This book starts simple and interesting with stuff about zero and prime numbers and rapidly becomes challenging (Bayes theory) and then incomprehensible (the Riemann hypothesis). It left me with an appreciation of G. H. Hardy, the more or less utterly unknown mathematician who features in "The Indian Clerk" as the bloke who invited the fantastic mathematician Rananujan to England. In fact Hardy was a tremendous mathematician who work went from primes to genetics.
But the book was a disappointment. I suppose the problem was that the ideas, presented in their four page format, were either too easy or, if they were interesting and challenging, contained too little information for me to truly appreciate what they were about. It sort of skimmed the surface and left me either confused or wanted much more.
March 2010; 203 pages
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