POOR ROBIN'S PROCHESIES: A Cuious Almanac and the Everyday Mathematics of Georgian Britain

Benjamin Wardhaugh

ISBN 10: 0199605424 / ISBN 13: 9780199605422

Published by OUP Oxford, London, 2012

About this Item

This mint unread copy is bound in cloth covered boards with bright gilt titling to the spine, tight, white, bright and square. The unclipped dust wrapper is in mint condition. International postal rates are calculated on a book weighing 1 Kilo, in cases where the book weighs less then postage will be reduced accordingly. Where the book weighs more than 1 Kilo increased charges will be quoted. Author, astrologer, journalist, satirist, and 'well-willer to the mathematics', Poor Robin of Saffron Walden was a fantastic, yet invented, figure of British popular culture from the Restoration to the end of the Georgian period. Poor Robin's Almanac first appeared in 1662, developing an enthusiastic following and long outliving its original creator to last until 1828. Benjamin Wardhaugh tells the great story of Georgian popular mathematics - through Poor Robin's remarkable life, from his humble beginnings as an almanac-writer through to best-selling stardom, controversy, and decline. Using the character, wit, and columns of Poor Robin, Wardhaugh explores the mathematics of ordinary people, from learning sums to using mathematics in weighing and measuring, in business, agriculture, map-making, and navigation. This is a history of mathematics that is rarely thought about creative, popular, and led by practical and social needs. It is centered on the ordinary people that used it. Their names remain little-known; their solutions have vanished along with the situations that required them; but their energy and ideas - as captured by Poor Robin - create a wonderfully rich picture of what mathematics can be, and has been. Ref L4.

Seller Inventory # 019097

Bibliographic Details

• Title: POOR ROBIN'S PROCHESIES: A Cuious Almanac and the Everyday Mathematics of Georgian Britain
• Publisher: OUP Oxford, London
• Publication Date: 2012
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0199605424
• ISBN 13: 9780199605422
• Binding: Hardback
• Edition: First Edition
• Condition: Mint
• Dust Jacket Condition: Mint

About this title

Synopsis

Author, astrologer, journalist, satirist, and 'well-willer to the mathematics', Poor Robin of Saffron Walden was a fantastic, yet invented, figure of British popular culture from the Restoration to the end of the Georgian period. Poor Robin's Almanac first appeared in 1662, developing an enthusiastic following and long outliving its original creator to last until 1828.

Benjamin Wardhaugh tells the great story of Georgian popular mathematics - through Poor Robin's remarkable life, from his humble beginnings as an almanac-writer through to best-selling stardom, controversy, and decline. Using the character, wit, and columns of Poor Robin, Wardhaugh explores the mathematics of ordinary people, from learning sums to using mathematics in weighing and measuring, in business, agriculture, map-making, and navigation.

This is a history of mathematics that is rarely thought about -- creative, popular, and led by practical and social needs. It is centered on the ordinary people that used it. Their names remain little-known; their solutions have vanished along with the situations that required them; but their energy and ideas - as captured by Poor Robin - create a wonderfully rich picture of what mathematics can be, and has been.

About the Author

Benjamin Wardhaugh lives in Oxford. He trained in mathematics, music and history, and has taught both science to historians and history to mathematicians. He is a former Fellow of All Souls College; he now studies and writes about history, particularly its mathematical parts.