The
book was great.
Twelve-year-olds
would normally spend the remaining days of their childhood doing games. Younger
Ravi was no exception to that, however his method of playing might have been
different from his peers--calculators instead of balls and figuring out math
patterns instead of hide-and-seeks. Bauji, his grandfather, ignited Ravi ’s mathematical abilities writ on his genes by
presenting him the magic of repeating a three digit number twice( it now
becomes six-digit) and having the original three-digit number as the final
answer after different stages of division. Their relationship is more than that
of a grandfather-grandson; in fact, Ravi even
said on the middle parts of the book that “ he was him”. They were so close
that it really pained Ravi loosing him
permanently in his life. After that tragic incident, he decided to obey his
grandfather’s will, went into the university at US, studied hard as an economics
major and met a couple of people who shared the same lust for math- Nico (
their professor), Peter, Adin and Claire, who helped him find the reason why he's granddad got sued eight decades ago and who became his wife later on.
Zeno’s
paradoxes. Sets and their cardinalities. How
Giordano Bruno argued the inferiority of faith to philosophy, how Galileo
awakened people with the possibility of a part to equal the whole in the case
of infinite series, how Bauji used his
basket of math concepts and presented the Pythagorean theorem in
justifying his blasphemy of Christianity to the judge, how harmonious series
works, how Cantor and his Continuum Hypothesis attracted attentions of billions
and sprinkled a light of greater
understanding and wider perspective on the parts of mathematicians on treating
intangible numbers, what axioms are
and how other big names such as Euclid, Gödel, Riemann, Einstein, Hilbert, Lobachevsky ,
Gauss ,Cohen and Bolyai and their respective geometry, Incompleteness theorem,
million-dollar Hypothesis, theory of relativity, number theory, complete theory
of parallels, electromagnetism and other important contributions that shaped math
through the ages and how theology and math fights, dominates, contradicts or
supports each other—these were all talked about in Math 208 classes or
mentioned in the conversations of the accused Bauji and his judge, Mr. Taylor.
Dialogues, Dear-diaries of math aces and the concept of having a 62- year-old sharp-minded professor to teach both fictional characters and all blood and flesh readers were the author's undeniably effective strategies in sharing the knowledge he have of this field of beauty and complexities, certainties and its uncertainties, kingdom of truths and its stairways of proofs, without boring readers and serving us a platter filled with math principles, life-changing ( slightly rare but extreme scenarios of overwhelming discernment) insights and a good story line featuring alive and relate-able characters. Sungo-tic moments do occur but that is the inevitable reality of reading a mathematical novel-- of life itself.
Glory to God
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