Here's Looking at Euclid: A Surprising Excursion Through the Astonishing World of Math - Book Review

If you were to have known before you started this book, that it was written by a genius, who was also a top-flight writer and mathematical theoretician -- albeit with a playful bent -- you probably would have left it right where it was, but still you would have had a playful mathematical "theoretician" doing the research.

Bellos does go over the great Euclidian discoveries and the math theory behind them. It makes sense that if you are going to pun on the name of the master, that you look at his work. Yes, this homage to the Greek mathematician makes it seem as if this will be one of those books you skim and leave on the coffee table to show that you are an intellectual. If that is as far as you get, then you are doing yourself and mathematics a great injustice.

There's far more to Bellos' mathematical journey, not only across mathematical space, than the title would indicate. It is a journey around the globe, following Bellos' journey, that takes you to some surprising places. Bellos can pull this off because he is a snappy writer with a surprising command of the language. Because of these abilities, he pulls you into math, using some real gems that include:

His theory that ants actually count the number of steps in trips to and from their colonies, an interesting construct that anthropromorphizes insects, giving them human-like qualities to them. How else can you explain ant behavior?

His side trip to the Amazon where he meets the only native tribe that uses a base-5 number and counting system because they can only understand numbers up to 5, yet their numbering system works at a highly sophisticated level. They use it to get as any being done anywhere else, which is quite a start to a person schooled in two theories (rote learning with the table cards and "the new math" and "set theory.")

His jump to the zen master of the theoretical math involved in oregami is priceless, as is his proof -- in a way -- that chaos theory is just about chaos and nothing more as he shows that in a chaotic system it is nearly impossible to introduce true randomness into iPod music list building. He theorizes, one cannot get to the absolute randomness as there are too many other distractions in the search for randomness, including the fact that many people like the same musical groups and will inevitably include their music on other music lists.

Bellos' book is so surprising that is also based on our prejudices about math. Just one example reinforces our prejudices. Of course, the teachings of the Buddha are surprising, quickly turning around our prejudices. This lasts until we meet the two New York "mathheads," who would rather build a supercomputer to use to write and argue about their "pi" mania, at a huge number of teraflops per second, rather than put their considerable talents to work on other, more important work.

Yes, Bellos' work is truly dense and takes an understanding -- and rereading of parts -- to make it all understandable, but Bellos, if you stick with him, is a witty, accurate writer who gets his educational point across. That, in itself, makes this a master work.

Roberto Sedycias works as an IT consultant for ecommUS-Book

A History of the World In 100 Objects - Book Review

There was once a saying at the height of the British Raj in India (colonial occupation) that "Mad Dogs and Englishmen Go Out in the Noon Day Sun," however, something similar can be applied to Britain's historical establishment because nothing will stop them from looking at the history of man in some very different ways.

Take Neil MacGregor's work where he studies the History of the World in 100 Objects. That's right, the director of the British Museum out-minimalized the super-minimalists, who thinks nothing of finding the fewest arguments or gadgets available to prove a point. It's like motorcycle historians who neatly boil that particular branch of motoring into "petrol" and "non-petrol," with "real" motorcycles as having a four-stroke "petrol" engine and the rest of the world just pretenders.

That they have forgotten the seminal work of Roper and Copeland, as well as Michaud, the engineer who made the motorcycle possible when he realized that two wheels of the same size and a real steering fork are necessary for safe two-wheeling. Yet the contributions of these men are neatly glossed over.

However MacGregor's history works to an astonishing degree. If you look at the firm examples he uses to back up his thesis, it is not as bizarre an idea as one might think.

Take the many shards of and clay pots found in the ancients city-states that were built on earlier cities as they rose from the plains of the Indus or Ganges rivers. The pot here or the tablet there that connects the dots to the pots in the holds of Phoenician traders who spread their culture across the ancient world. It shows that, while many in the historical establishment look down their rather long pince nez glasses at a "popular historian" like MacGregor, they cannot escape the fact that he's often right.

For example, the great statuary of the Greeks and their temples - one idea or two, the choice is yours; MacGregor would likely think they are linked as they define the period of Greek history in which they appeared, as well as for the millennium to follow, even through the rise of Persia and Syracuse and the Romans.

The Romans took the flower of Greek thinking and overlayed it on their "Republic," Aristotelian or Euclidean thought and objects to produce an empire that did last nearly 1,000 years and even survived a period of 100 Caesars in 100 years. The refinement of the Greek school of art and its advancement and morphing under Rome, along with the perfection of thought and the invention of the "sciences" of "history" and "sociology" and the strictures that they exposed are just two more examples of the direction of history.

The development and perfection of illumination by the Church and the many Holy Scribes and monks whose work each day was a page, if they were lucky, saved many of the great early works of man and our history. Illumination and the art of penmanship were two more objects along the way which strongly defined the direction of history and thought and all one has to do is look at them to know their means.

The real revolution comes with the introduction to the West of moveable type of the 15th Century invention of the printing press where, at once, thought could be made available to the masses, not just the nobility. What a concept, the masses learning to read and knowing as much as their "betters." That invention, in itself, and the revolution in though that spun off of it shows that MacGregor is quite right. If you look at the history of the west, it can be defined by 100 distinct objects, including such silly-looking objects as the king's throne made of hunting rifles.

Right there you have two engines of domination, the rifle with which the nobility could shoot their fill and still subjugate the local populace. In the wrong hands, though, history took another turn, didn't it? Imagine the combination of the cannon, rifle and printing press and you have all of the makings of even more revolution.

Then add in the "mechanical muscle" provided by the waterwheel and Canals which helped to speed the spread of thought. Of course, this led to experimentation in other areas such as those of Faraday and Morse and the invention of the telegram so that the world was instantly smaller.

That, in turn, led to more sophisticated printing plants and electronics, computers, the Internet and Worldwide Web.

Each, if you look closely at it, is merely an outgrowth of earlier work that was built on one or two elements of an earlier period. This is why the entertaining and witty MacGregor's work, an Amazon Best Book, works so well. It shows that, indeed, the history of western thought and man can be defined by just 100 objects.

It may look like a real stretch when you first crack the back of the book - yes real print and books - although sometimes you are limited to an eReader versions (there's just something missing) - but it's not as MacGregor shows why he is considered one of the wittiest and insightful historians of his generation. It's an interesting theory that he carries off.

Roberto Sedycias works as an IT consultant for ecommUS-Books

Book Review - Scale Aircraft Drawings: World War I

AppId is over the quota
AppId is over the quota

Summary

This 150 page book covers 35 World War I airplanes through the use of over 40 highly detailed "master" drawings. They are all drawn at a consistent scale of one quarter inch to one foot. As best as I could tell, all of the classic designs are included.

The book was published by Air Age, the same company that publishes Model Airplane News magazine. Although not stated explicitly, my assumption is that these drawings were all originally published in the magazine.

The Good

Wow. These drawings are a dream come true. They are incredibly detailed. Frankly, most of them are plain gorgeous. The drawings were all made with modelers in mind. They contain excellent details about each airplane's internal structure as well as showing full details about external markings. Outlines of the airfoils used are always included. Many of the drawings even contain detailed information on the layout of the instrument panel. In other words, they are all that one needs to construct a highly detailed scale model airplane.

As a bonus, detailed drawings of some of the engines and armaments (machine guns and bombs) are included in the back of the book. They were drawn to the same high standard as the aircraft drawings.

The Bad

It appears that all of the drawings have been scaled down to fit within the dimensions of the book. There is no indication given as to how much each drawing was scaled down. It would take some detective work to look up a key dimension for the airplane, such as its wingspan, and use that to extrapolate the scale of each drawing. The publisher could have saved us the trouble by including this information.

A preface to the book encourages the reader to order full size drawings from the Air Age store. I only managed to find four master drawings for sale in their store, and none were for World War I aircraft. Buying a set of drawings from them may have been a possibility in the past, but it is clearly no longer a viable option.

On average there are two pictures per airplane included. Most of the pictures are small, and the quality varies a lot. If you are building a scale model, you might have to supplement the included pictures with others discovered through additional research.

The text that accompanies the photos and the drawings is useful, but very short. Only about a third of a page is devoted to each aircraft. That is really just enough to touch the surface of what is known about these airplanes. The good news here is that it is a lot easier to find text that describes these airplanes than it is to find quality drawings.

The interior of the book is all in black and white. This means that the photographs are all in black and white, which should not come as a surprise given the time period of the airplanes. But it also means that the descriptions of colors in the external markings are all textual. It would be a challenge to accurately recreate a color only described as "dulled light green", for example.

The Ugly

Many of the drawings in the book were created by William Wylam. Mr. Wylam started producing airplane drawings for Model Airplane News in the late 1930s. That was 80 years ago! The amount of research that has gone into documenting these aircraft in more recent years is enormous. We simply know now a lot more about these airplanes than we did at the time Mr. Wylam was creating his drawings.

The end result of all this is that the technical accuracy of many of the drawings included in the book has been called into question in recent years. The magnitude of the reported errors varies a lot. Some of the airplane outlines are said to be off a little bit. Some of the registration numbers shown on the aircraft have been discovered to belong to entirely different airplanes. Other errors in his drawings are reportedly more serious.

Conclusion

I find it very hard to fault Mr. Wylam for the reported errors in his drawings. He had a job to do, and he did his best. I am told that many model airplane kits have been released over the years containing the same errors as found in the book. Hmmm. I wonder which book they used as their primary source!

I don't think these discrepancies detracted from the enjoyment derived by the kit builders from flying their airplanes. If your goal is to create a highly accurate scale model, you are well advised to supplement your research with additional sources.

Despite the warning above, I cannot imagine a serious fan of World War I scale model airplanes that wouldn't benefit from consulting this book.

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