I loved this smart, funny, big-hearted novel. As hilarious and wise as early Philip Roth, The Mathematician’s Shiva will delight and move you.

In mathematics, our freedom lies in the questions we ask – and in how we pursue them – but not in the answers awaiting us.

When you create something new, you’re breaking tradition – which is an act of defiance.

The frequencies of the notes in a scale – do, re, mi, fa, sol, la, ti, do – sound to us like they’re rising in equal steps. But objectively their vibrational frequencies are rising by equal multiples. We perceive pitch logarithmically.

In mathematics, our freedom lies in the questions we ask — and in how we pursue them — but not in the answers awaiting us.

Logic leaves us no choice. In that sense, math always involves both invention and discovery: we invent the concepts but discover their consequences. … in mathematics our freedom lies in the questions we ask – and in how we pursue them – but not in the answers awaiting us.

The frequencies of the notes in a scale—do, re, mi, fa, sol, la, ti, do—sound to us like they’re rising in equal steps. But objectively their vibrational frequencies are rising by equal multiples. We perceive pitch logarithmically.

Change is most sluggish at the extremes precisely because the derivative is zero there.

I loved this smart, funny, big-hearted novel. As hilarious and wise as early Philip Roth, The Mathematician's Shiva will delight and move you.

Looking at numbers as groups of rocks may seem unusual, but actually it's as old as math itself. The word "calculate" reflects that legacy - it comes from the Latin word calculus, meaning a pebble used for counting. To enjoy working with numbers you don't have to be Einstein (German for "one stone"), but it might help to have rocks in your head.