Mathsemantics: Making Numbers Talk Sense

By Edward MacNeal

Book Overview

Here is a whole new way of looking at math that liberates math phobes from their anxiety, enables business people to do their jobs more effectively, challenges and informs math buffs, and provides educators with the tools to teach math easily and effectively. How can it do all that? By reuniting numbers and meaning, two subjects that should never have been separated in the first place. Entertaining, anecdotal, and immensely practical, this extraordinary book offers a revolutionary way of looking at math as a language, something that we've all heard before but which has never made sense until now. Mathsemantics is that rare book that will change the way you look at the world--and provide the most sensible and inspiring answer yet to the problem of American innumeracy.

"Eye opening . . . a good antidote to innumeracy."--Library Journal

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0140234861
• ISBN13: 9780140234862
• Release Date: March 1995
• Publisher: Penguin Books
• Length: 320 Pages
• Weight: 0.52 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 5.2" x 7.5"

Customer Reviews

A truly superb book!

I teach British literature and love Scott, Austen, Wodehouse, and Hardy. I thouroughly enjoy the murders mysteries of Rex Stout and Dorothy Sayers. So why am I reviewing a book about math? Because it is one of the finest books I have ever read. This book bridges the gap between the right and left brains. While its subject matter includes some advanced concepts, they are expressed so articulately that they are accessible to virtually everyone. This is not a book for educators or students alone. Everyone should read it.

Common Sense on an Uncommon Topic

The author is "an expert" - someone who knows something and can explain it to and/or use it for those who can't - or just don't - on their own.I am a high school math teacher and community college and high school computer teacher. MacNeal THRILLED me with his insight into something that may be part of the problem with education the way we do it. Look for his connection of Piaget's work on the development of children's and adults' abilities through necessary stages with the Chinese language and with the teaching of math.I have had more successes with some of my students because of MacNeal and his book.

Deserves to be more widely known

This is one of my favorite books of its kind. It deserves a place on the shelf next to Paulos's _Innumeracy_. _Mathsemantics_ is a highly readable, insightful, conversational, anecdotal, fascinating discussion of the ways people apply (or fail to apply, or misapply) mathematical thinking to real world situations, and why they have trouble mixing math and language.

worthy

I enjoyed this book. It's humorous, and addresses how humans learn, not how teachers would like them to learn. It's compared to Paulos' INNUMERACY, but it doesn't have Paulos' arrogance and condescension. I enjoyed that, too, so consider this a good companion book.

A confabulation of math, words, analysis, & puzzles.

This book is a treat for anyone interested in math, words, analysis, and problem solving. Analysis is an art, and the author shows how numbers and words can present or hide the problem. The author builds the book around a set of problems he collected or invented over 20 years to help him hire people to work in his business. The problems turn out to be arenas where common sense does battle with dumb rules ("you can't add apples and oranges") and the art of definition (a passenger, a trip, a ticket, a traveler, and an airplane seat are different entities). This is also a funny book! The problems are interesting and concrete. The book is structured, too, so the reader easily gets a chance to hack away at the problem, and also see how other folks have done solving the problem over the last 20 years. (The explantions some folks give to explain their answers are sometimes screamingly funny, but always interesting.) This book is a fun read. It would also make a great companion text in a high school or college math or analysis course.