He does this while remaining funny and engaging throughout. Even when I didn’t quite grasp the specifics of what was being discussed, Parker was able to provide a higher level explanation so I could at least get the gist of the topic. I won’t claim to have understood everything presented, but I’m willing to admit that has more to do with my having years of avoiding math like the plague than Parker’s explanatory abilities. There are lots of neat tricks, jokes, and trivia, but he also tries to actually explain a lot of mathematical concepts. Parker sets out to remedy that by filling a book with ways to play with math. It’s no wonder lots of people find it difficult to get enthusiastic about math. You’re forced to learn the basics, then…. For the most part, people’s experience with math isn’t the same. You learn the basics of music, and then you can play songs with friends. You learn the basics of writing, and are then encouraged to write a story.
In other disciplines, you learn the basics, but then are allowed to have some fun.
Things to Make and Do in the Fourth Dimension invites us to re-learn much of what we missed in school and, this time, to be utterly enthralled by it.Review 1: Matt Parker starts with the idea that many people don’t enjoy math because they’ve never been allowed to play around with it. Starting with the foundations of math familiar from school (numbers, geometry, and algebra), he reveals how it is possible to climb all the way up to the topology and to four-dimensional shapes, and from there to infinity-and slightly beyond.īoth playful and sophisticated, Things to Make and Do in the Fourth Dimension is filled with captivating games and puzzles, a buffet of optional hands-on activities that entices us to take pleasure in math that is normally only available to those studying at a university level. In the absorbing and exhilarating Things to Make and Do in the Fourth Dimension, Parker sets out to convince his readers to revisit the very math that put them off the subject as fourteen-year-olds. This counterintuitiveness is actually part of the point, argues Parker: the extraordinary thing about math is that it allows us to access logic and ideas beyond what our brains can instinctively do-through its logical tools we are able to reach beyond our innate abilities and grasp more and more abstract concepts.
Part of the problem may be the way the subject is taught, but it's also true that we all, to a greater or lesser extent, find math difficult and counterintuitive. Math is boring, says the mathematician and comedian Matt Parker. A book from the stand-up mathematician that makes math fun again!
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