpaper a cave. The concept of zero -- a number representing nothing -- is taken for granted today (apart from anything else, how could all that electronics work otherwise?). However, for centuries it was a thorny philosophical and mathematical question. Roman numerals stopped being used in Europe when medieval Italians learned the zero from the Arabs, who in turn had picked it up from India. The ancient Greeks gave us much of our understanding of geometry, and the Romans put it into practice with structural engineering. We've come a long way. The Pirahã tribe, a few hundred people living in a remote area of Brazil, reminds us just how far -- with almost no contact with outside cultures, their math is limited to counting "one, two, many."

Numbers have also slipped into our language and culture in various ways -- the third degree, the fourth estate, and fifth columnists spring to mind. And have you ever been asked to "deep six" something? Intelligence agencies use "numbers stations" -- radio stations broadcasting strings of numbers -- to communicate in code with spies in other countries. And they've gained a cult following of fascinated civilian listeners. The controversial conviction of the Cuban Five came after FBI agents found a decryption program for a Cuban numbers station on their computers.

The influence of numbers in our everyday life also seeps into our superstitions. The number 666 -- still feared by many people as the "number of the beast" -- is believed to be based on gematria, a form of numerically encoding Hebrew words, which is also at the root of claims about a "Bible code." Math anxiety and ignorance allows people who practice numerology and astrology to make a lot of money by claiming to imbue numbers with a spiritual and cosmic significance. Not only is this completely unproven, it masks the far greater beauty of a mathematically ordered universe.

To sum it all up, math and numbers are everywhere, and they are embedded in our lives in every respect. Anxiety about them is really worth trying to overcome. The benefits they bring us are countless.
© 2010 Jamie Buchan, author of Easy as Pi: The Countless Ways We Use Numbers Every Day


Book Description from Readers Digest Books Site:
Have you ever wondered what makes "seventh heaven" and "cloud nine" so blissful and the number 13 so unlucky? Or why "fourth-dimensional" thinking is really out of this world? Inside Easy as Pi, you'll find the "4-1-1" on:

• Numbers in Language: "The Whole Nine Yards" on the origins of words and phrases that contain numbers
• Numbers in Fiction: Why Ray Bradbury named his novel Fahrenheit 451 and how "007" became James Bond's number
• Numbers in Culture: The story behind the most widely stolen social security number and how "555" became the fake area code of Hollywood
• Numbers in Mythology and Religion: Chinese lucky numbers and the traditional Western zodiac
• Numbers in Math and Science: A fun review of the terms you learned in school, along with easy (and fascinating) explanations of Roman Numerals, square roots, sound waves, statistics, game theory, binaries, and more

What a great idea for a teacher, grad student or someone who loves and is interested in the way numbers have been significant in our daily lives.

Thanks to Readers Digest Books and FSB Associates for getting the book to me.