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Mathematical Cranks (Spectrum)

3.8 out of 5 stars 6 customer reviews
ISBN-13: 978-0883855072
ISBN-10: 0883855070
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Product Details

  • Series: Spectrum
  • Paperback: 384 pages
  • Publisher: The Mathematical Association of America (September 1, 1992)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 0883855070
  • ISBN-13: 978-0883855072
  • Product Dimensions: 6 x 0.8 x 9 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
  • Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,728,718 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Top Customer Reviews

By Daniel H. Bigelow VINE VOICE on April 22, 2005
Format: Paperback
In this book, math professor Underwood Dudley catalogues the characteristics and errors of mathematical cranks. These are the people, usually mathematical amateurs, who believe they have done the impossible: squared the circle, calculated a different value of pi (or in some cases, several different values), and so forth. Math has the advantage over darn near every other human system that one can absolutley prove these people are wrong, but that doesn't stop a true crank.

I am no math whiz, and a lot of this book is over my head. But I am a crank enthusiast (if you are, too, the best World Wide Web cranks can be found at Crank.net, with which I have no affiliation). What interests me most in this book, other than Dudley's enthusiastic and deft writing, are his catalogues of crank behavior -- for instance, how they can go from enthusiastic amateur to demented conspiracy theorist rather than simply admit nobody's paying attention to them because they're wrong. The math-oriented parts of the book are interesting case studies, and the crank-oriented parts have general application to all cranks, even of the non-mathematical variety. This makes for a useful and entertaining book.
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Format: Paperback
Underwood Dudly's book is great fun, especially if if you have ever tried to argue with someone impervious to reason. His very funny tales of encounters with mathematical cranks will probably sound familiar. You will also learn a lot about mathematical and scientific reasoning along with hilarious examples of how not to do mathematics. The author's points on how to identify and avoid cranks can serve readers well in all walks of life, not just mathematics.
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Format: Paperback Verified Purchase
If you're a scientist or somebody who just likes to surf the internet for articles and forums about science, then you've no doubt run into "cranks". These include people into pseudo-science, conspiracy theorists, and others who keep pushing for crazy ideas that really have no basis in the scientific method. Even after their claims have been debunked, that doesn't stop them; it only makes them more determined to find excuses to rationalize away the opposing explanations from scientists, and keep trying to push their hogwash as being "science". Many of them self-publish their own books, complete with incomprehensible sentences and no real use of established scientific terms, symbols and nomenclature. When defeated, quite often they'll end up responding to the real scientists with the excuse of "Well you can't be 100% sure that you're correct, and you can't 100% prove that my crazy idea is wrong. Therefore we're at a stalemate, and there's still a chance that I'm correct!" Ugh.

You would think that this wouldn't happen in mathematics, since mathematics deals with the abstract and pure logic, not experimentation, and can thus offer an irrefutable proof on why a theorem is true or false. So since we have the mathematical proof that pi is irrational, then that should settle it, right? Unfortunately, mathematical cranks do exist. And that's who this book is about.

The author has collected dozens and dozens of different examples of works from mathematical cranks, and compiled them all here. The people's last names have been hidden. But you'll see some jaw-droppingly crazy proposals sent in to various universities and math periodicals. Each example is, on average, just a few pages long, complete with a background story from the author. You can read it from beginning to end, or just flip around to the different examples. Geeky math humor at its best!
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