Product Description

You dine with two friends, and the bill comes to £30. You each put down £10 and leave. The waiter realises that he has overcharged you and that the bill should have been £25. Since it is not possible to split £5 equally between three he gives you each a pound, and keeps the remaining £2 for himself. You have now each paid £9, making £27 in all, whilst the waiter has kept hold of £2. What has happened to the extra pound?

Confused? Mind gone blank? Don't know where to start? Mathematics Minus Fear will teach you how to deal with situations like this with renewed confidence.

What on earth is the reasoning behind all the numbers and boxes involved in long division? Why do you just turn fractions upside down and multiply them? And why, why, why does a 10% increase followed by a 10% decrease not get you back to where you started? Lawrence sheds light on all the dark mysteries that have haunted you from your school days.

He also explains where school mathematics has come from with reference to its historical and cultural background, and connects it to relevant everyday situations. Can animals count? Who invented numbers? Why were the Egyptians frightened of fractions? What is the connection between long multiplication and nuns? How do you win on the horses? Lawrence shows that the mathematics you learnt in the classroom does not exist on its own, but has fascinating connections with the world around you.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #62620 in Books
• Published on: 2006-03-20
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 288 pages

Customer Reviews

Essential Open University Preparation
If you are in your 40s about to challenge your fear of Maths and claim back the night with an Open University Maths Degree this book is a great primer.
Essential therapy, like easing yourself into a cool pool on a baking hot day.

Fantastic - I am now a countdown genuis!!
I LOVE this book! I have been hopeless at maths since secondary school and when I came across it in a local bookstore read a few pages and thought it had to be worth a try - couquering my maths demons and all that!
It's written really well and he explains the history behind how and why we are taught maths the way we are in schools and, if you like, the evolution of the maths we use everyday!
I decided it was worth every penny when I could answer a question about binary in a local pub quiz! The question was how is the number 19 represented in binary? - the answer is in the book - needless to say my friends were very impressed!!

Marvellous, but just a little caution advised.
I'm an adult literacy and numeracy tutor and always looking for interesting ways of making information accessible to my students. This is an absolutely marvellous book, but I won't be recommending it to too many of them. The reason is that whilst being very well written, it does require a higher level of literacy skills than many books that are written for adult learners. I loved reading all the interesting facts and the way that Lawrence made mathematics come alive for me, but I know that many of my students don't want that. They have dyslexia and they want a book that is easy to read and tells them what they need to know.

For all that, I can't give this book any less than five. How, oh how, I wish I had read this as a student thirty-five years ago. So, if you are highly literate and highly innumerate, GET THIS - it's fantastic.

If you want to understand mathematics in a plain, no frills format get Chambers' Adult Learners Guide To Numeracy which does the job nicely.