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The Man of Numbers: Fibonacci's Arithmetic Revolution Hardcover – July 5, 2011

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Keith Devlin (Author)
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4 out of 5 stars 43 customer reviews
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Product Details

  • Hardcover: 192 pages
  • Publisher: Walker Books; 1St Edition edition (July 5, 2011)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 1408815761
  • ISBN-13: 978-1408815762
  • ASIN: 0802778127
  • Product Dimensions: 5.8 x 0.8 x 8.4 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 11.2 ounces
  • Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (43 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #429,828 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

42 of 47 people found the following review helpful
Even more important than originally thought
By Ed Pegg Jr VINE VOICE on July 5, 2011
Format: Hardcover Verified Purchase
A man went on business to Lucca, Florence, and then Pisa. In each city, he doubled his money, then spent 12 denari. At the end, he had no money. How much did he start with?

This and hundreds of other math-heavy financial questions were asked in Liber Abaci, or "The Book of Calculation", published in 1202 by Leonardo of Pisa, who became better known as Fibonacci. The book is led to the European popularization of 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 0 -- the Hindu-Arabic number system.

Why? It was faster than the Roman method. The many questions were aimed at merchants. It was profitable. The merchants who used the methods in Liber Abaci were able to beat their competitors, and this caused the new methods to see widespread usage throughout Europe. Now, to a modern reader, Liber Abaci's six hundred pages of detailed calculations for how to make money conversions, tariff fees, and business transactions with a variety of obsolete currencies may seem like a tedious read. To a merchant of the era, some subset of the pages gave exact instructions for how to make more money.

The 13th century merchants of Pisa, Genoa, Milan, and Florence all took up the new mathematical system. At the time, there were other influential books for merchants. With Liber Abaci, they formed the initial core set for business math.

Forensic analysis of the other books was done a few years ago, and it revealed that Fibonacci was the author of the other influential books, as well.

Keith Devlin gives both the ancient and modern history. I had the privilege of seeing his presentation for The Man of Numbers at a recent math conference, and it was all a fascinating, gigantic story.

For the Kindle, there is a shorter companion book by the same author: Leonardo and Steve: The Young Genius Who Beat Apple to Market by 800 Years.
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59 of 68 people found the following review helpful
Don't buy the Kindle edition
By Joachim Wulff on August 18, 2011
Format: Kindle Edition Verified Purchase
I recently bought a Kindle and this was the first eBook I bought for it. It was quite a disappointment. Although the contents itself is interesting (I would probably rate a printed version 4 stars), the fun was spoiled by the poor conversion to Kindle format. I'm not an expert on this matter, so I don't know if this is inherent to eBooks, or if it's just the editors' poor job.

Most annoying are:
- Transliteration of Arabic into Latin text is partially done with images, which cause line-breaks in the middle of words. The word 'Muhammad', with an underdotted 'h' occurs quite often and causes a lot of unnecessary white space.
- Mixed fractions become ambiguous because there are is no space between the whole number and the fraction (and the numerator is in the same size font). So 112/13 can mean either 'one hundred twelve thirteenth', 'one and twelve thirteenth' or 'eleven and two thirteenth'. This makes following the examples quite a challenge and distracts from understanding them.

Also:
- Occasional references to page numbers. Kindle doesn't use pages.
- In the beginning of the text the '2' in squared entities is not super-scripted. In later part this is done properly.
- In the illustration that explains the use of symbols for digits in terms of angles in the graph, the symbol for '6' contains 7 angles. (This might be true for the printed edition too).

In short: buy the paper version, it's worth reading (I agree with the previous reviewer). Even if the Kindle version is a bit cheaper, it's a waste of money.
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15 of 15 people found the following review helpful
Credit Where Credit Is Due
By Rob Hardy HALL OF FAMETOP 500 REVIEWER on September 30, 2011
Format: Hardcover
No one needs to be informed that we have been through a calculating revolution in the past few decades, with a computer seeming to be on everyone's desk and in everyone's pocket. This particular calculating revolution, though, has been just one in a series, starting with notching tally marks on a bone around 35,000 years ago. Just as we take computers for granted now, so also we take for granted 0, 1, 2, and all the rest, but those are inventions as much as computers are, and they were a revolution in their time. It is a revolution that can be credited to a mathematician who is more famous for popularizing (he didn't invent) a series of numbers that bears his name, Fibonacci, but he now gets credit for introducing Arabic numbers to Europe in _The Man of Numbers: Fibonacci's Arithmetic Revolution_ (Walker & Company) by Keith Devlin, a mathematician who is well known as "The Math Guy" on NPR. Fibonacci didn't invent Arabic numbers, of course, and they are so much better a calculating system than the Roman numerals that preceded them that they would have been adopted eventually, but Fibonacci made it happen. Devlin's fascinating account shows how he did it, and how he didn't get credit for it, and how we now know him to be one of the most influential mathematicians who ever lived.

Although Devlin's book is supposed to be about its title character, it isn't a biography. Unless some librarian discovers a long-lost manuscript someday, Fibonacci will never have a biography. We know a little about him and his influences, all of which Devlin tells us, but details like his place and date of birth and death, family life, or what he looked like just don't exist. Fibonacci's father, a merchant, took him to north Africa when the boy was fifteen.Read more ›
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Most Recent Customer Reviews

1,1,2,3,5,8,13,...

Most of us know Fibonacci through his inimitable series: 1,1,2,3,5,8,13,... That is how we are introduced to the man. Prof. Read more

Published 4 months ago by Vijay K. Gurbani
Five Stars

As always, Dr. Devlin delivers.

Published 7 months ago by JAK
Funnumberology, no notnumerology.

Funnumberology,no notnumerology.

Published 8 months ago by mgrande
Two Stars

too slow a read

Published 9 months ago by arthur pesch
Five Stars

Read the book from the library then bought a copy for my math major daughter.

Published 10 months ago by Trish Arthur
Concise Story of Modern Arithmetic/Business Expansion Origins

This book on Leonardo of Pisa, or Fibonacci as he was also called, offers background, antecedents, and implications of his Liber Abacci (written in 1202) that helped popularize and... Read more

Published 11 months ago by Fred Cheyunski
Excellent book

Mr. Devlin has put his knowledge to work when he wrote this book and introduced me to Fibonacci of Pisa

Published 16 months ago by Michael Solow
You really have to like math to get engrossed in this one.

I bought it for its history aspect, but the author spends a lot of time taking you through the math of the problems that Leonardo included in his book. Read more

Published 18 months ago by Amazon Customer
Math for English majors

This book is about the man, not just the numbers. And the culture at the time and the scope of human thought.

Published 19 months ago by Nancy Jackson
Fibonacci... or should I say, Leonardo Pisano?

Charming and reasonably persuasive book about the medieval Pisano genius who turned Europe onto the Hindu-Arabic numerals and even algebra.

Published on November 22, 2013 by Sherman Dorn

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