Customer Reviews

Mathematical Models

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My copy of this classic is 37 years old, but the topics are timeless. The focus on physical models, makes the material accessible to even elemetary school students (that's when I first saw the book) but interesting to adults. The models cover 2 dimensional ones with contructing various curves and surface tesselations (think tiling a floor) to three dimensional ones like polyhedra (so that's what a soccer ball is!), conic and toroidal (doughnut) sections to mechanical models like linkages, machines for drawing curves (many of which are used in commerce)and on to rudimentary computing models. In a world where we're too quick to rely on a computer model, these physical representations offer students of all ages a grounding in the physical univerese, where we all actually live. After nearly 40 years, I continue to pull this book off the shelf and refer to it for models to reduce the complex and inaccessible ideas of life to simpler, intuitive models that invite exploration and produce delight and understanding in return

The fact that this book is in it's third edition and its 14th printing speaks for it's self. It is one of the best general textbooks ever written on the subject of mathimatical models. Best of all it is written at Highschool level so that anyone can read and understand it.

This book is the 3rd edition(1981) since 1951. Although the printing is new, the contents are old. The angle represent in degree-minute-second. I think the best is help you to make 3-D figure such as Five tetrahedra in a dodecahedron in P.139. If you are a teacher and want to make some 3-D models which name are not known to many people instead of cube or sphere, I think this book is suitable.