Mathematics often gets a bad press.

Describing someone as "calculating" or "rational" is hardly as flattering as being labelled "artistic" or "creative" and mathematicians in movies or novels are often portrayed as social misfits who rarely get the guy or girl. No wonder some folks say "oh I don't care for mathematics, I was never any good at it" with a wistful sense of pride.

Yet professional mathematicians talk of the subject differently. They look for elegant solutions to problems, revel in playing around with mathematical ideas and talk of the creative nature of mathematics. As the Russian mathematician Sophia Kovalevskaya said "It is impossible to be a mathematician without being a poet in soul."

By looking at some of the history of mathematics, psychological studies into how we come to know mathematics and key ideas in mathematics itself, this book will, if not make you fall in love with mathematics, then at least come to understand its nature a little better. Perhaps after reading, you will even care a little more for it.