Mathematics for the Million: How to Master the Magic of Numbers

I bought a used copy of this book 3 years ago (it was published in 1944). To think that it was written for ordinary people 60 or more years ago is astonishing. One can learn all the math that 99% of people need during their lives. If todays high school students would take the time to learn what is so excellently explained in this book, they would score 650 - 800 on the math SAT exam. One example is: there is a chapter where the author walks you through all the calculations and probabilities needed to set up your own life insurance company! This beats calculating the probability of drawing 3 green balls out of an urn filled with green and red balls. Buy It.

Mathematics is no more black and scary magic, while we go through this book, which was written long ago, but seems to fit right-oh in our life as if perscribed just yesterday. I've read it some 30 years ago and never forgot the quantum leap it gave me to win over the threat of mathematics.

The original edition was published in March 1937, and the present version is "updated" no more than necessary to remain accessible. Although it spans the essential concepts of basic mathematics from number systems to calculus, it embeds these in historical context that takes the chill edge off the schoolroom's stark exposure to ideas that startle the mind at first. At ten years old, I enjoyed its 1965 resurgence, which undoubtedly paved the way for my eventual Ph.D. in physics. But the book wasn't written for physicists or math-whiz wannabees. It was written for "the Million" -- the hoards of civilized men and women who benefited little from classroom math instruction and now feel the loss. Its continued popularity (or marketability, at any rate) testify to the skill with which Hogben has made the supposedly arcane both accessible and comfortable.

In "Mathematics for the Million," Hogben takes the reader through the entire evolution of mathematics. He begins with ancient farmers whose meager math skills consisted of knowing the values 1, 2, 3, and "more than three," and shows how these skills grew out of necessity as societies became more complex. Hogben's goals are twofold. First, he means to educate the average person so that math won't remain the esoteric domain of academics. Second, he means to demonstrate that mathematical advances occur when math is used to solve real problems, and not when it's used as intellectual entertainment for an idle leisure class. Hogben succeeds on both accounts, and in doing so he (very subtly) develops a theory which anticipates the structural Marxism of the '50s and '60s, including the work of Louis Althusser, Herbert Marcuse, and Jurgen Habermas. But Hogben's real magic is that he makes all this accessible to anyone: Even those with no math background at all will be doing calculus by the end of the book, even performing calculations to measure the Earth's circumference or the distance to the moon. Never has such an opaque subject been as lucid as in "Mathematics for the Million."

This book is a must for anyone who wants to understand the basis of many mathematical concepts that are taken for granted! Many concepts that are not fully explained in school are delineated brilliantly in M. for the M.! Everything is presented in its historical and societal contexts, thus adding even more meaning to the mathematical principles we use everyday (from basic math to calculus and probability).