Alex’s Adventures in Numberland
Math is often called the universal language, and in his new math travelogue, author Alex Bellos takes readers on a journey not only through realms of numerical thought and theory, but around the world as well. His book is already a bestseller in the U.K., under the title Alex’s Adventures in Numberland.
You traveled the world to investigate how math is perceived and put to use in a variety of cultural contexts. Could you give us a brief tally of the places you visited while writing this book?
I traveled near and far! I spent two weeks in Japan, visiting Tokyo, Osaka and Inuyama, a quiet town home to the world’s most numerate chimpanzees. I crossed India, from Bombay to Puri, on the Bay of Bengal, to meet a math guru. I attended the Mental Calculation World Cup in Germany and visited NeuroSpin, the world’s top neuroscience research center near Paris, France. In two trips to the U.S., I visited New York, Atlanta, St. Louis, Scottsdale, Reno, Newport Beach and Norman, Oklahoma. And I spent lots of time in the British Library, in London, where I live.
Why did you fashion your journey through the history of math into a geographical journey?
I used to be a foreign correspondent, and so I’m used to writing geographical journeys…I wanted to bring a sense of immediacy and relevance to talking about math, and this seemed like the most interesting and fun way to do it. My book is rather like a travelogue through the world of mathematics. And I found this world as exciting and exotic as the countries I had reported on as a foreign correspondent.
Were you ever surprised by how much, or how little, math pervaded a society you encountered?
Since math is where it all begins, I was never surprised by how deep math runs in any society. But what fascinated me–and surprised me too–was how differently math is approached in different cultures. This is counter-intuitive, since we assume that since 1 + 1 is always 2, math is somehow universal. But math culture is delightfully varied. In Japan, for example, children still learn the abacus. For fun! A million children attend abacus school every year there, and many take part in competitions–sort of like math equivalents of spelling bees.
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