I mentioned a little bit yesterday regarding posts that I’ve recently put up that have had something to do with numbers, either in the title, or perhaps due to some ordinal list. Like I said, it’s probably not a coincidence. That’s because on my rides on the subway I’ve been trying to take in a book on numbers that I picked up at Chapters about two weekends ago. The title is One To Nine: The Inner Life Of Numbers. This book has nine chapters exploring aspects of each digit, one through nine. I tend to really like quirky non-fiction that has something of a cultural bend to it. That’s why I kind of enjoyed books like Malcolm Gladwell’s things (I still have to read The Outliers), Freakonomics, and Eats, Shoots & Leaves. I don’t think any of the books have been perfect by any means. Even so, the writing in them had enough pull to make me want to finish the books. And then there are books like One to Nine. Jesus, I was preparing myself to like the book. I mean, the blurb that the publisher had on the book made it look like something that I would be into:

Have you ever thought about the uniqueness and simplicity of One, or what it means to be Two? Is Four really so square and why are there Seven days of the week, Seven deadly sins, or even Seven wonders of the world?

Wow. To me that sounded like it had enough content to not seem like some dry, purely theoretical tome. I’ve always enjoyed numbers a little more than the average person. In my mind there’s something very cool about how something seemingly black and white like mathematics has a lot of beauty in terms of patterns found in unexpected places. I was interested in seeing how all of that applied to everyday life situations. So, that’s why I thought such a book would be a good idea for subway reading. As I made my way through though…I quickly became more and more disappointed. Really, the book depends on the reader having a really good grasp of deep mathematical concepts. For example, maybe if I knew more about Twistor theory I’d be able to appreciate that part of the book better.

I will admit that there were some interesting things. For example the author touched on patterns that appear when you take the Fibonacci pattern modulo some number. That was kind of cool. Still, there wasn’t enough there to make me feel like I could get enough out of the things discussed. Way too much of it either went over my head, or was just presented so abstractly that my mind just didn’t want to bother trying to understand. See, that kind of bothers me. I took a lot of math long ago during engineering undergrad. I actually did learn about topics covered in the book like RSA encryption, Taylor series, etc. I don’t think any of that helped me absorb what was being said. I’m sure there were many points where my eyes must have been scanning over the page but not taking anything in. I’ve actually fallen asleep on the train a couple of times while holding the book. How sad.

I’ll take a guess and say that people that are doing some deep mathematics studies in university will probably enjoy this thing. For the casual reader, it’s not that great. Even if you have some mathematical background, the heavy parts are just too much to deal with. The blurb is inviting, but the text just talks over your head and doesn’t care if you don’t understand.