Contents
In which the author tries to find out where numbers come from, since they haven’t been around that long. He meets a man who has lived in the jungle and a chimpanzee who has always lived in the city.
In which the author learns about the tyranny of ten, and the revolutionaries plotting its downfall. He goes to an after-school club in Tokyo, where the pupils learn to calculate by thinking about beads.
In which the author almost changes his name because the disciple of a Greek cult leader says he must. Instead, he follows the instructions of another Greek thinker, dusts off his compass and folds two business cards into a tetrahedron.
In which the author travels to India for an audience with a Hindu seer. He discovers some very slow methods of arithmetic and some very fast ones.
In which the author is in Germany to witness the world’s fastest mental multiplication. It is a roundabout way to begin telling the story of circles, a transcendental tale that leads him to New York and a new appreciation of the 50p piece.
In which the author explains why numbers are good but letters are better. He visits a man in Braintree who collects slide-rules and hears the tragic tale of their demise. Includes an exposition of logarithms, a dictionary of calculator words and how to make a superegg.
In which the author is on a mathematical puzzle quest. He investigates the legacy of two Chinese men – one was a dim-witted recluse and the other fell off the Earth – and then flies to Oklahoma to meet a magician.
In which the author is first confronted with the infinite. He encounters an unstoppable snail and a devilish family of numbers.
In which the author meets a Londoner with a claw who claims to have discovered the secret of beautiful teeth.
In which the author remembers the dukes of hasard and goes gambling in Reno. He takes a walk through randomness and ends up in an office block in Newport Beach, California – where, if he looked across the ocean, he might be able to spot a lottery winner on a desert island in the South Pacific.
In which the author’s farinaceous overindulgence is an attempt to savour the birth of statistics.
In which the author terminates his journey with crisps and crochet. He’s looking at Euclid, again, and then at a hotel with an infinite number of rooms that cannot cope with a sudden influx of guests.