Works of prolific Russian-American writer Isaac Asimov include popular explanations of scientific principles, The Foundation Trilogy (1951-1953), and other volumes of fiction.
Isaac Asimov, a professor of biochemistry, wrote as a highly successful author, best known for his books.
Asimov, professor, generally considered of all time, edited more than five hundred books and ninety thousand letters and postcards. He published in nine of the ten major categories of the Dewey decimal classification but lacked only an entry in the category of philosophy (100).
People widely considered Asimov, a master of the genre alongside Robert Anson Heinlein and Arthur Charles Clarke as the "big three" during his lifetime. He later tied Galactic Empire and the Robot into the same universe as his most famous series to create a unified "future history" for his stories much like those that Heinlein pioneered and Cordwainer Smith and Poul Anderson previously produced. He penned "Nightfall," voted in 1964 as the best short story of all time; many persons still honor this title. He also produced well mysteries, fantasy, and a great quantity of nonfiction. Asimov used Paul French, the pen name, for the Lucky Starr, series of juvenile novels.
Most books of Asimov in a historical way go as far back to a time with possible question or concept at its simplest stage. He often provides and mentions well nationalities, birth, and death dates for persons and etymologies and pronunciation guides for technical terms. Guide to Science, the tripartite set Understanding Physics, and Chronology of Science and Discovery exemplify these books.
Asimov, a long-time member, reluctantly served as vice president of Mensa international and described some members of that organization as "brain-proud and aggressive about their IQs." He took more pleasure as president of the humanist association. The asteroid 5020 Asimov, the magazine Asimov's Science Fiction, an elementary school in Brooklyn in New York, and two different awards honor his name.
513.2 Asimov present shortcuts to dealing with the arithmetic operations of addition, subtraction, multiplication and division, as well as operation with decimals and fractions. More than just calculation tricks because he clearly expounds on the underlying principles.
In today's generation of ubiquitous calculating devices (smartphone/laptop etc), we hardly use standalone calculators, let alone take the trouble to mentally or manually do these calculation tasks. One might argue that we've outsourced the ability to calculate, does that make us dumber? Imagine having a teacher like Asimov, presenting concepts (in this case, arithmetic hacks and shortcuts) in a lucid and simple manner! The scope of this book is very limited, and hardly covers junior school arithmetic concepts, but is an interesting detour into the history of several of the calculations we take for granted.
I read this fabulous book as a teenager whilst at boarding school. It taught me many brilliant 'tricks' which helped me to develop my mental arithmetic skills.
Fifty years on, I've tried to obtain a copy of this fabulous book and discover Amazon can provide a copy costing an unbelievable £220! (Will have to peruse the 2nd hand bookshops!!
One of those great books where I already knew all these ideas, but it's presented so well I thought I was learning new things. I can say for certain that I can now better apply the math knowledge I already have. I highly recommend this for everyone. It makes doing math a breeze.