As a mathematic and education major, I find it important to understand everything about what you are teaching. It is only when you know about its process and history that you understand it well enough to teach it to others. Learning the history of an aspect of mathematics is not an easy task, seeing as most are somehow tied in together and rely on each other in one way or another. This book is an accurate example of this because it states and explains the process that it took in order to obtain the result of the number e. It obviously did not just happen in one day. It took hundreds and hundreds of years and numerous mathematicians and scientists to come across this possible finding. Once they noticed that they found a new mathematical discovery, they had to prove it and explain it to others. The complete process for this specific operation took centuries to stumble upon and realize the significance. The invention of e introduced the mathematical world to a whole new light and advanced us to a new level.
Despite the valid information and great ideas found in e: The Story of a Number by Eli Maor, there are some flaws to his writing that as a reader I struggled with. Something that stuck out to me that made the reading difficult was the amount of formulas. Perhaps, it is the way that Maor displayed the formulas that caused the difficulty. However, occasionally, the book felt more like a mathematics text book rather than a history book because of the amount of formulas and explanations of those. Focusing more on how the formulas were derived would have helped steer clear of that feeling. I believe that it is just as important for someone to understand how the formula works, but that should be done in class. This book was written with the intentions to explain the story of e, not with the intentions to teach how to use it (or other mathematical operations for that matter). Overall, the book contains great insight to the process and history that is behind e. It is not too complicated to read and people with a poor mathematical background should be able to read it without much struggle to understand what was being conveyed.