Mathematics Minus Fear: How to Make Math Fun And Beneficial To Your Everyday Life, by Lawrence Potter

It is well known and well-understood that people tend to struggle mightily with mathematics and that a great many people fear and hate math to such a degree that it may harm their lives by leading them to be unlikely to take opportunities that require them to know mathematics. Given that shortcomings in STEM often spring from the difficulty that mathematics provides to people, it would make sense that this book is part of a substantial but fairly obscure genre of works that are designed to encourage casual self-study driven mathematical education on the part of people who do not use mathematics as part of their jobs nor have acquired a high degree of skill in math from their education. Indeed, this book appears to be particularly aimed at those whose experiences with mathematics education in school might even be viewed–with perhaps some only mild exaggeration–as traumatic in nature. I am not precisely the ideal target of this book, as I have no particular fear of mathematics nor am I hostile to the way that math was taught, as I had a fair (if not spectacular) degree of native interest and talent in the subject that was not educated out of me, and my own studies and professional career, and at least a few of my personal interests have involved mathematics to one degree or another. Nonetheless, I read this book and enjoyed it as a friend of mathematics who wishes it to be better understood and less feared by others, since it is not so scary as many people assume.

The central conceit of this book that frames its contents is an extended story that almost seems like a parable involving a somewhat sadistic math teacher and several students, of which the author focuses on two, the somewhat restive and rebellious Charlie (who might be a stand-in for the author), and the eager-to-please Bernadette, who is not natively skilled in mathematics but whose social graces please the severe math teacher whose teaching efforts frustrate Charlie and bore most of the students in his class to no end. The author’s intent in this book is to teach mathematics so that both the Charlies and Bernadettes may understand it, but he is focused most of all on the effort to keep Charlie from tuning out to education altogether. There is something deeply poignant in his description of Charlie’s problems in public school, where his energy and sense of play are viewed as rebellious and troublesome by teachers and other authorities, rather than appreciated and focused in productive directions. One gets the sense that there are many millions of boys in classrooms like Charlie who are either punished or medicated into submission and who are deeply turned off with the material of schooling because of their frustration with the system of schooling. It is precisely this fate that the author, wisely, wishes to encourage readers to avoid.

In terms of its contents, this book is about 250 pages in length and has a multitude of small chapters that are perfect for bite-sized reading. After introducing the book by discussing why the author wrote it and his goals in making mathematics less painful to readers, the author spends eleven short chapters talking about numbers in one’s head and figures on paper (I), which include basic counting, arithmetic, and checking one’s answers. This is followed by a discussion of different types of number, the relationship between fractions, decimals, ratios, and percentages which the author handles well also, managing to combine a discussion of how to fairly divide pizzas with a look at the power of compound interest. The next part of the book discusses the fear of the unknown that leads many people to abandon mathematics when it comes time to learn algebra, by looking at how one deals with unknowns through false assumptions, doing the same operations to both sides, and the logic of simultaneous equations, that all seek to provide the saving of Charlie. The fourth part of the book then discusses probability and statistics, looking at the relevance of this branch of mathematics to games of chance as well as weather forecasts and life insurance. The book ends with three appendices that deal with dividing fractions, putting sudoku to bed through a disciplined method, and providing examples to the puzzles and exercises throughout the book, after which there is a discussion on puzzle sources and a bibliography.