Customer Reviews

Riot at the Calc Exam and Other Mathematically Bent Stories

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The back cover claims the book is "Appropriate for mathematicians, math students...and indeed everyone else". Well, I am not sure that the book will make a good surprise birthday present for just any non-mathematical "else". Perhaps the "else" should be restricted to the subset who have had occasion to cringe at the oddball math journals thrusting at them from the library rack, with their incomprehensible jargon-laden titles and abstracts. Such a reader might appreciate the constant put downs of the "bad guys" in the stories, the contributors to said journals. But only those who appreciate math, those who can see the mistake on the front cover of the book, those with a good training in at least the standard university calculus curriculum, will experience the smug satisfaction of "getting it", meaning experiencing some really good mathematics in the stories. With so many anti-hero mathematicians featured in the stories, the reader is allowed to freshly ponder questions like: What good is this math for me? Is it more beautiful and useful, now that the professionals have had their foibles exposed?

Perhaps mathematics, by definition (ha ha), is inevitably a serious subject. If not, then why didn't the niche market in math humor blossom a long time ago? The book has some serious endnotes about the math concepts featured in the stories. Perhaps the book needs a more serious introduction as well. For example, think of what Jewish jokes have done for Judaism -- it is difficult to imagine the field having survived and prospered without being buoyed up by the humor. In the long run, maybe humor could eventually play a similar role for professional mathematics.

Colin Adams is an accomplished mathematician and a prolific author. For example, his book on knot theory, The Knot Book, is beautifully written. His book How to Ace Calculus, written with Abigail Thompson and Joel Hass, is a very useful text (I've used it with my own children), and it is full of humor. The present book, Riot at the Calc Exam, is a collection of humorous short essays, most of which have previously appeared in the Mathematical Intelligencer. I think the essay that gave its title to the book is the best; when I read it I laughed so much the tears rolled down my cheeks.

The audience for this book is probably quite small; math grads and profs are the obvious readership, and it isn't clear that the book would appeal to a much larger readership. Also, the kind of humor is best consumed in small doses. I wouldn't advise reading the book in a single reading. One story per week would be about right.