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Rating: 
Summary: nice reference
Review: A concise yet complete reference work on numbers. Starts with i and moves to very large numbers. Also, where relevant, integer sequences and relata are discussed, for instance, the fibonacci sequence with the number 5 and so on and so forth. Additionally, there are some nice appendices listing various integer sequences, factors and such.
Rating:
Summary: nice reference
Review: A concise yet complete reference work on numbers. Starts with i and moves to very large numbers. Also, where relevant, integer sequences and relata are discussed, for instance, the fibonacci sequence with the number 5 and so on and so forth. Additionally, there are some nice appendices listing various integer sequences, factors and such.
Rating:
Summary: Great for Middle and High School Students
Review: A great supplemental tool for teachers! I had terrific fun with my 6th grade math students when reading them certain passages in this book. Many of the topics covered, such as factorials, hexidecimals, triangular numbers, pi, primes, etc. are not generally covered in the middle school very well or at all, and this book serves as a great launching tool for discussions that kids enjoy and think about long after class is over. Also, many topics go in depth and will challenge even the best high school math students and take them in many directions that traditional math education does not.
Rating:
Summary: a really neat book
Review: Everyone has that smart-alex relation who ruins Thanksgiving dinner by proving to every four year old in the room that they know more about math than they do. There are several ways to deal with such a pain in the posterior but the least likely to involve violence and police intervention is this book.There are few `wonderful' books ... you can count them with the fingers of one hand ... this is one. The `smart-alex' in the family would call this book: `just a book on popular mathematics' thunder against it and not know 1/100 th of those facts within. This is understandable number theory ... I guess you could call it that. It takes a number, some whole integers and some fractional or decimal parts and tells you about them. What they are made off, how to use the number, how it was used historically ... in other words it not dry like those awful wiggly things scraggy armed Mr. Enngenheimer [whomever] bored you with in high school
Rating:
Summary: a really neat book
Review: Everyone has that smart-alex relation who ruins Thanksgiving dinner by proving to every four year old in the room that they know more about math than they do. There are several ways to deal with such a pain in the posterior but the least likely to involve violence and police intervention is this book. There are few 'wonderful' books ... you can count them with the fingers of one hand ... this is one. The 'smart-alex' in the family would call this book: 'just a book on popular mathematics' thunder against it and not know 1/100 th of those facts within. This is understandable number theory ... I guess you could call it that. It takes a number, some whole integers and some fractional or decimal parts and tells you about them. What they are made off, how to use the number, how it was used historically ... in other words it not dry like those awful wiggly things scraggy armed Mr. Enngenheimer [whomever] bored you with in high school
Rating: 
Summary: No recreational mathematician should be without it
Review: In the foreword to G.H. Hardy's book A Mathematician's Apology, C.P. Snow tells an anecdote about Hardy and his collaborator Srinavasa Ramanujan. Hardy, perhaps the greatest number theorist of 20th century, took a taxi from London to the hospital at Putney where Ramanujan was dying of tuberculosis, Hardy noticed its number, 1729. Always inept about introducing a conversation, he entered the room where Ramanujan was lying in bed and, with scarcely a hello, blurted out his opinion about the taxi-cab number. It was, he declared, "rather a dull number," adding that he hoped that wasn't a bad omen. "No, Hardy! No, Hardy," said Ramanujan, "it is a very interesting number. It is the smallest number expressible as the sum of two cubes in two different ways." Usually it takes a great deal of insight as well as considerable mathematical training to discover a yet unknown properties of some number. Only recognizing the beauty of a number pattern is much easier, though, especially with a friendly book like this one on hand. Wells, a long-time mathematics popularizer, has collected over 1000 numbers he considers interesting. Each of them is given a short explanation, often accompanied with a bibliographic reference. Celebrities among the numbers, like i, e or Pi, are given a more comprehensive treatment. Included are also several sequences, like Fibonacci's, Mersenne's, Fermat's, Carmichael's or Kaprekar's, each accompanied with its explanation. So are cyclic, amicable, untouchable or lucky numbers, and many more sequences you probably didn't know about. While Wells' dictionary certainly gives the impression of a well-researched work, the list of numbers is by no means exhaustive. Anyone familiar with chaos theory will notice the absence of Feigenbaum constant; prime hunters would probably be interested in discussion on Woodall primes, Sophie-Germain primes, or Proth primes. But they are better off with Paulo Ribenboim's book on primes, anyway, while Wells' book, with its easily understandable explanations and accessible price is probably more suited for the "recreational mathematics" audience.
Rating:
Summary: An interesting compendium for the beginning scholar.
Review: Loaded with information, light-hearted and extremely well written! The book is so enjoyable that whenever you get near it you feel like grabbing it and find the vices and virtues of yet another number. And between one number and the next, one meets an entire gallery of mathematicians, mathematical terms, unsolved problems, great achievements and colossal mistakes... It's a jewel of a book - I strongly reccomend it.
Rating:
Summary: Wonderful starting point to a lifetime of investigations
Review: This book gives a summary of every interesting number known. A great way to find areas of maths to explore further and use as a stimulus to teaching. Check out his other Penguin Dictionaries, too - they make a great set.
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