Customer Reviews

The History of Mathematics: An Introduction

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I haven't read much on this subject, but I enjoyed this book. The description above says that it's designed for college juniors and seniors, and many of the technical details really will require that level of mathematical maturity. However, there is enough of what the author calls an emphasis on the "bibliographical element" that much of it would be interesting to read through only skimming the technical parts. The author also tries to explain why progress was made at certain times in history but not at others.

The scope is relatively comprehensive: spanning from archeological finds that suggest early numbers systems to early twentieth century work in countability and set theory.

The text itself reminded me quite a bit of my old high school history books -- readable but a little slow-paced at times. More interesting, though, are the problems at the end of every section
-- problems that require the use of ideas and techniques from the time period being described. The author suggests these exercises as a good way to learn both mathematics and history, but they can be safely skipped.

Just a single complaint: the book seems to have a slight slant toward Western mathematics: early Greeks, Europeans from the middle ages, modern Americans recieve the bulk of the attention while there is a single ten-page section entitled "Mathematics in the Near and Far East". While not a fatal flaw (it is of course true that most of modern mathematics has its roots in the West), I would have liked to see a more balanced account.

I really love this book! I highly recommend it. I haven't encountered any other that has come close to this book. The minute I got this book I fell in love with it and I was reading it everyday. The problems at the end of the chapters are so cool. When I did a course in the History of Mathematics we used Boyer and that book is so boring! I really don't like history, but Burton makes it much more interesting. I would recommend this book for a course any day in the history and development of mathematics for those who have had some experience with mathematical proofs. Burton did a wonderful job on this book!

This older version bascially have more or less the content of the newer version. However,you must take care that assignment from your teacher with page number may not match the page number of your book.
As for the content of the book, I think it is written in a very interesting way and it make the study an enjoyable task.

I've taken several math classes so the chapters that covered material in which I was familiar seemingly flew by, where as others were quite boring. I didn't work out any of the problems, but upon inspection they seemed like they were upper undergraduate level problems. The problems dealt with geometric proofs, number theory, binomial expansion, sequences and series, etc. so for the reader, they might get more out of the book if they've taken the prerequisite classes. Hope this helps.

Interesting subject, well researched but poor formatting and rushed or non-fleshed out reasoning makes this text incredibly disappointing. Not worth your money. If you are at all rusty on algebra and arithmetic, you will get lost or be frustrated with the demonstrations and problems shown in the book. Even the answer guides in the back are poor illustrations of well-worked, fully explained problems. You find a lot of "and so because of X formula, we can see Y". You will think to yourself, how in the world did one make a logical step from the previous statement to the last. The chapters and chapter sections are also very inconspicuous and figures do not relate well to the surrounding text. Quite terrible book unfortunately.

This book definitely served its purpose! It was the required text for a Math class I took, and the information in it was great - perfectly supplemented the material. I suppose it had too, since it was the required text. A little technical at times, but each chapter starts off with a nice historical overview.

I had to read this book for a History of Math class. It was fairly interesting and provided a different look at things. I don't think I'd ever want to read it for fun, though... I'm studying math because I'm not interested in history.

This is the international edition, and while it says on the inside that it's not intended for use in the U.S., I've found it to be exactly the same as the full-price hardcover U.S. version.

This book is too long, there's no way more than half of it can be covered in a semester. The problems are very easy and don't require the reader to think too often. I think this book had a hard time finding it's identity. The chapters are written like a history book with little computation involved but the questions at the end are all math based, generally reapeating the same concept over and over again. I'd say there are better, more concise, Math History books out there....for a cheaper too!!!

Happy customer. Received the book promptly and a resonable price compared to the campus bookstore.

I had to buy this textbook for a class. This book was pretty much not helpful at all and boring. But maybe that is just the nature of the subject. I'm glad that class is over.