The Parrot’s Theorem
I realised that most (ok, all) of my reading of late has been entirely non-fiction (and probably excessively IT related) so I thought I should get back to the fictional genre. Since I was in the city on Monday just gone, I dropped into the library and, for no other reason except that the blurb read well, picked up a copy of The Parrot’s Theorem written by Denis Guedj (and translated from French by Frank Wynne).
Anyone who knows me I’m not too fond of studying mathematics, but for some reason, this book, classified as Math Fiction, seemed to catch my eye. This French best seller’s is set in a Parisian bookstore, detailing the story of a mysterious cargo shipment of a Mathematical library, a talking Amazon blue parrot and somehow managing to form a link between the rest of these as well as the mafia and the death of the bookstore owner’s long lost army friend. After finishing the book last night, I would not be inclined to say that this book’s bizarre and intertwining plotline was definitely not its strongest point. As funny as this may sound, the plotline simply set the stage for the author to describe (what I hope to actually be factual) the history and evolution of over 2000 years of mathematical theorem’s and proofs.
Unlike the maths classes that I remember, that simply detailed formulas and repetitive rehearsals, this book gave life to a number of world famous mathematicians and the circumstances in which they developed their theorems. I had no idea, for example, that mathematics (a simple definition of a link between a theory and a proof involving numbers) was really the result of a number of philosophical arguments and there continues to be a strong relationship between mathematics and philosophy today. Most of the famous ancient mathematicians were fore mostly philosophers, and then followed by their role as mathematicians. The author continues to demonstrate that modern day fundamentals are in fact, only fairly modern. He discusses the concept of zero and how it was only invented in 733AD (that’s 1272 years ago) even though mathematics has been around almost double that time.
The biggest thing that this book has to offer is not really the education of the number of theorems it covers, but the really interesting way that they came into being.
TheKua Rating: Fictional value (6 out of 10), Educational value (9 out of 10).
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When I visit my family down on the coast, we try to have a late breakfast with the entire family. We tend to take turn cooking so the rest of us can read the paper and have a break. Lately it’s been my duty to prepare the morning mean, and today I turned out some fluffy blueberry pancakes, served complete with a raspberry coulis and some maple syrup. It was a wicked way to enjoy today’s family meal on such a crisp Sunday morning!
Tonight (or rather last night) Sydney based songwriter and artist, Lior came to perform at The Zoo. After I got back from my big three weeks abroad I was looking for gigs to attend. I hadn’t heard of Lior before but after reading a few reviews and listening to a couple of his songs from his site, I thought I’d hunt down his album. There were a few places online that seemed to have it, but a stop in at the local JB Hi-Fi seemed to do the trick. The sales person who was serving me said she really liked his stuff and it was a good album. She mentioned that she’d also just missed his last concert but managed to hang around outside enough to say that he was a good performer as well. 
Tonight I can attest that his performance is really worthwhile actually visiting. Lior performed a few new songs and the ones that he played off his Autumn Flow album were superbly improvised and varied, making it just an amazing show to see. It was made even better considering that tickets were only $16.10! Tonight was such an amazing crowd as well, with the tickets for tonight’s gig completely sold out! So good that I think I’m going to go see him perform down on the Gold Coast as well.