Customer Reviews

One to Nine: The Inner Life of Numbers

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

 

 

I am enjoying the book a lot, but bewarned--you may not get a lot of the references he makes if you don't a some math background. I have undergraduate degrees in math and physics and I needed that to understand some of the details. Hodges discusses a lot more than just the numbers. For example he uses the number eight (one byte) as an excuse to discuss a lot about computers and computing with many (interesting) references to the ideas of Alan Turing (about whom he wrote a book). Many of the other chapters also wander into areas you might not have guessed were related to that number--but that's not a bad thing. I recommend the book to readers who haven't forgotten all their algebra.

One To Nine: The Inner Life of Numbers

The title, One to Nine The Inner Life of Numbers, suggests a book of note. The book, though, appears to be only a mish mash of information from the author's weekly newspaper column in the Observer on mathematical topics. The author indulges himself with comments regarding politics and society and does not appear to know his audience. His text is arrogant and wanders without direction. That is a pity, because the topic should have been an interesting one. Not only is the book poorly written, the book is also poorly typeset. Word spacing is inconsistent which makes the text difficult to read.

When I completed this book, I had to ask myself why I bothered. I found this to be one of the worst books that I have read in the past 60 years. Waste neither your money nor your time on this book.
Not recommended.

I have always enjoyed math and use numbers constantly in making illustrations about everyday events. I won't tell you not to try this book as much of the material is fascinating! However, in spite of my mathematical background, I found that most of the material was too abstract for my feeble mind. I had trouble comprehending some of the concepts that were presented as being fairly simple. Hopefully, you are smarter than I am and will enjoy this book. If you struggle with numbers to begin with, I would suggest something more basic.

I have the basic education to digest this book and I'm of the same 'vintage' as the author so I can see his mind set. This book should never have made it past the editor's desk. It's a good start but it needs serious work with respect to organization etc.
It's more like the author's conversation with himself - that's it - it reads like a blog!! Except it isn't one so I cannot blast the author when he gets too full of himself or wanders hopelessly far from his premise (which is often hard to determine.)
The book is an entertaining read, though, in small chunks, as bed time reading.

It's been a long time since it took me as long to finish a book as this one is taking!

I love books about math. Eli Maor's book "e": The Story of a Number (Princeton Science Library) is one of my favorite of all time on any subject.

This book by Hodges is incoherent crap, which he tries to pass off as erudite rumination. It comes across more as senile rambling that does little to offer an exploration of its supposed topic. Did this book have an editor? Did its author proofread it at all? Or did he simply type it in one sitting and send it directly to the printing press?

I was very excited to see this book on the shelf, since I thought it sounded interesting and promised to add to the relatively small selection of well-written general audience math books. How wrong I was. DO NOT WASTE YOUR TIME.

I enjoyed the author's quick pace through pure and applied mathematical concepts.

I suspect One to Nine's limited appeal (several poor reviews on Amazon) may stem from the material containing a bit too much applied science for most mathematicians, and too much math theory for someone without a substantial mathematical background. As an engineer by education, I know just enough math to be dangerous and feel very comfortable with the physics, chemistry, or other applied science references in the book.

The friends of mine that have read One to Nine also liked it. I would recommend it to someone with a mathematically based science degree, such as most engineering degrees.

Oxford Fellow Andrew Hodges, who wrote the very well received biography, Alan Turing: The Enigma (1992), uses--rather quixotically I might say--the one to nine format to delve into the world of mathematics. His emphasis is on number theory, mathematics as applied to physics, and mathematics as applied to cryptology. The text is difficult, and the puzzles strewn throughout, whether labeled, EASY, GENTLE, TOUGH, HARD, TRICKY or DEADLY, proved mostly too difficult for this non-mathematician.

For those readers versed in number theory, that branch of mathematics in which numbers are explored purely for their own sake without even the dream of a practical application, this book is probably a delight. And for cryptologists it is probably a double delight since Hodges explores in some considerable depth the delicious irony of how pure mathematics became contaminated, as it were, when it was noticed some years ago that the encryption of messages could be facilitated by using very large numbers with unique divisors. While it is easy to multiply two even very large numbers and get a unique result it is enormously difficult to find the unique factors that make up a very large number.

At any rate that is my understanding. And if I have gotten it wrong it is only because I am not much of a mathematician. Which brings me to the central criticism of this book. To put it bluntly I don't think anyone but a mathematician can fully appreciate Andrew Hodges' text. It's that difficult. Additionally, Hodges, who is a physicist as well as a mathematician, brings string and twistor theory into the fray further multiplying the difficulties for the general reader.

But even more off-putting (and this explains some of the negative reviews this book has garnered) is the fact that the book is more than a bit self-indulgent. Hodges's political views are a bit too obvious and gratuitous (although not necessarily disagreeable). He digresses often, sometimes whimsically, sometimes unaccountably. He employs naked jargon, insider allusions, and unexplained references. His subject matter spills over and jumps around from one chapter to another making the "One to Nine" structure seem artificial what with matter pertaining to the number six, for example, appearing in the chapter on the number seven and vice-versa.

I think it's obvious that the sort of book that Hodges has written here must needs another sort of structure, perhaps in three parts, one dealing with encryption, the second with pure number theory, and the third with mathematical physics. He is following to some extent (as he acknowledges) the structure that Constance Reid used so successfully in "From Zero to Infinity" (1956, new edition 2006) in which the chapters were entitled "Zero," "One," "Two,"..."Nine," and then "e" and "Aleph Zero." It's too bad that Hodges didn't emulate Reid's reader friendly prose--and he's a good enough writer to do it--instead of her structure.

Finally I didn't like the fact that the reader has to go to a Website to get the answers to the puzzles!

This may be the most disappointing book I have ever read. I enjoy math and books about math and, after reading the blurbs on the jacket, I looked forward to reading Hodges' book. However, this book seems to be just his unstructured ramblings with little effort made to actually make it interesting or readable. I took away almost nothing about math from the book; only the writer's political, religious and quasi-scientific beliefs. I gave up after a few chapters.

As a math / non-fiction fan and a real fan of Hodges' "Alan Turing" bio, I was really looking forward to "One to Nine". The promise was not met. The material is all over the place and, at times, I had little idea what he was talking about. As a simple example, the relationships among the harmonics in music mean nothing to me. Should I know that background information? Sorry, I don't.

Thus, who actually will buy the book? It's certainly not popularized enough for the general public and it's not heavy enough for a serious math guy. The niche is unclear and probably not large. "Zero: The Biography of a Dangerous Idea" and "It Must Be Beautiful: Great Equations of Modern Science" are better.

Some of the material is indeed quite enlightening and a pleasure to read. Hodges clearly enjoys the ideas and wants to spread the excitement. Through the first half, there were enough moments to keep me going. The second half clicked better, perhaps because it is actually less about numbers and more essay-like about general math and science. Hodges' venture into familiar territory with Turing machines and computers and such has little to do with the specific numbers for the containing chapters, which serve as a vague hook. That was fine with me, as some of that material was quite good.

I wish Hodges had provided answers for some of the many posed problems. Most of them were out of my league and I may not have understood the answers, even if short enough to provide. For several others, I really would have liked to know.

I enjoy reading books on mathematics and number theory and thought this would be a good choice from the library for my next read. Unfortunately, it was much less than expected.

First, the author has what I would term, an 'elitist' writing style. Mathematical concepts are hard enough to grasp for a lot of people - and the matter is made worse when difficult to understand English is employed in explaining it.

Second, many of the examples presented lack solutions, or even a thorough explanation of the problem.

Finally, the book really goes astray with interspersed, and largely irrelevant political, religeous (read: anti-Christian) and pseudo-science commentary (man made global warming, etc...). These comments are irritating and distract the reader tremendously from the stated goal of the book. By Chapter 4, I had read enough of these comments to lead me to return the book without finishing it.

In summary the book seems to be nothing more than a tome representing the intelligence and stature of the author. He is smarter than you - and it becomes evident very early on.

Not recommended.