I travelled through time and met Ramanujan!!!

   

    Writing a blog after a very very long time. It feels fresh and yet new. Made me think back into this journey of how I stared reading books and started writing blogs/reviews over my readings. Well, recently, (not recently) I read Ramanujan: From Zero to Infinity by Arundhati Venkatesh, a work of historical fiction. While it draws inspiration from the real-life experiences of the renowned mathematician Srinivasa Ramanujan, the book presents a fictionalized narrative of his childhood. Credits to Priya Kuriyan, Illustrator of this book for her fun and exciting depiction of characters and scenarios. 

I was always very much fond of mathematics, the equations, and the way it unfolds throughout the course of any concept. It always mesmerized me to a greater extent. Having seen Ramanujan's film "The Man Who Knew Infinity", I was very excited for this read, but it turns out to be a... it's a children's book. 😅

Yeah, it's aimed at kids- probably around 10 and above. Now I understand why an illustrator for a so-expected biography of one of the greatest mathematician. Even though I'm not the target audience, I still enjoyed the vibe and liked every page and paragraph of it. It was a complete fun read, at times I felt this could be one of the books where parents could buy it for their children who are not very fond of mathematics. It could help them grab their interests towards mathematics. 

Now, about the experience. A HUGE HUGE applause for the writer herself and for the efforts that she have taken for this. A small 160 page book 23 small chapters. However, here's the key point. This is a book about a mathematician, so instead of just bluntly mentioning it as 'Chapter 1', 'Chapter 2', and so on... she did something very quixotic (I just learnt this word in this book- it means extremely idealistic -thank me later for not making you switch tabs for finding what it means). Every chapter number was described as a equation of the number itself like Chapter 14 was: 

Isn't it amazing. Although very intuitive but the thought process behind it was commendable. The book comprises of few riddles/problems which are very interesting and  brain tickling. I'll put some of the problems at the last, just give them a try. Fortunately, I was able to find answers for all and yet wasn't very quick though. Just bragging, I even found a mistake in one of the problems, technically in the solution for a problem. Alongside, there were many mathematical puns which I enjoyed a lot. Few of which I have heard in my childhood but many was new. Many worked and few didn't. Few of those puns are: Sin asked Tan, "why did you do that?" Tan said, "Because". (be-Cos)

Why was seven afraid of nine? Seven-Eight-Nine. (Seven ate Nine)

The mathematical symbol, or a bag, π(pi) could be either. (bag called as pi- in tamil)

And there were several more puns throughout the book. The puns were not only mathematical but also with the characters that the story evolved which made the read a joyful one.

Finally, it was a good time reading it though I wanted to share this experience ASAP but wasn't able to. If you find yourself free for few hours, you can complete this in few hours of sitting. It is short, simple yet engaging. Now, for the next blog- here's a clue: I'm going to meet "The Aravind Swamy". If you've made it this far, thank you for reading. Until next time, take care.

PS: Here are the problems that you could give a try:

1. You have to fry each side of three slices of fish. You cannot have more than two slices at a time on the pan. One side takes 30 seconds to get fried. Turning over a slice takes 2 seconds. The time to remove a piece from the pan and put it on a plate or take a slice from the plate and put it on the pan is 3 seconds. You're only allowed to put in, remove or turn one slice at a time. You have three slices of fish to fry (6 faces for 3 slices -in total). What's the fastest way to fry all the three slices?

2. There is a platform of 100 iron ingots arranged neatly in ten piles of ten bricks each. Each pile of ingots weighed 1000g or 1Kg, except for one pile that had ingots weighing 10 grams less. The pile with the lighter needed to be identified and they had to be done in as few weighings as possible. The weighing scale could accomodate all 100 ingots at the same time. 

3. You are given a can of exactly 8 litres of milk.  You will also be given 2 empty cans of capacity three and five litres each. Using just these 3 cans, and nothing else, you have to get four litres of milk. Find the fastest way of getting 4 litres of milk.

4. A father of 3 sons died, leaving behind 23 cows. Before his passing, he gave instructions that the eldest son, should get half the cows, his middle son should geta third and the youngest should get an eighth. How many cows will each son get?

With love

ΛV