The Joy Of X: A Guided Tour of Math, from One to Infinity

by Steven H. Strogatz

The eminent linguistic philosopher J. L. Austin of Oxford once gave a lecture in which he asserted that there are many languages in which a double negative makes a positive but none in which a double positive makes a negative—to which the Columbia philosopher Sidney Morgenbesser, sitting in the audience, sarcastically replied, “Yeah, yeah.”)

Best of all, with a place-value system, ordinary people can learn to do arithmetic.