{"product_id":"huge-numbers-richard-elwes-9781541605923","title":"Huge Numbers: A Story of Counting Ambitiously, from 4 1\/2 to Fish 7","description":"\u003cb\u003eHow humanity's long pursuit of ever-larger numbers broke the boundaries of mathematics and propelled us into the Information Age \u003c\/b\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e \"A charming tour\"--Jordan Ellenburg, author of \u003ci\u003eShape\u003c\/i\u003e \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e What if, every time you wanted to write down 1,000,000, you had to draw a picture of a god? And what if that number were the biggest you had a symbol for? If you were doing math in ancient Egypt, those were the rules: anything bigger broke math. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e As mathematician Richard Elwes shows in \u003ci\u003eHuge Numbers\u003c\/i\u003e, this is the strange story of math. Even today, writing down some numbers is beyond us: try it with all the zeroes in a googolplex, or an outrageous alien number like TREE(3). Safer not to try: even harnessing every particle in the universe, you wouldn't come close. But this book is no mere bestiary of numerical monsters. It shows how, by hunting down and studying ever-bigger numbers, arithmetic has reshaped human thought and made our modern era of science and computation possible. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e Where many math books celebrate abstract algebra or ineffable infinities, \u003ci\u003eHuge Numbers\u003c\/i\u003e is both more practical and far weirder. It reveals a world where most numbers remain out of reach until we discover how to chase them down and tame them, and so remake our world again. \u003cbr\u003e","brand":"Basic Books","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":50001749344449,"sku":"9781541605923","price":32.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0781\/5512\/0833\/files\/9781541605923.jpg?v=1771612614","url":"https:\/\/www.porchlightbooks.com\/products\/huge-numbers-richard-elwes-9781541605923","provider":"Porchlight Book Company","version":"1.0","type":"link"}