Ellenberg has successfully showed how Math is convoluted into all kinds of sciences through this incredible work. I particularly enjoyed the development of such-and-such theories throughout the history. The stories, dramas, and discussions are amazingly detailed, with cited speeches and writings from the involved mathematicians and scientists. Despite Ellenberg’s intention to bring Math closer to general public via this book, which I wholly support, I believe it can only be fully enjoyed by readers who were/are used to doing Math. Against the stereotype of a mathematician, his writing is very appealing and humbly witty. However, his tendency to detour from the main subject can make it exhausting to follow. There are some parts of the book where numbers and tables should have been utilized instead of wordy descriptions. The book still did a great job in educating the readers to pay attention to common situations in which we’re more likely to make mistakes. Definitely recommend this book to those who love Math, all the more so to analysts and researchers.
Personal notes: Doing Math and problem solving was my leisure activity back in middle/high school, I attended several competitions and brought home some prizes, but everything stopped when I started university. I did some small Math projects after that, but could not feel Math like the way I had. Perhaps I missed the feeling of learning Math, the clicking moment when everything started to make sense; and when I read this book, I felt like I became a student again, seeing the examples leading to a new knowledge, and that knowledge links to another, making a huge system of reasoning, making Math the science of all sciences.