Name: Anonymous 2010-10-23 23:39
Yes, there is a disgruntled chinaman giving undeserved bad reviews to books concerning math history. He is giving the identical review to many books.
chinaman: The author reviews mathematical history but mentions no India nor China. He presented a biased view of mathematical history.
The books is misleading in that regard.
response: This review is nonsense. The reviewer claims the author is biased because while discussing mathematical history, he leaves out India and China. You don't have to read past page 2 to see how ridiculous the reviewer's claim is. The author notes on page 2 (which anyone can read for themselves as part of what Amazon has made available to preview the book prior to purchase), "In our study of early mathematics we are restricted essentially to that of Egypt and Babylonia." He goes on to explain why, "The ancient Egyptians recorded their work on stone and papyrus, the latter fortunately enduring because of Egypt's unusually dry climate; the Babylonians used imperishable baked clay tablets. In contrast to the use of these media, the early Indians and Chinese used very perishable writing materials like bark and bamboo. Thus it has come to pass that we have a fair quantity of definite information, obtained from primary sources, about the science and the mathematics of ancient Egypt and Babylonia, while we know very little indeed, with any degree of certainty, about these fields of study in ancient India and China." This has nothing to do with the author's so called bias... It has to do with the fact that, in at least the case of early mathematics, there isn't much material (at least not at the time the author wrote the book) to glean from in regards to Indian or Chinese mathematics.
If this wasn't bad enough, the above commenter notes this reviewer makes the exact same comment about another book. What's going on here? It seems the reviewer is surveying math books which discuss its history for contributions on Chinese and Indian mathematics. Anything which doesn't contribute, even though the text explains why, is "biased". This seems to me to suggest the reviewer, being Asian (probably Chinese; this isn't hard to infer given his name and given English is clearly a second language; read his other reviews for a full sense of this), has a chip on his shoulder. Apparently the evil Westerners--who think they are the only ones who've contributed to mathematics or recognized the concepts--are purposely leaving the East and their contributions out... I have to admit, I never thought I would see a math book be implicitly accused of racism.
chinaman: The author reviews mathematical history but mentions no India nor China. He presented a biased view of mathematical history.
The books is misleading in that regard.
response: This review is nonsense. The reviewer claims the author is biased because while discussing mathematical history, he leaves out India and China. You don't have to read past page 2 to see how ridiculous the reviewer's claim is. The author notes on page 2 (which anyone can read for themselves as part of what Amazon has made available to preview the book prior to purchase), "In our study of early mathematics we are restricted essentially to that of Egypt and Babylonia." He goes on to explain why, "The ancient Egyptians recorded their work on stone and papyrus, the latter fortunately enduring because of Egypt's unusually dry climate; the Babylonians used imperishable baked clay tablets. In contrast to the use of these media, the early Indians and Chinese used very perishable writing materials like bark and bamboo. Thus it has come to pass that we have a fair quantity of definite information, obtained from primary sources, about the science and the mathematics of ancient Egypt and Babylonia, while we know very little indeed, with any degree of certainty, about these fields of study in ancient India and China." This has nothing to do with the author's so called bias... It has to do with the fact that, in at least the case of early mathematics, there isn't much material (at least not at the time the author wrote the book) to glean from in regards to Indian or Chinese mathematics.
If this wasn't bad enough, the above commenter notes this reviewer makes the exact same comment about another book. What's going on here? It seems the reviewer is surveying math books which discuss its history for contributions on Chinese and Indian mathematics. Anything which doesn't contribute, even though the text explains why, is "biased". This seems to me to suggest the reviewer, being Asian (probably Chinese; this isn't hard to infer given his name and given English is clearly a second language; read his other reviews for a full sense of this), has a chip on his shoulder. Apparently the evil Westerners--who think they are the only ones who've contributed to mathematics or recognized the concepts--are purposely leaving the East and their contributions out... I have to admit, I never thought I would see a math book be implicitly accused of racism.