Strogatz Parses Division in Latest NYT Column

February 23, 2010

Once again, Steve Strogatz walks readers through the basic, yet at times baffling, principles of mathematics in his weekly column for The New York Times. In this week's column, he tackles division, with a little help from Daniel Day Lewis, Verizon Wireless, and irrational numbers.

"There are many confusing things about division and its consequences, but perhaps the most maddening is that there are so many different ways to describe a part of a whole," wrote Strogatz. "This profusion of choices may be partly to blame for the bewilderment many of us feel when confronted with fractions, percentages and decimals."