 | Summaries and Customer Reviews are supplied by Amazon.com | At the very beginning of his book on i, the square root of minus one, Paul Nahin warns his readers: "An Imaginary Tale has a very strong historical component to it, but that does not mean it is a mathematical lightweight. But don't read too much into that either. It is *not* a scholarly tome meant to be read only by some mythical, elite group.... Large chunks of this book can, in fact, be read and understood by a high school senior who has paid attention to his or her teachers in the standard fare of pre-college courses. Still, it will be most accessible to the million or so who each year complete a college course in freshman calculus.... But when I need to do an integral, let me assure you I have not fallen to my knees in dumbstruck horror. And neither should you." Nahin is a professor of electrical engineering at the University of New Hampshire; he has also written a number of science fiction short stories. His style is far more lively and humane than a mathematics textbook while covering much of the same ground. Readers will end up with a good sense for the mathematics of i and for its applications in physics and engineering. --Mary Ellen Curtin |
Average Customer Rating:   Unintelligible I thought this volume was going to be an entertaining, but stimulating, history and development of i--well, I gave up in anger and frustration after the first three chapters.
Mr. Nahin suffers from two of the maladies of many writers of math textbooks, the inability to express himself clearly to the intended reader and the inability to separate the chaff from the wheat. Chapters 2 and 3 are illustrative of the author's shortcomings, especially the latter on the geometric interpretation of i as developed by Wessel. Here, vector addition is clearly explained both in words and by a diagram, but vector multiplication and how Wessel derived it (actually the heart of the matter) is not. We are forced to try to figure it out based on the author's verbal explanation with no examples (and I mean simple and meaningful ones) given. The reader feels the full force of the inadequate presentation when the author tries to build on concepts which he has not clearly enunciated in the first place.
If the author were uncertain as to the clarity of his presentation, he should have beta tested it.
As it is, too many people are turned off to math and texts like this only increase the negative reception. In short, there is no excuse for this!!! Paul Nahin is a math/physics teacher wizard This is my first review and it's an honor to start with one of Mr Nahin books.
I'm an EE engineer by trade and an occasional hobbyist of math and physics reading. Several years ago I stumbled over one of Mr Nahin books, "when least is best", at the public library and from reading the first pages I understood that this book/author stood clearly out of the pile in its class. Although I like to read "technical" books that addresses applied math and physics concepts, but in the process of reading many of such books I lose interest somewhere in the middle of the reading, not only because lack of time, but mainly because the material presented is "dry" and quickly becomes quite boring... Well, with Nahin's books things turned completely different and I ended up buying/reading almost every book of this author (except his book on "time travelling" which is, to my liking, a bit dry to read). Not only Mr Nahin engage the reader in timely and interesting subjects, but he's magically able to present "dry" and "complex" concepts in a very clear and easy to understand manner. Try to read a "text book" on "calculus of variations" or "Fourrier transforms" and see how it's difficult to understand the "basic" theory behind these concepts... you'll be able to "solve" problems and get a good grade in your exams but you'll likely miss the "physical" explanation/implication of the concepts involved... well Nahin's books precisely fill in this missing part. I highly recommend Nahin's books for applied math and physics enthusiasts -those who have a sufficient math background-. These books are pretty technical and can be used as supplement for text books in classes. I wish I had Mr Nahin as teacher; he's truly a math wizard!
I'll try later to comments on his other books that I read so far. The last 2 I bought but didn't have yet the time to read.
Shame on you Amazon! An Imaginary Tale: The Story of i [the square root of minus one]
This delightful book, full of really cool mathematics, was ruined by Amazon when they scanned it for distribution to Kindle users. I believe they used an optical character reader to scan a hard-copy of the book, and then didn't bother to check what they had. Quality control of this product is egregious! There are errors on nearly every page: large letter V's in the place of square root radicals. wildly varying character sizes when reproducing mathematical notation, missing parts of equations (for example, primes missing from functions indicating second derivatives), all exponents tagged as footnotes, and more.
All of this makes reading the book a chore - when it could be enjoyable and instructive.
Shame on you Amazon! Sure to enhance your appreciation of complex numbers This book is a neatly packaged mix of historical notes intertwined with related results and derivations that explain how complex numbers enter various calculations. You may think of it as an "appetizer sampler" for the topic - "A Splash From The Complex Plane" - to quote the title of a diagram in the final pages of the book.
The bibliographical notes and certain parts of the text suggest that the author has done a significant research. He has managed to collect and present such a diverse set of examples that his readers finish the book agreeing with him in that there's nothing imaginary about "i" after all.
Most of the book (except the final chapter) only requires knowledge of basic Calculus. But, if you have a little more mathematical maturity than that, you may enjoy and appreciate some of the finer details in the historical notes and connections that are mentioned. An excellent read for all technical & mathematic fans As a long time electrical engineer, now more managerial, I still get amazement from past work of scientists and mathematicians; actually more now than before! The author is a big fan of Euler and the history of imaginary numbers. I also purchased his other great read: Dr. Eulers Fabulous Formula. One does not have to be overly technical to understand the path of the story. The story of how imaginary numbers were discovered, covered, developed, ignored, and many things in between. To this day, I am amazed how this theory was developed before the dawn of computing platforms. This book outlines the tale with major and minor players throughout history. I highly recommend this read to engineers, mathematicians and scientists.
david paul
ceo, validus technologies |  |
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