I Don't Want a Calculator for a Gift

            I have read a lot of mathematical books since I was a kid, but I have never heard of such thing as a mathematical novel. When I read the part of the book being fictional, I thought, ‘This is new’. Indeed, it is.

            The book was still about mathematics but this time, it’s different, it has a plot. And I might say, it has a captivating plot. Not only that, the book was a philosophical book at the same time and it tried to tell us the beauty and relevance of mathematics to the human understanding of the surrounding world.

            The story started with Ravi Kapoor trying to rewind his birthday. It was his 12^th birthday when his grandfather, Vijay Sahni, a mathematician, gave him a calculator for a present. Any child of his age would be so unlucky to receive a calculator as a gift. But for Ravi’s case, his Bauji, an Indian term Ravi used to address his grandfather, want him to enjoy using the calculator, and to treat it as a toy. Every now and then, his grandfather would give him mathematical tricks and games that Ravi enjoyed. Instead of playing, he spent most of his time solving the puzzles given to him by his grandfather, and made him mathematically inclined. But just two days after his birthday, his grandfather died. His Bauji was the only person who want Ravi to be attracted in mathematics, as a result of his death, Ravi became indifferent to mathematics.

            Ravi’s parents encouraged him to study economics. His only goal in life was to get a good job and a good salary. It was also revealed in the book that Ravi liked music. He always go to a coffee house where musicians play their instruments. There he met a mathematics professor named Nico Aliprantis. He offered Ravi to attend his class that fall, it was a math course entitled “Thinking about Infinity”. There, he was able to befriend his professor, Nico. Nico was able to observe how good in mathematics Ravi was. Ravi once went to Nico’s office and discovered that Nico specializes in the same field his grandfather did. Nico gave him a paper that says that his grandfather was in prison while writing the paper. Nico was close to his grandfather and loves him very much, hence, he was very shocked to know that his grandfather went to prison without them knowing. Because of this, he researched for more information that helped him know more about his grandfather’s imprisonment.

            Starting from that part of the story, the narrative progressed into two interconnecting stories. One was about Nico’s class that Ravi attended and the other was Ravi’s research about his grandfather’s imprisonment.

With the help of Carol Stern, the Information Specialist at their Graduate library, who happened to be the mother of Ravi’s friend, Claire, Ravi was able to get information about the imprisonment. Carol helped him find papers that explained why Vijay was imprisoned. From those papers, he learned that his grandfather was sentenced because of blasphemy. Blasphemy is a profane or sacrilegious talk about God or other sacred things. Ravi even discovered that his grandfather became an atheist because of mathematics, because he always wanted proof. His grandfather was given the chance to face a judge to decide whether he should proceed on trial or just be free of all charges. But instead of persuading the judge to free him of his charges, Ravi’s grandfather explained to the judge why he did such thing mathematically. Vijay was clearly a good person, he was even able to befriend the judge himself. But still, Vijay stand for what he had said. Thus, after few weeks of conversation with the judge, it was decided that his case proceed to trial and he was then sent to prison.

At the same time that Ravi was researching about his grandfather’s imprisonment, Nico’s class continued. This is where the author inserted almost all the mathematical parts of the story. A lot of facts fascinated me, from Zeno’s paradoxes and infinitude of primes through Godel's Incompleteness theorem and Paul Cohen's Consistency theorem. I should say that Nico really had a great way of teaching mathematics. He grinded the topics into chunks enough for his students to digest. During their last class that semester, Nico stepped out of actual mathematics and considered the philosophy of mathematics. He explained and differentiated two philosophies, namely; Platonism and Formalism. He said that to a Platonist point of view, a real answer exist, while to a formalist, the hypothesis is not a well-formed string.

I enjoyed both the mathematical and philosophical parts of the story. But another factor that caught my attention was actually the growing romance between Claire and Ravi. A fictional mathematics book is quite new, what more if romance is also present? So, I think the authors did great. I did not include in the summary the problems that were presented both in the transcripts and in Nico’s class because they were too many of them. But, all in all, I found all of them awesome.

It was written in the ‘authors note’ that the purpose of the book is to show the readers that mathematics is beautiful. Well I guess it is beautiful in very different way that only few can appreciate, and this book helped me appreciate this beauty, the beauty hidden behind the numbers. The entire story tells how Vijay Sahni and Nico Aliprantis changed Ravi Kapoor’s way of seeing mathematics. It means that math is naturally beautiful, we just need someone to help us see it.