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Really Big Numbers Paperback – July 7, 2014

by Richard Evan Schwartz (Author)
4.7 4.7 out of 5 stars 52 ratings
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Winner of the 2015 MSRI Mathical Books for Kids from Tots to Teens Award! In the American Mathematical Society's first-ever book for kids (and kids at heart), mathematician and author Richard Evan Schwartz leads math lovers of all ages on an innovative and strikingly illustrated journey through the infinite number system. By means of engaging, imaginative visuals and endearing narration, Schwartz manages the monumental task of presenting the complex concept of Big Numbers in fresh and relatable ways. The book begins with small, easily observable numbers before building up to truly gigantic ones, like a nonillion, a tredecillion, a googol, and even ones too huge for names! Any person, regardless of age, can benefit from reading this book. Readers will find themselves returning to its pages for a very long time, perpetually learning from and growing with the narrative as their knowledge deepens. Really Big Numbers is a wonderful enrichment for any math education program and is enthusiastically recommended to every teacher, parent and grandparent, student, child, or other individual interested in exploring the vast universe of numbers.
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  1. Print length
    192 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Publisher
    American Mathematical Society
  4. Publication date
    July 7, 2014
  5. Grade level
    7 - 9
  6. Dimensions
    7.5 x 0.75 x 7.5 inches
  7. ISBN-10
    1470414252
  8. ISBN-13
    978-1470414252
  9. See all details
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Editorial Reviews

Review

This is a classic book to which I can imagine a child returning again and again as s/he grows older, getting more out of it each time. --Amazon

The book gets better with every reading. ... It is great for sharing, and for explaining why we like mathematics so much. Get it with someone small you love, and start a journey. ... This book would clearly make a great present for mathematicians to give to their children. --LMS Newsletter

Schwartz does a very nice job of mixing very elementary ideas with mathematical content that will be new even to mathematicians, making for a fun and enlightening reading experience. ... A written review such as this cannot capture the spirit of Schwartz s book, every page of which is illustrated with bright colors and beautiful drawings that are appealing to look at even beyond the mathematics that they convey. --Mathematical Association of America

About the Author

Richard Evan Schwartz , Brown University, Providence, RI.

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ American Mathematical Society (July 7, 2014)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Paperback ‏ : ‎ 192 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1470414252
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1470414252
  • Grade level ‏ : ‎ 7 - 9
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 14.7 ounces
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 7.5 x 0.75 x 7.5 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.7 4.7 out of 5 stars 52 ratings

About the author

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Richard Evan Schwartz

Richard Evan Schwartz

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Richard Schwartz grew up in Los Angeles. He wore only blue clothes between the ages of 7 and 11. He spent his youth obsessively playing tennis until video games distracted him. He majored in math at UCLA, got a PhD in math from Princeton, and is currently the Chancellor's Professor of Mathematics at Brown University. His research interests lie in geometry and dynamics. He likes to do mathematical experiments on the computer and then find proofs for the results he discovers.

Rich was an Invited Speaker at the 2002 International Congress of Mathematicians, a Guggenheim Fellow in 2003, a Clay Research Scholar in 2009, and Simons Fellow in 2012. He is the author of a number of books, including Spherical CR Geometry and Dehn Surgery, Outer Billiards on Kites, You Can Count on Monsters, Man Versus Dog, Unnecessary Surgery, and The Extra Toaster. He lives with his wife and two daughters in Barrington, Rhode Island. In his spare time, he listens to music, writes comic books, cycles on the bike path near his house, walks on the beach, or spends time with his family.

Customer reviews

4.7 out of 5 stars
4.7 out of 5
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52 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

Mary O'Keeffe
5.0 out of 5 stars Brilliant!
Reviewed in the United States on July 31, 2014
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Written and illustrated by an inspired mathematician at Brown University, whose two young mathematically playful daughters appear periodically and delightfully throughout the book's wondrous drawings. It is a classic book to which I can imagine a child returning again and again as s/he grows older, getting more out of it each time, as larger and larger numbers and mathematical ideas dance tantalizingly into your grasp. Combinatorics, graph theory, higher dimensional geometry, the pigeonhole principle, and even a dash of chemistry into the mix. (Visualizing Avogadro's number in a vividly memorable way he credits to his high school chemistry teacher: if you had a mole of carbon atoms and turned each atom into a person, you could fill up 15 hollowed-out earths with them!)

Mary O'Keeffe
Albany Area Math Circle
10 people found this helpful
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Keith F.
5.0 out of 5 stars Really interesting, 4 sum...
Reviewed in the United States on December 30, 2022
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It is a refreshing & captivating way to approach handling a quantitative summation of 'really big numbers'.
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Emma Lee
5.0 out of 5 stars Great for kids who love numbers!
Reviewed in the United States on September 10, 2022
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This book is a must read for kids who love numbers!!
One person found this helpful
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Athanasius
4.0 out of 5 stars Only a few flaws
Reviewed in the United States on December 18, 2016
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Overall, it's a great introduction to large numbers. The ending is the truly unique part of this book, since it goes beyond what other similar children's books do and tries to get into numbers that have no concrete method of expression (i.e., beyond even the estimated number of atoms in the universe and such things). I admire the way the author introduces "-plex" in a kind of silly but straightforward way, then plays with it, and then moves onto the more abstract methods adopted by some mathematicians for even bigger numbers (e.g., numbers inside of geometrical figures).

I should note that I write this review as someone who has a long admiration for large numbers; I distinctly recall reading a few essays by Isaac Azimov as a kid and taking a journey similar to what this book does.

It's fun and inventive, so the very few flaws stand out a bit. The most notable flaw comes from the author's choice to have the text flow in all sorts of random directions and sometimes to break it up and have phrases connect in non-linear ways. For the most part, this is good and adds a whimsical touch to the layout. However, there are several pages where this tendency disrupts the flow to a point that a reader may have some difficulty figuring out what order the words are even supposed to be read in. If there were a rationale behind this ambiguity (poetic license, interesting wordplay created by the different types of juxtapositions possible in the layout, etc.), that would be okay. But here it just comes across as poor planning that makes the text unnecessarily complex to follow. Again, this happens only on a small number of pages, but it's enough of an issue that a graphical designer or editor might have been able to suggest easy ways to fix it. (The ending note implies the author created all the graphics and layout himself.)

My other minor quibbles have to do with the time spent on certain concepts and types of explanation. Most kids tend to love *names* for large numbers, which they can throw around in silly ways. But the author moves into abstraction a bit too quickly and doesn't allow enough time to digest the names and orders of magnitude for numbers somewhat larger than a billion or so. He even goes so far as to call things like quadrillion, quintillion, etc. just a "list of funny names for some of the powers of 10." No hint at how that naming system works, or any kind of consistent build-up in orders of magnitude there with illustrations/examples (until we get to astronomical masses for septillion through nonillion). I imagine kids would be much happier to walk around using cool words like "quadrillion" and "octillion" or a "googol" or "googolplex," but they abstractions of exponential notation and other symbolic systems don't give rise to such naming of large numbers. It would have been nice to linger a bit more on that stuff, since this book also goes beyond other children's books in even getting to numbers on that scale, rather than stopping at billions or trillions.

The use of combinatorics for examples is also great, but again there could have just been a little more detail there to show how fast combinations and permutations grow. It's fun to tell kids there are quintillions of ways to color a checkerboard, but most kids (and adults, for that matter) won't have an intuitive sense of how fast combinatorial results grow, so some of these examples don't do justice to the hugeness of the numbers (like, say, the number of atoms in the earth or whatever). Again, I don't think the examples are bad -- just that combinatorics and rapid growth needs to be illustrated and explained as well as exponential notation, "plex," etc. are.

My last minor criticism is with the few times "problems" are posed in the text (mostly of the form "Is X bigger than Y?") with no answers or even hints at how to think about them. Why bother stating these problems at all? Many of them would require significantly more advanced mathematical skills and intuition than the book assumes from readers.

No book is ever perfect, but given the brevity of the text, these minor issues can stand out. Personally, I think this book would be better understood as a guide into the way mathematical notation can be used for abstraction and attain a beauty for its own sake, using the case of large number notations as an example. It's NOT really a great book for "understanding" big numbers concretely, as in getting a sense of relative orders of magnitude or whatever. For that, I'd recommend other children's books like "Millions, Billions, and Trillions," "How Much Is a Million?" and similar books.
13 people found this helpful
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Brian McAnulty
5.0 out of 5 stars Worth it
Reviewed in the United States on November 3, 2023
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Great book!
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Robert
5.0 out of 5 stars Hi
Reviewed in the United States on October 31, 2016
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I read the book REALLY BIG NUMBERS by RICHARD EVAN SCHWARTZ and I read every page. The book starts with 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 200 300 400 500 and 1000 pieces of cheese then 1024 squares then 2500 dots and 2500 more dots for 5000 then 7 days in one week and 24 hours in one day and 60 minutes in one hour and just over 10,000 minutes in a week then 20,000 then 40,000 then 50,000 then 100,000 then one million, then billion then trillion, gradually getting larger to a GOOGOL which is 100 quintillion times number of atoms in universe then GOOGOLPLEX - imagine a 10^98 dimensional piece of cheese sliced into a googol equal parts each dimension, then there will be a GOOGOLPLEX pieces of 10^98 dimensional cheese. Then come googolplexplex and googolplexplexplex and MEGA where there are numbers inside polygons to make HUGE NUMBERS. At the end, INFINITY. the book is 192 pages and is seven inches square and I read it for 45 minutes.
5 people found this helpful
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Peter
5.0 out of 5 stars The pictures are great and funny
Reviewed in the United States on January 15, 2016
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Our entire family admires this book. We get back to it once and again, and there is something there for almost every age and level of understanding. It starts with "small" big numbers and builds up to unimaginably big ones. The pictures are great and funny, the questions are challenging, and I love the examples of what the big numbers would be "in real life". Thanks for making this book available!
One person found this helpful
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GM
5.0 out of 5 stars Though it would be a big book but it was not big nor bulky at all. Just the numbers.
Reviewed in the United States on January 8, 2022
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Though it would be a big book but it was not big nor bulky at all. Just the numbers.
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Top reviews from other countries

savvy
4.0 out of 5 stars A bit too advanced for my 4-year old grandson
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on February 15, 2015
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Too much for my 4-year old grandson. Will put aside for a year.
One person found this helpful
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Vijayarajan
4.0 out of 5 stars Interesting!
Reviewed in India on November 13, 2014
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A good book for everyone interested in numbers!
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