The Math Instinct: Why You're a Mathematical Genius (Along with Lobsters, Birds, Cats, and Dogs)

This book got rather boring about half way through, as the author Kevin Devlin switched from animal mathematics to human mathematics, but the first half was certainly a good read. He starts off with an experiment which showed that humans at 4 months of age have a sort of number sense that allows them to do addition and subtraction on groups of objects less than 4 objects in size. Other experiments also showed that the same procedures can be done by babies who are just a few days old. If you don't believe me when I say that babies have the number sense to know that 1+1=2, read the book. My mother doesn't believe me either.

The most interesting chapters were chapters 1 through 7. Chapter one houses the pages on babies doing math, while chapter 2 starts off with a dog named Elvis that can do calculus. The owner of Elvis was a math proffesor, and noticed that when he threw the ball on an angle into a lake, Elvis would run along the beach for a while (dogs travel faster on land than in water), then jump in at some point to swim to the ball. After a day of many measurements, Elvis's owner realized that Elvis was jumping into the lake at the exact point that he should if he wanted to take the quickest route to the ball. But, the owner had to use calculus to calculate that point.

Devlin then goes on to show how the birds travel using the position of the stars, sun, and even Earth's magnetic field. People also used to travel like this, but they needed to use trigonometry to do so. The point that is made is that birds and people can perform the same function, but birds naturally are able to calculate the direction they should travel in, while humans need to perform complex mathematical calculations to know where to go. That is the point of the entire first half of the book, and I suggest reading the first half. It's quite interesting how bats, ants, and lobsters also navigate.

My criticisms on this book is that Devlin will repeat himself over and over and over to make a point, and it is quite annoying. Other than that, the last half of the book might be interesting to some people if they're into human mathematics, the links between abstract math and the brain, and why school taught mathematics are what keeps some people from learning how to succeed in math. There's also a half interesting section on the human visual system.

All together, it's a good book and definitely worth the read.