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Summary

A bite-sized mathematical sightseeing tour of the natural world from the author of The Magical Maze. Why do many flowers have five or eight petals, but very few six or seven? Why do snowflakes have sixfold symmetry? Why do tigers have stripes but leopards have spots?

Mathematics is to nature as Sherlock Holmes is to evidence. Mathematics can look at a single snowflake and deduce the atomic geometry of its crystals; it can start with a violin string and uncover the existence of radio waves. And mathematics still has the power to open our eyes to new and unsuspected regularities - the secret structure of a cloud or the hidden rhythms of the weather.

There are patterns in the world we are now seeing for the first time - patterns at the frontier of science, yet patterns so simple that anybody can see them once they know where to look.
©1997 Ian Stewart (P)1997 Orion Publishing Group

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Wonderful educational audiobook!

I thoroughly enjoyed listening to this audiobook. Prof. Stewart narrates and writes with wisdom and much experience and presents ideas and tricky concepts with ease.
In fact, this is also a really good primer to some of his other well-known books such as '17 Equations that Changed the World' and 'The Great Mathematical Problems'. Great value for money!

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  • T. Kirby-Green
  • 15-01-19

Only wish there was more

This is a book that left me hungry for more. It bears listening too multiple times. Part celebration of mathematics, part ode to the algorithmic beauty of nature it’s more of a report from a moving frontier than ia definitive summary of all there is to know about nature’s numbers.