The comics are from the book Understanding and Doing Math – Circle 1 Are natural numbers natural? Do we need zero? Be careful with negative numbers! How to rationally divide two golden bars among three pirates? Secrets of decimal notation Bills can sometimes be irrational.
School mathematics: Real mathematics:
My neighbor John and I got into a serious disagreement while working on a fence between our houses: will we use an English foot (John’s proposal) or a traditional Croatian elbow (my proposal) to measure the fence? This event helped me solve a problem that has plagued me since elementary
Someone proposes the following bet to you. A symmetrical dice will be rolled only once. If is rolled, the challenger gets euros, otherwise, you get euros. The probability of rolling is and the probability of not rolling is , times bigger. Would you accept a bet? What would you do
Some do math because they have to. Some do math because they think math helps them manage the world. Some do math because they find beauty in it. Not only is there no royal path to math, as Euclid said long ago (for geometry), but there is also no common
