I promise I don’t only read books that Katie gives me.
‘How Life Reflects Numbers and Numbers Reflect Life’: you have to admire the attempt to make inevitable title for the sequel to Alex in Numberland make sense. A more pedantic author would have gone with Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alex Found There, but then again, a more pedantic author would probably have written a more tedious book. Personally, I would have gone with Do the Fucking Maths, but that’s tenuous even if you place the stress where you need to.
Alex Through the Looking Glass seemed to be perfectly pitched for someone with my level of maths education. If this is intentional, it’s an absolute disaster. I got a good maths A-level without too much difficulty, but was sufficiently baffled by parts of my further maths course that I outright failed a paper and got an overall grade that my wife later advised me not to include on my CV. That further maths course was with a different exam board to my main maths A-level, so I studied some things twice and some apparently quite important things not at all. My level of maths education is not level at all. It’s lopsided and ridiculous. It’s impossible to believe that this book could have been pitched at me, so I think we can assume that seemed that way simply because it’s quite a good book.
Better yet, it cleared up a few of the things that I never understood from my further maths course, and it included a few amusing anecdotes that I would be looking for a way to drop into conversation if only I had a good enough memory to do so.
I recommend buying this book, and then taping it to your copy of The Knowledge to correct some of the latter’s clear and acknowledged omissions.
I have contacted OCR to let them know that I have filled the gaps in my understanding, but apparently this is not sufficient to bump my Further Maths A-level up a grade. I therefore award Alex Through the Looking Glass no stars.
☆☆☆☆☆