Friday, March 21, 2014

A Certain Ambiguity: A Mathematical Novel Book Review

    I really don't like reading novels but this book “A Certain Ambiguity” by Gauruv Suri and Hartosh Singh Bal was interesting for they merged literature and mathematics in one book.

    The story started when Ravi Kapoor was given a mathematical puzzle by his grandfather on the calculator. Amazed by the fact Ravi became committed to math ever since. Ravi is accepted in Stanford studying economics. He lately met his professor Nico in the class “Thinking About Infinity.” One time he discovered that his grandfather specializes in this topic and was jailed because of blasphemy while doing his research. This happening started the quest of Ravi in researching about his grandfather's imprisonment.

   The story had great plot in involving mathematics in the story like the discussions about Euclidian Geometry, Paul Cohen's Consistency theorems, Farkas Bolyai and his son Janos, Bernhard Riemann, Albert Einstein and other mathematical personalities and discoveries.  

     Although filled with mathematical conversations and discussions the authors doesn't forget to write about the personal story of the characters just like the love that emerged between Ravi and Claire.

    I am sure that any novel readers would love this story even if sometimes we cannot understand the mathematical terms and problems that we could encounter in this book.

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