Were you born a mathematician? Do you like math? Or did you like math and then got frustrated with it? Does Algebra or Calculus strike dread in your soul? Or maybe you get lost in the variables of life and just need to know what is going on. Eddie Woo strives to answer at least some of these questions in It's A Numberful Life.

Eddie Woo confesses in the Prologue that he had little joy in math, but then he began training as a mathematics teacher when he turned 19. He had learned a secret - "Math is all around us." In 26 short chapters, he takes the readers on a whirlwind tour of the world beginning with babies as mathematicians, then going up into the sky to question why rainbows are circles, diving into sound and music with wave cycles, comparing veins in your body with lightening, delving into cryptography, killer butterflies, and card tricks to astonish your friends, explaining why there are so many conspiracy theories, why electronic devices lie about how long they will last, and several other topics! He provides plenty of visual examples to make the processing and absorption of information easier and much more fun. And that is the key to this book. Eddie Woo had fun writing this book and he wants the reader to have fun reading it!

So if you are looking for a quick reading, non-fiction book that may blow your mind and help you understand math, pick up It's A Numberful World and enjoy!

It is very, very good at connecting abstract math concepts with the everyday. With pictures! Although it might be aimed for a younger audience, i want to buy it for my math-averse college students.

Note: I only read the first few chapters and skimmed through the rest. I do plan on reading the rest of it.

I picked up the book expecting to find an assortment of number and mathematical based trivia. Though not entirely wrong, the book is more scholarly than the typical trivia book. The book is not full of equations but is aimed much more at the visual learner - filled with illustrations and graphs. Each chapter tackles a specific topic of interest in mathematics and illustrates its place in our natural world. For example, Chapter 7 is entitled “What Sunflowers Know About the Universe”. In the course of 20 pages the author takes the reader through a study of symmetry, into a discussion of the golden ratio, and concludes by saying:

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A BRIEF NOTE: It’s not really that sunflowers are intelligent beings who worked out the equations to come to this conclusion -- but simply that any ancestral sunflowers that didn’t use the golden ratio produced fewer seeds per flower, and were therefore weeded out by the process of natural selection. But the fact that this natural algorithm should arrive at a mathematical truth like this is almost as beautiful as the fact that human beings calculated it through their ingenuity and insight!
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The author, an Australian public school teacher, has been named Australia’s “Teacher of the Year” and identified as one of the top ten teachers of the world. In 2018, he was named “Australia’s Local Hero of the Year”. This book serves as great evidence for the validity of those honors. More information about the author can be found on Wikipedia and with a Google search. As a Christian, I found the dedication of interest:

Dedicated to the Author of Life

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“Mathematics is the language with
which God has written the universe.”
—Galileo Galilei
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Though mathematical, it is not a difficult read - and will be enjoyed by many. Whether a mathematician, a physicist, a general lover of knowledge, this book has a place on your bookshelf or bed stand. The junior high and high school library will want a copy on their shelves. This is also true of the liberal arts college library. It is less likely to be found on the shelves of the university library, but perhaps on the coffee table in the math department’s lounge.
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This review is based on a free electronic copy provided by the publisher for the purpose of creating this review. The opinions expressed are my own.

YouTuber Eddie Woo tries, and succeeds, to make math interesting in It’s a Numberful World.

“If you go down deep enough into anything, you will find mathematics.”

Eddie proves his point by explaining why rainbows are round, blood vessels and lightning bolts look alike, and the zeros are in the middle of the Plinko board.

I’m pretty sure that It’s a Numberful World is for young folks. But I found the simple explanations of natural phenomena fascinating. Although I’ve taken college calculus, I learned a lot from the book. There are many things that most wouldn’t think of as math. The shape of a sunflower, Netflix’ movie suggestions, and the sound of a guitar come to mind.

If you want to revisit your childlike feelings of awe, just read about the golden triangle, pi, phi, and e. Even better, if you have a child having difficulties understanding why they should study math, this would be a perfect gift. 4.5 stars rounded up to 5 stars! Or should I say spheres (read the book to find out why).

Thanks to The Experiment and NetGalley for a copy in exchange for my honest review.

This is a fun book about Math, whether you are a Math teacher or a student. Eddie does an amazing job of not just showing where we see Math in our everyday lives but also takes us into the bigger question of why certain math facts are taken to be facts. Why do we use 360 degree? What is common between lightning and blood through our veins? Why do we draw stars a pointy things but they are actually big spheres? Is 1 really a prime number? What does it mean to draw x as the horizontal axis and y as the vertical axis? Why can't we divide by zero?

This is story-telling at its best about Math, Chemistry, Physics - our world. Filled with little experiments that the reader can do to supplement their thinking, It's a Numberful World is indeed a wonderful book, showing a side of Math that gets hidden away while teaching the curriculum.

I am grateful for the advanced reviewer copy from the publisher through NetGalley. It has been a pleasure diving into the real world of Math, with Eddie's humorous narrative.

I absolutely adored this book! I am a math teacher and once I downloaded and started this, I could not put it down. I love how Mr. Woo makes the text so relatable. As a math coach now I find myself trying to find ways to make math more meaningful for my middle school students also while emphasizing the growth mindset. Woo did an amazing job at tying math to relatable scenarios for all students and people to understand. The visuals, chapter breaks, graphs, charts, etc. were all fabulous. Highly recommend for all teachers, educational staff, parents, and those struggling to find their groove in math.

Meet your favorite math teacher, despite the fact that you will probably never see him in person. Eddie Woo takes readers on an introductory tour through the astounding realm of mathematics and its connections to every area of life. From explanations of card tricks to appreciation for the precision of musical harmony, each chapter explores the ways in which math is intertwined throughout the cosmos. Whether a reader is interested in the study of chemistry, origami, lightning, or the circulatory system, Woo engagingly traces how various fields of mathematics play a part in understanding each of them. Terms like fractals, golden ratio, and Fibonacci sequence are easily comprehensible with the explanations and diagrams provided. The book can be enjoyed from cover to cover, or each chapter can be read as a stand-alone essay. There are also suggestions for further reading for those hungry for more. A perfect gift for the number-lover in your life.

Intriguing! After reading the first few chapters, I pre-ordered the book for my personal collection. The application of math to "real world" is fascinating and presented in a readable/ accessible manner. Looking forward to diving in!

Very well documented book about the natural sciences phenomenons though the mathematical theorems. The illustrations are wonderful and this book can be used to create workshop at school. Amazing!

#ItsAnumberfulWorld #NetGalley

A perfect choice for people who think they do not like math. The author presents math concepts in easy to understand ways that are intuitive and so much better than the rote methods many of us were exposed to in school.

Great book on the joy of numbers

I loved this book. I never really liked math in school but Author Eddie Woo showed me the joy of math. He writes with a great sense of humor and in plain language and a conversational tone. He explained most things well, but acknowledges that not everyone will get everything he wrote and that this was fine. You don’t have to understand something completely to be able to enjoy it. This is the third book on math I’ve read recently. “The Golden Ratio” by Gary Meisner was not nearly as good. I enjoyed “Understanding Numbers,” by Marianne Freiberger and Rachel Thomas, finding it very informative, but neither of these books was as fun to read as Eddie Woo’s. If you are looking for a book that discusses the role of math in various aspects of society, then “Understanding Numbers” is a good choice. If you want to read something fun about numbers, then “It’s a numberful world” is the book to read.

I am squarely in the target audience of this book!

I loved every single page of it, underlined pretty much half this book and have had several long conversations with my family as I was read it in. In fact, while we were driving to the beach, I read parts of it out loud to my kids. This book is the perfect combination of math, fun, learning, fascination, and joy!

This book is broken into chapters, most of which are not intercorrelated (with a few exceptions) where there's a new mathematical concept covered in each chapter. It mentions all things math like fractals, algebra, chaos theory, graph theory, encryption and more. I knew many of these concepts and yet it was still delightful to reread what I knew and fascinating to read what I didn't know.

If you're a fan of math or have someone in your life who might not appreciate how magical math is and how it's a part of every single aspect of our life, I think this would make an excellent gift. I hope they will love this book as much as I did.