Math teachers - I'm teaching Geometry and looking for a good novel with some math involvement for my students for part of the school literacy requirements. Any suggestions? --Nate
My first reaction was to suggest Heinlein's Number of the Beast, but that was when I thought you were kidding. Actually, that book got me to sit down and try to actually calculate 6^6^6 - and eventually write a program to do it for me. More appropriately, google turns up these links: http://members.cox.net/mathmistakes/fiction.htm http://mathforum.org/kb/message.jspa?messageID=1469237&tstart=0 (with more suggestions buried elsewhere in the thread) Flatland is apparently available here: http://www.geom.uiuc.edu/~banchoff/Flatland/ Hope that's at least a little helpful.
I like The Number Devil by Hans Magnus Enzensberger...the reading level is about middle school. I have also used the shorts from John Allen Paulos' books Innumeracy and A Mathematician Reads the Newspaper. These are not novels and not necessarily related to Geometry, but students find them readable and they generate good discussion.
I'm not sure if your administration would approve, but any technical forensics based murder mystery novel would be great for dealing with math and geometry. Think about what they have to do when they try to reconstruct a crime. They look at blood spatter and use angles and shapes to determine where the blood came from, how it was moved, and at what velocity it was moving when it hit the surface. They use string and angle measurements to pinpoint the location of a shooter. They also use angle measurements to reconstruct car accidents. The list of what forensics teams use math, and more specifically geometry for is huge. This type of book might not be allowed, but it might be worth a try.
Oh, and sherlock holmes...for the logic, which is vital to geometry if you're teaching it through a proof based curriculum.
I liked Fermat's Enigma It's been a while since I read it so I don't remember the reading level of the book.
These links might be useful: http://mathforum.org/library/topics/lit_poetry/ http://www.fun-books.com/mathematics.htm
I was going to suggest The Number Devil too. I haven't read it yet, but I checked it out from the library and have thumbed through it and it seems pretty cool. I also just ordered Algebra Unplugged, which is for Algebra, not Geometry, but seemed well-reviewed nevertheless. And these might be a bit lower than you are looking for (and again, more for Algebra), but Danica McKeller's Math Doesn't Suck and Kiss My Math are EXCELLENT math books aimed toward middle school girls (well, and guys will appreciate too). Danica played Winne on the Wonder Years and then majored in math at UCLA.
Algebra Unplugged isn't a novel, but it is one of my favorite books for people - grownups, primarily - who are terrified of algebra and believe it's toxic. A certain amount of beer shows up, along with pizzas and tenors.
Thank you so much TeacherGroupie for these links, especially the fun books one. I never realize that books like these were available...I know way back went to school, this was not even mentioned. One of the books I want to get for myself is the cats and calculus one as I embark to take this class next year. Kris:thanks:
