Abstract
THERE has been no shortage of books purporting to make elementary mathematics ‘popular’ during the years since the beginning of the War; but good books of this class have been exceedingly rare. McKay's is a good book. It covers familiar ground, but its freshness, boldness and thoroughness are obviously the product of considerable thought and extensive reading on the part of the author. Numerologists, circle squarers, gematria addicts and perhaps Shakespeare are easy mathematical prey for an author, but McKay goes further by giving Bernard Shaw a severe and well-deserved admonition and by showing how “Whitaker's Almanack” and “Kaye and Laby”come to grief.
The World of Numbers
By Herbert McKay. Pp. vii + 198. (Cambridge: At the University Press, 1946.) 8s. 6d. net.
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The World of Numbers. Nature 157, 786 (1946). https://doi.org/10.1038/157786a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/157786a0