Enter your mobile number or email address below and we'll send you a link to download the free Kindle App. Then you can start reading Kindle books on your smartphone, tablet, or computer - no Kindle device required.

  • Apple
  • Android
  • Windows Phone
  • Android

To get the free app, enter your mobile phone number.
Download to your computer
Kindle Cloud Reader

The Book of Numbers Corrected Edition

by John H. Conway (Author), Richard Guy (Author)
4.4 out of 5 stars 22 customer reviews
ISBN-13: 978-0387979939
ISBN-10: 038797993X
Why is ISBN important?
ISBN
This bar-code number lets you verify that you're getting exactly the right version or edition of a book. The 13-digit and 10-digit formats both work.
Scan an ISBN with your phone
Use the Amazon App to scan ISBNs and compare prices.
Have one to sell? Sell on Amazon

Sorry, there was a problem.

There was an error retrieving your Wish Lists. Please try again.

Sorry, there was a problem.

List unavailable.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest
Buy used On clicking this link, a new layer will be open
$19.99 On clicking this link, a new layer will be open
Buy new On clicking this link, a new layer will be open
$24.80 On clicking this link, a new layer will be open
More Buying Choices
37 New from $24.46 32 Used from $4.93
69 used & new from $4.93
See All Buying Options
Free Two-Day Shipping for College Students with Prime Student Free%20Two-Day%20Shipping%20for%20College%20Students%20with%20Amazon%20Student

Best Books of the Year So Far
Looking for something great to read? Browse our editors' picks for the Best Books of the Year So Far in fiction, nonfiction, mysteries, children's books, and much more.
$24.80 FREE Shipping on orders with at least $25 of books. In Stock. Ships from and sold by Amazon.com. Gift-wrap available.
click to open popover

Frequently Bought Together

  • The Book of Numbers
  • +
  • Surreal Numbers
  • +
  • On Numbers and Games
Total price: $106.80
Buy the selected items together

Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought

Page 1 of 1 Start overPage 1 of 1
This shopping feature will continue to load items. In order to navigate out of this carousel please use your heading shortcut key to navigate to the next or previous heading.
Back
  1. Surreal Numbers
    Donald E. Knuth
    3.8 out of 5 stars 13
    Paperback
    $18.05 Prime
  2. On Numbers and Games
    John H. Conway
    4.4 out of 5 stars 5
    Hardcover
    $63.95 Prime
  3. Genius At Play: The Curious Mind of John Horton Conway
    Siobhan Roberts
    4.3 out of 5 stars 35
    Hardcover
    $22.87 Prime
  4. The Symmetries of Things
    John H. Conway
    4.4 out of 5 stars 12
    Hardcover
    $69.25 Prime
  5. How to Solve It: A New Aspect of Mathematical Method (Princeton Science Library)
    G. Polya
    4.4 out of 5 stars 106
    Paperback
    $13.94 Prime
  6. The Penguin Book of Curious and Interesting Numbers: Revised Edition (Penguin Press Science)
    David Wells
    4.4 out of 5 stars 19
    Paperback
    $13.34 Prime
Next

Customers Viewing This Page May Be Interested In These Sponsored Links

  (What's this?)
NO_CONTENT_IN_FEATURE
New York Times best sellers
Browse the New York Times best sellers in popular categories like Fiction, Nonfiction, Picture Books and more. See more

Product Details

  • Hardcover: 310 pages
  • Publisher: Copernicus; Corrected edition (March 16, 1995)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 038797993X
  • ISBN-13: 978-0387979939
  • Product Dimensions: 6.4 x 1 x 9.2 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
  • Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (22 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #103,615 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

    •  Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?

Customers Viewing This Page May Be Interested In These Sponsored Links

  (What's this?)

Customer Reviews

Top Customer Reviews

4.0 out of 5 starsGets off to a strong start
By wiredweird HALL OF FAMETOP 1000 REVIEWER on March 27, 2005
Format: Hardcover Verified Purchase
Conway and Guy start this book with an enticing survey of how numbers pervade the English language, showing the hidden (or not-so-hidden) numerical roots of common words. They also mention other numbering systems, including the Roman numerals, Greek, Egyptian, and cuneiform Babylonian - numbers that persist in our 60-based measures of minutes and seconds, in both time and angle.

Next, they move into squares, triangular numbers, and many others with rich geometric meanings. Chapters 1 and 2, especially, create vivid images that bring many of their concepts to life. I had a bit of trouble finding ch.3's focus. It touches briefly combinatorics, a world in itself, and difference techniques. I found "Jackson's Fan" fascinating, but too terse for easy application to real problems. After this, the going gets a lot tougher, fast.

By ch 4, "Famous Families," the illustration is no longer as vivid as before. Ch. 6, on fractions and decimal expansions also held some interest - it touches on complexity in the decimal forms of fractions, and the numeric roots from which it springs. The section on continued fractions is only just enough to titillate without really enlightening. Discussion of imaginary numbers is OK, and offers some enjoyable insights. The section on quaternions, though, does a lot less to invite personal involvement and stir the imagination. Later sections of the book present readable surveys of their topics, but require a lot more form the reader in the way of determination and mathematical background.

If the whole book sustained the initial energy, it would have been an instant classic. The later parts of the book were clear, readable, and even enjoyable, but didn't match the breadth or vividness of the first half. I enjoyed this, but I may not come back to it.

//wiredweird
Comment 39 people found this helpful. Was this review helpful to you? Yes No Sending feedback...
Thank you for your feedback.
Sorry, we failed to record your vote. Please try again
Report abuse
5.0 out of 5 starsDelightful!!!
By James M. Cargal on September 8, 2000
Format: Hardcover Verified Purchase
This is a delightful survey of numbers clearly aimed at as wide an audience as possible. However, as is always the case in such books the book is more formidable than it intends or than it looks. Still it is very friendly especially compared with, say, "Numbers" by Ebbinghays et al. The coverage is wide: primes, reals, Cayley numbers, Eisenstein numbers, polygonal numbers, catalan numbers, Stirling numbers of both types and of course Bell numbers. There are the cardinals and ordinals of Cantor as well as Conway's own surreal numbers. (And an earlier reviewer was correct about misprints and color problems.) I recommend this to anyone whose mathematical maturity is at least as great as basic calculus (and who is interested).
Comment 29 people found this helpful. Was this review helpful to you? Yes No Sending feedback...
Thank you for your feedback.
Sorry, we failed to record your vote. Please try again
Report abuse
5.0 out of 5 starsSuperb but dangerous
By A Customer on January 10, 1997
Format: Hardcover
A personal but fascinating review of numbers: from Egyptian
fractions to surreal numbers; from numbers so large they cannot
be imagined (and barely be named) to ruler-and-compass; all prefaced by
a virtuoso etymologic riff.

Beautifully produced, engagingly written, full of new perspectives
on old material - and new material too. The book contains so
much disparate information that each reader will find
something in particular that he or she likes. I do not
think I have ever seen a popularization at once so interesting
to anyone from bright junior high-school student to a professional
mathematician.

I have two minor complaints. First, there are some misprints
(for example in the description of trisections), and in some of
the early diagrams the orange and the red tiles come out looking
the same. In view of the extraordinary complexity of the
production and in view of the overall visual appeal and
clarity of the presentation, these slight errors do not
detract from the impact.

The more serious problem has to do with the fact that the
book is so fascinating
that it can be a real time sink. I have personally lost many
hours pondering the big (and I mean /big/) numbers Conway
and Guy describe, for instance. The book is almost like a
CD-ROM game in that one can get completely lost in it for days.
It made me wistful, too, that I had not had this book when I was first
learning mathematics (also, it could use a few more references
to things like Graham's number and surreal asymptotics).
Not only that but, despite its fairly hefty price tag, I
find myself buying copies for friends - so it can use up
not only a lot of time but money too!
Comment 20 people found this helpful. Was this review helpful to you? Yes No Sending feedback...
Thank you for your feedback.
Sorry, we failed to record your vote. Please try again
Report abuse
2.0 out of 5 starsToo many topics, too little information
By rsholmes on May 23, 2012
Format: Hardcover
I'm not sure why it took 17 years for me to catch up with John H. Conway and Richard Guy's The Book of Numbers. I don't even recall hearing about it until I came across it in a local library.

It is, I'm sorry to say, not as good as I'd hoped. They would have written a better book had they chosen about half as many topics, or written about twice as many pages. As it is, there's far too many steps left out, too much unexplained, too many terms undefined. To pick just one example, in the section "Lagrange's Numbers, Markov's Numbers, and Frieman's Number" in Chapter 7, the last paragraph is about the Lagrange spectrum, the Markov spectrum, and Frieman's number. One paragraph? It needed more. I would guess that people who already learned about these things once might read Conway and Guy's discussion, nod, and say, "Oh yes, I remember that." For me, who'd not encountered them before, the paragraph was opaque. There simply wasn't enough information conveyed to promote any understanding. Omitting that paragraph, or perhaps that entire section, would have been an improvement, if they didn't want to expand the discussion to a page or so.

There should have been better proofreading, as well. In the caption to Figure 10.8, to pick one of several problems I noticed, the fraction 6/14 should be 1/64.

It's a shame. Conway and Guy could have written a much better book had they not been in such a rush to get through so many subjects.
2 Comments 14 people found this helpful. Was this review helpful to you? Yes No Sending feedback...
Thank you for your feedback.
Sorry, we failed to record your vote. Please try again
Report abuse

Most Recent Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars(I've taken courses with him and find this book a nice guide to how he...

Conway is one of the preeminent mathematicians of our generation. This book is a must have. His approach is always fascinating and enlightening. Read more

Published 14 months ago by Moribund Alpaca
5.0 out of 5 starsAwesome book of numbers!

I love this book! It does not, in any way, "dumb down" numbers for children. It is very thoughtful and well presented. I am excited to read this book aloud to my children. Read more

Published on September 19, 2014 by scdweller
4.0 out of 5 starsWhen it's good, it's very good

The sections at the beginning of the book are a sheer delight. I particularly enjoyed the chapter on figurative numbers, which shows how to get sums of powers of numbers by... Read more

Published on January 30, 2014 by Martin P. Cohen
5.0 out of 5 starsGood book

There are fewer numbers than I was expecting, especially given the title, but it is still a very good read.

Published on April 3, 2013 by David
4.0 out of 5 starsWelsh - could do better.

I don't suppose there are many sales to Welsh-speaking mathematicians but it's unfortunate
that the Welsh word for "three" is rendered as "toi". It's "tri". Read more

Published on February 9, 2011 by Stanhope
4.0 out of 5 starsInteresting introduction to numbers

Fascinating overview of the many different types of numbers. It made me think, like a book of puzzles. I really like the geometrical interpretations in the early chapters. Read more

Published on October 13, 2010 by Giant Panda
2.0 out of 5 starsConfusion! Poor Editing

Horrible - the beginning of Chapter 2 is a prime example of confusion both textually and graphically. Read more

Published on March 28, 2009 by ReadySetGo
5.0 out of 5 starsThe Book of Pure Enjoyment

I own a lot of books on Mathematics and Mathematical topics. This book truly is my favorite. The color illustrations, the other drawings and diagrams make the topics very... Read more

Published on November 27, 2008 by R. H. Pratt
4.0 out of 5 starsvery nice, but wishing for a clean up

This is an 'almost done' type of book. I like the way the subject is handled. The pictures and the thoughts that go with them are really good food for thought. Read more

Published on July 20, 2005 by Mr. John Peter Kaufman
5.0 out of 5 starsArtful Numbers

This book is excellent. I am not a mathematician; my Ph.D. is in a social science, but my interest in intellectual history made this book worth it for me. Read more

Published on August 29, 2001 by unraveler

Set up an Amazon Giveaway

The Book of Numbers
Amazon Giveaway allows you to run promotional giveaways in order to create buzz, reward your audience, and attract new followers and customers. Learn more about Amazon Giveaway
This item: The Book of Numbers
Set up a giveaway

What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?

There's a problem loading this menu right now.

Learn more about Amazon Prime.

Pages with Related Products. See and discover other items: complex numbers