The Number Devil: A Mathematical Adventure

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This angel number is associated with humanitarian and caregiving behaviors, as well as kindness, balance, generosity, and charity.

Colin Wright and I have been exchanging suggestions on the topic of books for 14 year olds. Spivak is at the “very ambitious” end of the scale but bear in mind there are 11 year olds who do A-level Further Maths and get an A. Not very many, to be sure, and I suppose if your 14 year old had already done FM at 11 you wouldn’t need someone else to suggest books. But anyway. Matsumoto, Valerie J. "Faculty Show Depth, Breadth of the Written Word". UCLA Today. University of California Press. Archived from the original on 4 April 2012 . Retrieved 23 October 2011.

About the author

Paulos, John Allen (18 November 1999). "The Way to Numerical Heaven". The New York Review of Books. 46 (18) . Retrieved 3 September 2011.

Compared to Spivak’s textbook it’s much more affordable, easier to carry (i.e. less useful as a doorstop), less intimidating to the beginner and rather more light-hearted. For comparison’s with other texts see: Enzensberger, Hans Magnus (1998). The Number Devil: A Mathematical Adventure. Translated by Michael Henry Heim. New York: Henry Holt & Company. ISBN 0-8050-5770-6. Gardner, Michael (8 November 1998). "It All Adds Up". Los Angeles Times . Retrieved 3 September 2011.

Hans Magnus Enzensberger was a German writer and scholar, but no mathematician. Born in 1929 in Kaufbeuren, he studied literature and philosophy in Erlangen, Freiburg, Hamburg, and Paris, published more than 70 books, spoke several languages and lived in multiple countries. Additionally, Enzensberger had several wide-ranging interests, including a passion for mathematics. He criticised the isolation of the subject from society and dedicated The Number Devil to his eleven-year-old daughter, Theresia, who struggled with some of the mathematical concepts explained in the book. The idea of the “number of a man” or “beast” may refer to the practice of gematria in Jewish numerology, where every letter of the Hebrew alphabet corresponds to a number (e.g., aleph=1, bet=2, etc.), and words and names correspond to the sums of these numbers. On the “pop maths” side, I always liked Ian Stewart’s books, but they may have dated somewhat.) Reply