Can a book about mathematical equations be a interesting read? Yes it can be. The In Pursuit of Unknown takes us to the world of maths in a very interesting story telling way, which is never done before. This book is about 17 most important mathematical equations that changed world.

In persuit of unknown cover

In this post, I will be talking about different things I found interesting in the book.

General perception of maths

General public thinks maths is a tedious brain bending exercise, that they have to go through in school. Maths is often ranked as most difficult subject to learn. Not only that, many people thinks maths is just sheer waste of time. It doesn’t has any practical usage in the life.

The reason for these kind of perception is nothing do with maths itself. It is something do with the way school teach maths. Rather than exciting students about possibility of world exploration using maths, they just make them to learn theorems and solve dry problems.

This book is a good example for how to teach math right. It takes a story telling approach to introduce the equation, then builds upon that equation to show how it has impacted the world.

For example, I think every one heard of Pythagoras theorem. It’s something we learn early in school and easy to remember. But from its outlook it doesn’t seems to have much of practical usage. It’s about right angle triangles right?. As most of the shapes we encounter are not triangles and most of triangles we encounter are not right angle. So Pythagoras theorem seems not even much practical to people who work on real world shapes. Our schools teaches the theorem and solve few problems. Their task is done.

But there is a secret hidden inside this theorem which school don’t teach. This book uncovers that for you. The secret is, it’s found that any triangle can be divided into two rectangle triangle. Which means any triangle sides can be calculated using the theorem. Not only that any shape can be divided into multiple triangles. Suddenly Pythagoras theorem becomes the secret key to understand the all kind of shapes. So rather than just teaching the theorem, if you show their universal applicability people will start appreciating more.

Importance of pure research

Many of the times, maths seems to be less practical. People prefer more practical branches of science like computers, genetic engineering over pure maths.

But as this book shows, many of the breakthroughs in practical areas started as a very non practical maths research. One of the equations, wave equation, which governs the TV, satellite etc started as study the vibration in violin strings. If you are practitioner or a business person you are never going to pursue research of violin strings. You may think its just sheer waste of time.

But mathematicians love abstract boring ideas. It proves that by understanding just violin strings vibration you can understand the universe.

This book opens our eyes to beauty of abstract maths. May be choosing color balls in probability theory makes us laugh, but same underneath maths governs the atoms in a substance.

Power of reasoning

One of the hidden theme of the book is to show how wonderful our brain is. Most of the equations discussed in the book are not discovered or derived from experiments. They are invented by sheer power of thinking and reasoning. Some one in remote place, sits in a corner and scribbles on paper to discover the principals governing the universe. It’s a very powerful image.

Equations covered in book

The following are 17 equations covered in book. Each equation gets a chapter.

  1. Pythagoras’ Theorem
  2. Logarithms
  3. Calculus
  4. Newton’s Law of Gravity
  5. The square root of –1
  6. Euler’s formula for polyhedra
  7. The normal distribution
  8. The wave equation
  9. The Fourier transform
  10. The Navier-Stokes equation
  11. Maxwell’s equations
  12. The second law of thermodynamics
  13. Relativity (E=MC^2)
  14. Schrodinger’s wave equation
  15. Information theory (Shannon)
  16. Chaos theory
  17. The Black-Scholes equation

The book starts with basic well known equations like pythagoras, logarithm etc. Then it moves on more and more complex equations like wave equation,relativity. I will not get into details of these, as I want you to enjoy the book without any spoilers!.

Why you should read it?

This book serves several purposes at same time. First of all its fascinating to read the stories behind each discovery. Many of the stories are very colorful and non obvious most of the times. In another level, it brings most influentials mathematics to general public conscience. So if you are science history buff or a mathematics student this book should keep you engaged till the end.