“Math for English Majors: A Human Take on the Universal Language” by Ben Orlin

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Rating: 3/5 Stars.

An interesting book that demystifies mathematics by looking at it as a language: it has nouns, verbs and a grammar. By looking at maths from this angle, the author hopes to guide the reader to look past the numerous symbols that make up mathematics, and to think of it as a language for describing aspects of mathematics. The book is livened by the authors numerous (trademark) bad drawings and personal recollections of teaching and talking about maths.

The first part of the book looks at numbers and arithmetics, which the author considers as nouns. This is usually the first encounter people have with maths. He looks at different ways to count and measure numbers, negative numbers and ways to express large numbers. He then moves on to verbs, which are the actions that can be done on numbers like addition, multiplication and other more advanced forms like square roots and logarithms. Finally, he shows that the symbols, variables, expressions and equations make up a grammar, making use of the numbers (nouns) and actions (verbs) to make up a mathematical sentence. He then ends with a brief ‘phrase book’ on the vocabulary of the various aspects of mathematics from geometry, statistics, proofs and so on.

By the end, the author hopes to show that mathematics resembles a language that is used to express an idea or to make a statement, rather than just a jumble of symbols to be manipulated in obscure manners.

Book read from 2026/02/03 to 2026/02/05.