Colin Bruce

I've been reading this book to our boys (9 and 12), and this is I think the first time they've ever been able to understand why math might be interesting. (Sadly, thanks to our elementary school curriculum from time immemorial, elementary school math is nothing more than arithmetic.)

I stumbled on this book years ago, and I loved it because it was such a beautiful presentation of some rather interesting math--especially for somebody who loved Sherlock Holmes. On a whim, I decided to see if our boys could learn anything from it. I was very surprised to find that my boys seemed to like it, and keep asking for more--they liked it better than the original Sherlock Holmes stories. Apparently this book is good not only for people who like a beautiful presentation of things they already know, but also for people who don't know the stuff yet.… (meer)