Introduction to Number Theory

Everything I expected

Required book, much better price point here than through other places with quick delivery

good book for my daughter

Because Number Theory is generally introduced later in a High School or College curriculum, this book is a bit unusual. It goes over the relevant topics, but it's a bit tedious with me (as I have a Math degree). Reasoning with possibly sharing the topic with family. Some advanced books are dense. One might try finding a compromise with more than one book. One advanced book, recommended by a College Professor, is Davenport's "The Higher Arithmetic: An Introduction to the Theory of Numbers". It has some serious observations. At this time, I am not ready to post a review of this other book.

This book completely changed my sons' lives. They have both been drawn to math from a very young age, but so much math education is based on procedures over concepts. This book not only addresses the wonderful subject of Discrete Math and makes it accessible to everyone, it focuses on conceptual understanding of the topic and the authors love and ability in the subject is contagious. There are so many 'aha' moments that both my sons would read sections and problems to me. This book gives the kids the tools to think for themselves and try different approaches to a problem, while guiding them with questions along the way. My oldest, who is now 16, was introduced to this book at 10 years old and the lessons still resonate with him today. Also, the book shows multiple approaches as opposed to today's "one size" mentality to problem solving. It made my kids take more risks and have more confidence in their problem solving prowess, and isn't that what we want for our kids? We want them to think critically using the tools at their disposal instead of just fitting pegs into holes. The person who left the bad review has obviously never seen or used this book and should be reported - the review is not accurate at all. ~Kathy Cordeiro

I have to post this just because I don't want people looking at a three-star rating and ignoring this book - the Art of Problem Solving books have also changed my life, as another reviewer mentioned. If you want to really learn math, really, fundamentally understand it, and not be bored to tears but instead challenged, puzzled, awed, and overjoyed - get these books. They do not feed you algorithms of steps to go through to "come to the right answer" like typical school textbooks. They explain why it works, and want you to question them, test them, try to prove them wrong. The problems build up bit by bit, and some are extremely difficult. But there's a complete solutions manual - what more could you ask for?

... and the best in the AoPS series. This is a math book you can love.

This book assumes much prior knowledge. The explanations are incomplete. It is not useful as a textbook. It is not useful to learn about Math. It runs off on unproductive tangents. Most of the problems come down to a "guess and check" strategy in the end anyway. Mostly it is about a snotty author letting you know that he is much "smarter" than you are. If you want to learn interesting things about Math, this is not the book to read. Some of the solutions to the problems just play "gotcha". In other words, even if you do the math correctly, the author tells you why you are wrong for some extraneous reason. Rather ironically, there are many straight forward and simpler ways to solve a lot of the problems. What a huge waste of time and money this book was. I do not know why any publishing company would waste money bringing this book to market. It is really useless.