Picture yourself at a starting point before anything exists – no matter, no cosmos, not even empty space. Your task is to create the universe, but all you have to work with is, quite literally, “nothing.” How do you proceed?
This is the thought experiment The Big Bang of Numbers invites you into, as an original and completely accessible way to appreciate mathematics. An experiment in which you’ll build all the numbers out of nothing, then construct space using these numbers, and then, through a natural progression of mathematical creations, be able to design everything else your universe needs!
Whether you’re a novice at math or an expert, the journey will reveal to you secret lives of numbers you may never have imagined, unexpected geometries that might actually describe the space you physically live in, underlying patterns that tie together humble lifeforms and enormous galaxies. You’ll experience the playful, game-like nature of the subject mathematicians adore, while also seeing how such abstract games manifest themselves in concrete examples from nature and real life. How math not only gives rise to such essential qualities as randomness and beauty, but also informs the Big Questions humans grapple with – the nature of knowledge, the origin of life. Above all, how mathematics, more than God or physics, is the life-force of the universe, the exuberant, irrepressible power that guides every facet of existence.
Distilled from almost four decades of teaching experience, and written in a lively, irreverent style that is consistently engaging and lucid, The Big Bang of Numbers will appeal to both math-savvy audiences and beginners – to anyone, in fact, who wants to learn more about math or who wants new ways to motivate math learning in others.
