A review by radioactve_piano
An Imaginary Tale: The Story of "i" [the Square Root of Minus One], by Paul J. Nahin
3.0
It's only been three and a half years since I've been in an upper-level math class, and yet, I felt like a dunce at many points in this book.
Granted, that may have been due to Nahin's decidedly engineer-fascinated-by-math style of writing (that style does exist, I swear; I grew up with my dad teaching me math in a way that can only be described as filtered through an engineer's mind); aside from my dad, the people I spoke math with were all mathematicians.
I should have read this when I first received it as a gift if I wanted to fully grasp all of the equations. As it was, despite my degree in math and the insanely slow pace I took reading this, the lack of constant use of many equations and theorems shown in the book meant I recognized the name and the general idea, but was totally lost on some of his executions.
Granted, that may have been due to Nahin's decidedly engineer-fascinated-by-math style of writing (that style does exist, I swear; I grew up with my dad teaching me math in a way that can only be described as filtered through an engineer's mind); aside from my dad, the people I spoke math with were all mathematicians.
I should have read this when I first received it as a gift if I wanted to fully grasp all of the equations. As it was, despite my degree in math and the insanely slow pace I took reading this, the lack of constant use of many equations and theorems shown in the book meant I recognized the name and the general idea, but was totally lost on some of his executions.