Best children math books according to redditors
We found 111 Reddit comments discussing the best children math books. We ranked the 60 resulting products by number of redditors who mentioned them. Here are the top 20.
We found 111 Reddit comments discussing the best children math books. We ranked the 60 resulting products by number of redditors who mentioned them. Here are the top 20.
Sir Cumference and the First Round Table
This joke has actually turned into a EXTREMELY useful book I use to teach 5th graders their geometry formulas. There is a whole series of them now and are by far some of my favorite books to use in teaching! He is married to Lady Di of Ameter and his son is Radius.
Winnie Cooper wrote a book on this.
A while back, I saw a musical called Calculus and it was hilarious. I also learned more than I ever did in a class. Get her the CD.
Vi Hart is a female math doodler who makes learning math really fun.
Some of this may be a bit advanced, but it sounds like she can handle it.
There was a book my Geometry teacher read to us once in class that told the story of Sir Cumfrence and his wife Lady Di of Ameter and their young son Radius. Sir Cumference is tasked by King Arthur to find a way that all of his knights can sit at a table as equals and thus the round table was born.
EDIT: I found it here
Classic, there is a series of books based on this one:
Sir Circumference and the First Round Table
Sir Cumference and the Dragon of Pi
Sir Cumference and the Great Knight of Angleland
Sir Cumference and the Sword in the Cone
There is even more, but you get the point :) I found out about these books when I tried that joke on my wife and kids a while back. They said I stole it from a book. I said no way. Then she pulled these from our enormous bookshelves. They had been patiently waiting for me to try that one. Just so they could show me the books, saving them for a few years, knowing some day I could not resist telling that joke...
I wrote a quick script to search the full text of HPMOR and return everything italicized and in title case, which I think got most of the books mentioned in the text:
Book title|Author|Mentioned in chapter(s)|Links|Notes
:---|:---|:---|:---|:---
Encyclopaedia Britannica| |7|Wikipedia|Encyclopaedia
Financial Times| |7|Wikipedia|Newspaper
The Feynman Lectures on Physics|Richard P. Feynman|8|Wikipedia|Full text is available online here
Judgment Under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases|Amos Tversky|8|Amazon|
Language in Thought and Action|S.I. Hayakawa|8|Amazon Wikipedia |
Influence: Science and Practice|Robert B. Cialdini|8|Wikipedia|Textbook. See also Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion
Rational Choice in an Uncertain World: The Psychology of Judgment and Decision Making|Reid Hastie and Robyn Dawes|8|Amazon |Textbook
Godel, Escher, Bach|Douglas Hofstadter|8, 22|Amazon Wikipedia|
A Step Farther Out|Jerry Pournelle|8|Amazon|
The Lord of the Rings|J.R.R. Tolkien|17|Wikipedia|
Atlas Shrugged|Ayn Rand|20, 98|Wikipedia|
Chimpanzee Politics|Frans de Waal|24|Amazon|
Thinking Physics: Understandable Practical Reality|Lewis Carroll Epstein|35, 102|Amazon|
Second Foundation|Isaac Asimov|86|Wikipedia|Third novel in the Foundation Series
Childcraft: A Guide For Parents| |91|Amazon|Not useful if your child has a mysterious dark side
Also, this probably isn't technically what the OP was asking, but since the script returned fictional titles along with real ones, I went ahead and included them too:
Book title|Mentioned in chapter(s)
:---|:---
The Quibbler|6, 27, 38, 63, 72, 86
Hogwarts: A History|8, 73, 79
Modern Magical History|8
Magical Theory|16
Intermediate Potion Making|17
Occlumency: The Hidden Arte|21
Daily Prophet|22, 25, 26, 27, 35, 38, 53, 69, 77, 84, 86, 108
Magical Mnemonics|29
The Skeptical Wizard|29
Vegetable Cunning|48
Beauxbatons: A History|63
Moste Potente Potions|78
Toronto Magical Tribune|86
New Zealand Spellcrafter's Diurnal Notice|86
American Mage|86
As others mentioned, TVTropes has a virtually-exhaustive list of allusions to other works, which includes books that aren't explicitly named in the text, like Ender's Game
I would say she is still a keeper
For those of you that might not know about it...
https://www.amazon.com/Cumference-First-Round-Table-Adventures/dp/1570911525
There is a whole series of these books!
Ok... this is a weird one but I am going to throw it out there anyway. When I was 8 (many years ago) my grandfather gave me this book: Thinking Physics by Lewis Carroll Epstein. It is basically a picture book of simple physics puzzles meant to help high schoolers or undergraduates develop an intuition for the subject. It asks questions and then provides answers on the next page with solid, simple descriptions.
I. Was. Hooked. I couldn't get enough. This book taught me that we could examine the world around us and understand how it works. My 8 year old brain boggled at the possibilities! WE CAN LEARN ABOUT ANYTHING IF WE TRY! Fucking magnets... I figured out how they work! Or, at least I got an idea. This book made me curious and excited to explore the world around me.
From an excited, curious kid, I moved up on, always eager to explore. This book lead to an undergraduate education in Physics and my current pursuit of a PhD in biophysics. This book played a massive role in developing my critical assessment of the world around me.
ITS REAL!!! link and preview
She's also written a few books to get kids intersted in math.
I guess he never read this book to his kids
I remember my parents reading me this book before bedtime, and they give examples of million, billion, and trillion.
You might enjoy this Prime number book based on monsters. My kids can't understand multiplication yet. Hell, I can't even get them to understand what odd and even numbers are. But they love learning about prime numbers.
Wikipedia says the number of dead or missing for the Winter War on the Soviet side: 126,875–167,976
Wikipedia says the number dead or missing during the Continuation War for the Soviets: 265,000 dead or missing (including 64,000 captured).
Do I have to explain simple addition to you? See, you add together 126,000 with 265,000 and that gets you 391,000 dead or missing Soviet soldiers.
I know big numbers can be hard. I'm sure you're trying your best, though. Maybe learn to deal with them before you worry your pretty little head with really difficult concepts like politics, mmkay?
Edit: I even went and found you this helpful resource for under ten dollars to get you started, buddy.
Hiya! I'm a recent physics/computer science graduate and although I can't think of any super cool handmade options off the top of my head, there are some physics books that I find interesting that your boyfriend may enjoy. One solid idea would be just about anything written by Richard Feynman. Reading through the Feynman Lectures is pretty standard for all physicists, though there are free versions online as well. There are a few others, such as The Pleasure of Finding things Out and Surely You're Joking Mr. Feynman. There's also a cool graphic novel that recounts the events of his life called Feynman by Ottaviani. If you're not familiar with who this guy is, he is a colorful and concise orator who won a nobel prize in physics. His biggest contributions were in nuclear physics and quantum computation, and his quirks make his explanations of these topics very interesting. The Feynman Lectures are more formal, while his personal books are a mixture of personal experience and explanation.
 
Something else that I typically gift all of my friends who are problem solvers interested in physics is the book Thinking Physics. This book is great for developing some high level intuition in every field of physics (mechanics, optics, thermodynamics, electricity and magnetism, quantum mechanics, etc.). This book is great because it's broken into small digestible sections that build your knowledge as you solve more of the questions (solutions are given).
 
Good luck!
If you allow me to lump math/science, The Wonder Years star, Danica Mckeller
http://www.amazon.com/Math-Doesnt-Suck-Middle-School-Breaking/dp/1594630399
Reading this book as a kid means I always calculate tips in my head for my advanced mathematics loving friends.
I would suggest searching thru old back-issues of Scientific American magazine; specifically the "Amateur Scientist" columns - probably in the 1950s-60s space-race era. Most likely, there is some column in there about homebrew radio-telescopes.
One source for these back-issue columns:
http://www.amazon.com/Scientific-Americans-Amateur-Scientist-Science/dp/0970347626/
Now - I'll tell you this - I just got a surprise. I ordered my copy back in 2005 from this organization (now defunct):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Society_for_Amateur_Scientists
...and only paid $30.00 for it. So - I guess my copy has appreciated a bit. Sorry - maybe you can find the articles elsewhere (perhaps archive.org?)...
The only issue after that would be figuring out how to translate the likely tube-based schematics into something more modern, and then of course tying that into a computer system for analysis.
If you google "how to build your own radio telescope" - you'll find some interesting links that might help you. I recall owning a book at one time (not sure I still have it), in which it showed you how to build such a thing - but the book was published in the 1960s - so again, it was all tube-based (and I think the "interface" consisted of chart recorders, an oscilloscope, perhaps a reel-to-reel tape recorder, and some headphones).
There is a whole series of math-related "adventure novels" (not sure exactly what they are about) involving a hero named Sir Cumference.
Example: http://www.amazon.com/Cumference-First-Round-Table-Adventure/dp/1570911525
Sir Cumference and the First Round Table
This joke has actually turned into a EXTREMELY useful book I use to teach 5th graders their geometry formulas. There is a whole series of them now and are by far some of my favorite books to use in teaching! He is married to Lady Di of Ameter and his son is Radius.
Aside from looking hot, she earned a bachelor's in Mathematics at ULCA, co-authored a paper and wrote a middle school math book.
Number Freak: From 1 to 200- The Hidden Language of Numbers Revealed
A Mathematician's Lament: How School Cheats Us Out of Our Most Fascinating and Imaginative Art Form
Arithmetricks: 50 Easy Ways to Add, Subtract, Multiply, and Divide Without a Calculator (Hey, you said light!)
I swear all the really well written general books on math were written before 1980! Check out Mathematics, Its Magic and Mastery.
I remember this joke from 4th grade when my teacher read the class this book.
Try to find entry points that interest you personally, and from there the next steps will be natural. Most books that get into the nitty-gritty assume you're in school for it and not directly motivated, at least up to early university level, so this is harder than it should be. But a few suggestions aimed at the self-motivated: Lockhart Measurement, Gelfand Algebra, 3blue1brown's videos, Calculus Made Easy, Courant & Robbins What Is Mathematics?. (I guess the last one's a bit tougher to get into.)
For physics, Thinking Physics seems great, based on the first quarter or so (as far as I've read).
Times tables the fun way amazon
Yes. There is an organized attack on America happening right now. It MUST be stopped.
I have had arguments in op-ed pieces with these folks, and man...are they fucking stupid.
I have a large math background, and can argue with these fakers. There used to be a guy called Dembski that got a graduate degree in math and then used a bizarre area of game theory to argue for creationism. He lost. Even his professors have denounced his work as "meaningless" and "dishonest". He'll usually simply put up some equations that appear "mathy" and nobody argues with him. But I'll give him a run for his money with my own equations.
Long ago, a famous mathematician (Euler) cited an equation as proof for God's existence. His work was pure bullshit. Even a gifted mathematician fucks up when trying to prove god.
Have a good one, man.
However, I cannot recommend math highly enough. There's some real wisdom there. Did you know that some numbers have biographies? If you're interested (and most people aren't), you could start (and I already know you're probably not interested), here's some books that make math sexy and fun:
By Danica McKellar
Math Doesn't Suck: How to Survive Middle School Math Without Losing Your Mind or Breaking a Nail
Kiss My Math: Showing Pre-Algebra Who's Boss
Girls Get Curves: Geometry Takes Shape
Hot X: Algebra Exposed!
Good luck.
Learning physics is learning to think. Start here, don't cheat, you will thank me when your done.
https://www.amazon.com/Thinking-Physics-Understandable-Practical-Reality/dp/0935218084/
http://www.amazon.com/My-Counting-Book-Learn-Count-ebook/dp/B00AT2K0F4
Yes, Bryson's is a good one. I'd also recommend some classic books: 1. The Universe and Dr. Einstein. 2. About any book written by George Gamow, like One Two Three . . . Infinity. 3. Thinking Physics. I think all these books are quite motivating.
http://www.amazon.com/Math-Doesnt-Suck-Middle-School-Breaking/dp/B002BWQ4UK/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1269570913&sr=8-1
Pretty unique take on teaching math.
That's what I'd do with a grade 7/8 class. But... typical 2nd graders don't relate fractions with division but as separate objects... that's if they've been introduced to them at all, which typically they havn't.
Oh... in the future there is a book called... sir cumference and the dragon of pi, or sir cumference and the first round table
You could read it to them.
https://www.amazon.com/Cumference-First-Round-Table-Adventure/dp/1570911525
A good read
Here is my copy and paste list:
Books
TIPERS
TIPERs are a fantastic resource for including conceptual thinking assignments. Answer keys are generally available if you talk to your school's Pearson Rep. IMO, the E/M book is the weakest, in part because it ignores that circuits are a thing. I would start with the first as it is a general overview, and go from there.
General Physics Education
Websites
Youtube
Let me know if you have questions about any of these, or about particular types of physics courses.
If you are really curious about those tricks, there are books with more. I can't recommand a specific one though since the book I had is in german. I also may point out that most of the tricks are for special cases (like squaring numbers that end on 5), so you would need to train lots of different tricks to get really good at it.
I personally started to calculate the total price I need to pay in the grocery store when buying stuff. That is not too hard and ensures that you'll train on useful numbers.
As long as the base (the thing being raised to a power) is the same
So 3 10^5 2 10^7 = ( 3 2 ) ( 10^5 10^7 ) = 6 10^12
And ( 8 10^5 ) / ( 2 10^7 ) = ( 8 / 2 ) ( 10^5 / 10^7 ) = 4 * 10^-2
You may find my kindle book useful
http://www.suniltanna.com/indices.php
I've also done one on scientific notation (also known as standard form) and engineering notation, which isnt on my website yet but is on amazon (search my name "Sunil Tanna") or
Book link:
https://www.amazon.com/You-Can-Math-Scientific-Engineering-ebook/dp/B07QCR33R1/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?keywords=tanna+standard+form&qid=1565679187&s=gateway&sr=8-1
A fun math book for children: You Can Count on Monsters by Richard Schwartz. It's a really nice way to teach factorization to young children that's both visually interesting and entertaining. You can ignore the ages 8 and up thing, it has some higher level content but it also functions as a picture book, so your kids can appreciate it on multiple levels as they get older.
>I'm a 17 year old senior in HS looking to major in physics or engineering next year when I go off to college. I'm subscribed to this subreddt because I find it very interesting. That being said, I don't have an extensive background on physics and was very curious about the Higgs-Boson.
Good for you! We need more people going into the hard sciences. Take the following with a grain of salt, just wanted to share some hindsight. When it comes to physics, start early. I highly recommend a book called Thinking Physics. I didn't find out about it until college when a TA recommended it in an intro course; wish someone told me about it in High School. It would be right up your alley. :) Also, don't be discouraged if the math roughs you up a bit when you get to linear algebra.
Get Epstein's book Thinking Physics. Every physicist loves it, it requires no mathematical knowledge whatsoever, and I have seen more than one professor struggle with finding answers. This doesn't teach you the underlying mathematical structure, leaves out most of what you need to pass exams, but once you're through, you've built up a thorough understanding of the world around you.
Look for another one called Blood in the Face. I found it at my house in Redneckistan southeast of New Orleans sometime while my older sister dated this Nazi rich-boy asshole back in high school. Being a bookworm, I read it cover to cover multiple times. I didn't read the copy of Mein Kampf he left behind, however. I think my being gay may have had something to do with these books appearing, because it wasn't long after I came out that they showed up.
My sister dumped the hate politics when she dumped him, so we're okay with each other. I still live in Cajun Redneckistan, just not that particular bumfuck town anymore. I much prefer to read books like [Thinking Physics](http://www.amazon.com/Thinking-Physics-Understandable-Practical-Reality/dp/0935218084/ref=sr_1_19?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1313345888&sr=1-19) anyway.
And nobody fucks with me for being gay.
"The Amateur Scientist" was a section in Scientific American from 1928 until 2001 with many wonderful projects for all disciplines in science. For physics there is "atom smasher", cloud chamber, cyclotron, electron microscope and dozens more, from the simple to the complex. Many of the projects are not straight out recipes and require some ingenuity of the builder and so present a fun challenge to the experimenter.
Here is an index to all the articles:
http://amasci.com/amateur/sciamdx.html
and there is a cdrom available:
https://www.amazon.com/Scientific-Americans-Amateur-Scientist-Science/dp/0970347626
Best science teacher I ever had the pleasure of being taught by introduced me to this book. This book and his class changed my world.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0935218084
A little about joe for anyone who's interested.
http://nutrias.org/culotta/ltio.htm
i had to check if it was real.http://www.amazon.com/How-Teach-Math-Black-Students/dp/0913543977#reader_0913543977
I bought my son 'How much is a million' which helps to visualise big numbers including a million, billion & trillion (if a billion children stood on each others shoulders...)
Oh yeah...In my school of Engineering, every class I had 2 - 5 women. Most of them did not even finish up along with other guys. Now I am speaking of experience here in Oregon State University. Hell ya, I would be lying if I said engineering was a cake walk for me, so I am not bitching about being hard but talking about numbers from first hand experience. Try looking up this book by Danica Mckellar. She was an actor who later did a Phd in Math and wrote the book to generate an interest in Math for women. Interest is what is lacking....
http://www.amazon.com/Math-Doesnt-Suck-Middle-School-Breaking/dp/1594630399
a couple links to her books:
http://www.amazon.com/Hot-Algebra-Exposed-Danica-McKellar/dp/0452297192/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1314044932&sr=8-3
http://www.amazon.com/Math-Doesnt-Suck-Survive-Breaking/dp/0452289491/ref=pd_sim_b_2
Epstein, Thinking Physics (http://www.amazon.com/Thinking-Physics-Understandable-Practical-Reality/dp/0935218084)
This book is wonderful. It is almost a bathroom reader, but it has amazing depth and great lessons that range across all of physics.
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B01ASA5DQW #lego #ebook
It's not particularly small, but Relativity Visualized by Lewis Carroll Epstein is mostly pictures and is an awesome book.
Edit: by the description of the cover, maybe it's Thinking Physics, also by Epstein?
Not quite science, but when I was young I liked to read the How Much is a Million? book, which got me interested in numbers. It may be above your target audience if you're aiming at 2nd grade, but How Things Work was one of my favourites too.
Kiss My Math
There's actually a series of books about Sir Cumference http://www.amazon.com/Cumference-First-Round-Table-Adventure/dp/1570911525/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1420960594&sr=8-1&keywords=sir+cumference+series
That's the way I'd do it but I read math magic when I was a kid and it taught lots of simplifying strategies that I didn't learn in school
The King's Chessboard - Exponents
Math Curse - Word Problems.
Grandfather Tang - Tangrams.
The Grapes of Math - Number sense and multiplication. This author has lots of others as well.
The M&M Math Book - Counting, shapes, early number sense.
How much is a million? - Complex numbers. I think there's a sequel out too.
Sir Cumference and the First Round Table - Geometry. There is an entire Sir Cumference series.
So many more, but those are off the top of my head. Follow the Amazon links and click through related books. You'll find a ton.
She is a mathematician who writes books about math now. Seriously!
Also, it looks like she really likes pantyhose stockings.
My attempts at advanced math at university level (calculus) have systematicaly failed to me. The tomes that are produced on this topic are usualy very -- arcane -- and take a lot of effort to read though enough to get the gist of it -- something that a person with adhd often has issues with; requiring to get and undstanding quick to feel any kind of reward/effort mechanism. I managed to do computer science math tho (venn diagrams and stuff like that) but was in no way as hard as the calculus intro course on university level.
​
BUT, there is a "manga" guide to Calculus that might be a lot easier to understand than that university tome of infinte dust;
https://www.amazon.com/Manga-Guide-Calculus-Hiroyuki-Kojima-ebook/dp/B007XLF1SA/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=Calculus+manga&qid=1557094297&s=gateway&sr=8-1
So I went to grade school in the early 90s and the year after the book Times Tables the Fun Way came out. I am now 32 and I still use these silly stories to remember basic multiplication, such as "you have to be 16 to drive a 4x4" or "two snowmen (represented by a pair of 8s) are cold, so they want to build a fire. So they need sticks. The Sticks (6) are For (4) the fire." (8x8=64) etc.
I object. This meme is stealing good dad jokes from king author.
http://www.amazon.com/Cumference-First-Round-Table-Adventure/dp/1570911525