Product Summery
INTRODUCTION
WELCOME TO THE SECRET WORLD OF MATHEMATICIANS.
This is your introduction to the gorgeous, exciting, beautiful math that only professionals see. What’s truly astounding is that it’s accessible, even for kids ages six to ten. We think that if more kids had a chance to play with a wider world of math, there would be far more math enthusiasts in the world.
Most people think you learn math by climbing a sort of ladder: first addition, then subtraction, then multiplication, then fractions, and so on. In fact,math is much more like a tree. There are many different areas of math that require only a basic foundation. Plenty of this lovely and woefully ignored math doesn’t require any previous knowledge. It’s accessible to everyone, if they only knew it existed.
Readers of this book may ask, “How is this math?” Kids cut and tape and sew and color. They imagine walking over bridges, reproducing the same problem that spawned an entire field of mathematics. They draw enormous shapes in parking lots. It may not look like math because there are whole chapters with no pencils or memorization or calculators—but we assure you,the math you’re about to encounter is much closer to what actual mathematicians do.
Mathematicians play. They come up with interesting questions and investigate possible solutions. This results in a lot of dead ends, but mathematicians know that failure provides a great chance to learn. In this book, you’ll have a chance to think like a mathematician and experiment with a given idea to see what you can discover. That approach of just fiddling around with a problem and seeing what falls out is an extremely common and useful technique that mathematicians employ. If you take nothing else away from this book, learning to just try something—anything—and seeing what develops is a great skill for math, science, engineering, writing, and, well, life! This is your opportunity, your gateway, into little-known worlds of math.Turn the page and explore for yourself.