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4.07 AVERAGE
4.07 AVERAGE
adventurous
informative
reflective
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Interesting book. There's a lot of reflection on the division between religion and science, but it's surprisingly well thought out. However, even though I enjoyed the story, I did feel it dragged at times. It was one of those books that I had to remind myself to keep reading rather than spurred me to continue on.
Not a review yet but I'm on page 50 and I'm already in love with Ellie. So many things I identify myself with her. My favourite quote so far (not a big spoiler of the main plot, just an understanding of our main character - still marking it as spoiler just in case):
"In the seventh grade they were studying ‘pi’. It was a Greek letter that looked like the architecture at Stonehenge, in England: two vertical pillars with a crossbar at top - π. If you measured the circumference of a circle and then divided it by the diameter of the circle, that was pi. At home, Ellie took the top of a mayonnaise jar, wrapped a string around it, straightened the string out, and with a ruler measured the circle’s circumference. She did the same with the diameter, and by long division divided the one number by the other. She got 3.21. That seemed simple enough.
The next day the teacher, Mr Weisbrod, said that π was about 22/7, about 3.1416. But actually, if you wanted to be exact, it was a decimal that went on and on forever without repeating the pattern of numbers. Forever, Ellie thought. She raised her hand. It was the beginning of the school year and she had not asked any questions in this class.
‘How could anybody know that the decimals go on and on forever?’
‘That’s just the way it is,’ said the teacher with some asperity.
‘But why? How do you know? How can you count decimals forever?’
‘Miss Arroway’ – he was consulting his class list – ‘this is a stupid question. You’re wasting the class’s time.’
No one had ever called Ellie stupid before, and she found herself bursting into tears. Billy Horstman, who sat next to her, gently reached out and placed his hand over hers. His father had recently been indicted for tampering with the odometers on the used cars he sold, so Billy was sensitive to public humiliation. Ellie ran out of the class sobbing.
After school she bicycled to the library at the nearby college to look through books on mathematics. As nearly as she could figure out from what she read, her question wasn’t all that stupid. According to the Bible, the ancient Hebrews had apparently thought that π was exactly equal to three. The Greeks and Romans, who knew lots of things about mathematics, had no idea that the digits in π went on forever without repeating. It was a fact that had been discovered only about 250 years ago. How was she expected to know if she couldn’t ask questions? But Mr Weisbrod had been right about the first few digits. Pi wasn’t 3.21. Maybe the mayonnaise lid had been a little squashed, not a perfect circle. Or maybe she’d been sloppy in measuring the string. Even if she’d been much more careful, though, they couldn’t expect her to measure an infinite number of decimals.
There was another possibility, though. You could calculate pi as accurately as you wanted. If you knew something called calculus, you could prove formulas for π that would let you calculate it to as many decimals as you had time for. The book listed formulas for pi divided by four. Some of them she couldn’t understand at all. But there were some that dazzled her: π/4, the book said, was the same as 1 – 1/3 + 1/5 – 1/7 + …, with the fractions continuing on forever. Quickly she tried to work it out, adding and subtracting the fractions alternately. The sum would bounce from being bigger than π/4 to being smaller than π/4, but after a while you could see that this series of numbers was on a beeline for the right answer. You could never get there exactly, but you could get as close as you wanted if you were very patient. It seemed to her a miracle that the shape of every circle in the world was connected with this series of fractions. How could circles know about fractions? She was determined to learn calculus.
The book said something else: π was called a ‘transcendental’ number. There was no equation with ordinary numbers in it that could give you π unless it was infinitely long. She had already taught herself a little algebra and understood what this meant. And π wasn’t the only transcendental number. In fact there was an infinity of transcendental numbers. More than that, there were infinitely more transcendental numbers that ordinary numbers, even though π was the only one of them she had ever heard of. In more ways than one, π was tied to infinity.
She had caught a glimpse of something majestic. Hiding between all the ordinary numbers was an infinity of transcendental numbers whose presence you would never have guessed unless you looked deeply into mathematics. Every now and then one of them, like π, would pop up unexpectedly in everyday life. But most of them, an infinite number of them, she reminded herself – were hiding, minding their own business, almost certainly unglimpsed by the irritable Mr Weisbrod."
Spoiler
"In the seventh grade they were studying ‘pi’. It was a Greek letter that looked like the architecture at Stonehenge, in England: two vertical pillars with a crossbar at top - π. If you measured the circumference of a circle and then divided it by the diameter of the circle, that was pi. At home, Ellie took the top of a mayonnaise jar, wrapped a string around it, straightened the string out, and with a ruler measured the circle’s circumference. She did the same with the diameter, and by long division divided the one number by the other. She got 3.21. That seemed simple enough.
The next day the teacher, Mr Weisbrod, said that π was about 22/7, about 3.1416. But actually, if you wanted to be exact, it was a decimal that went on and on forever without repeating the pattern of numbers. Forever, Ellie thought. She raised her hand. It was the beginning of the school year and she had not asked any questions in this class.
‘How could anybody know that the decimals go on and on forever?’
‘That’s just the way it is,’ said the teacher with some asperity.
‘But why? How do you know? How can you count decimals forever?’
‘Miss Arroway’ – he was consulting his class list – ‘this is a stupid question. You’re wasting the class’s time.’
No one had ever called Ellie stupid before, and she found herself bursting into tears. Billy Horstman, who sat next to her, gently reached out and placed his hand over hers. His father had recently been indicted for tampering with the odometers on the used cars he sold, so Billy was sensitive to public humiliation. Ellie ran out of the class sobbing.
After school she bicycled to the library at the nearby college to look through books on mathematics. As nearly as she could figure out from what she read, her question wasn’t all that stupid. According to the Bible, the ancient Hebrews had apparently thought that π was exactly equal to three. The Greeks and Romans, who knew lots of things about mathematics, had no idea that the digits in π went on forever without repeating. It was a fact that had been discovered only about 250 years ago. How was she expected to know if she couldn’t ask questions? But Mr Weisbrod had been right about the first few digits. Pi wasn’t 3.21. Maybe the mayonnaise lid had been a little squashed, not a perfect circle. Or maybe she’d been sloppy in measuring the string. Even if she’d been much more careful, though, they couldn’t expect her to measure an infinite number of decimals.
There was another possibility, though. You could calculate pi as accurately as you wanted. If you knew something called calculus, you could prove formulas for π that would let you calculate it to as many decimals as you had time for. The book listed formulas for pi divided by four. Some of them she couldn’t understand at all. But there were some that dazzled her: π/4, the book said, was the same as 1 – 1/3 + 1/5 – 1/7 + …, with the fractions continuing on forever. Quickly she tried to work it out, adding and subtracting the fractions alternately. The sum would bounce from being bigger than π/4 to being smaller than π/4, but after a while you could see that this series of numbers was on a beeline for the right answer. You could never get there exactly, but you could get as close as you wanted if you were very patient. It seemed to her a miracle that the shape of every circle in the world was connected with this series of fractions. How could circles know about fractions? She was determined to learn calculus.
The book said something else: π was called a ‘transcendental’ number. There was no equation with ordinary numbers in it that could give you π unless it was infinitely long. She had already taught herself a little algebra and understood what this meant. And π wasn’t the only transcendental number. In fact there was an infinity of transcendental numbers. More than that, there were infinitely more transcendental numbers that ordinary numbers, even though π was the only one of them she had ever heard of. In more ways than one, π was tied to infinity.
She had caught a glimpse of something majestic. Hiding between all the ordinary numbers was an infinity of transcendental numbers whose presence you would never have guessed unless you looked deeply into mathematics. Every now and then one of them, like π, would pop up unexpectedly in everyday life. But most of them, an infinite number of them, she reminded herself – were hiding, minding their own business, almost certainly unglimpsed by the irritable Mr Weisbrod."
I've wanted to read this for some time and was not disappointed! Did I understand all of the science in it? Absolutely not. But I found it really interesting, think that the protagonist was well-written, and appreciated the ambiguity of the last third of the novel. This is also the most I have ever, and will ever, encounter the word Dodecahedron. If you enjoy audiobooks I highly recommend this one - it's narrated by Jodie Foster!!
Interesting to re-read this debate of faith and science today while science is being attacked regularly. This book portrays the debate so eloquently, rationally and without sensationalism. The book is a little slow at the beginning but gets so interesting once it gets into the discovery and the ongoing debate. Thank you Carl Sagan.
This is probably one of my favorite books of all time. Which is kind of silly, as Sagan was crazy in the head.
Admittedly, I saw the movie version of this first before reading the book. I thought the movie was wonderful, so I wasn't surprised to find that the book was even moreso.
Eleanor Arroway is still my favorite heroine. I think her flaws are the flaws that a lot of driven people run into.
Admittedly, I saw the movie version of this first before reading the book. I thought the movie was wonderful, so I wasn't surprised to find that the book was even moreso.
Eleanor Arroway is still my favorite heroine. I think her flaws are the flaws that a lot of driven people run into.
mysterious
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
The premise of this novel is very compelling, enough so that it makes absolute sense why it deserves recognition as a sci-fi classic: is there a hidden message in the numbers of pi?
This is one of my all-time favorite movies, viewed dozens of times. I've always been reluctant to read this book, for fear that it would be disappointing. I dare say, it might even be slightly better than the movie. The story is essentially the same--brilliant female astronomer pooh-poohs the naysayers and "wastes" her promising career on scanning the cosmos for communications from extraterrestrial life, then shuts them all up by discovering an unmistakable message from an intelligent source. Many details are different from the movie--her family, her relationship with the religious leader Palmer Joss, the details of the Machine, the results of the voyage--but for good reasons. You could see how the storyline of the movie had to be changed to accommodate the general public by making it more accessible and sensational, but it was done in a good way (Sagan, as an advisor for the movie, wouldn't have had it any other way). The book is more subdued, matter-of-fact, more realistic. It focuses less on Ellie's personal experience, and more on the world's reaction to the Message from space--the opposition to and concerns about the machine; the financial and political struggle involved in shouldering such a massive project; how such an event would change people's worldviews. I also love Ellie's arguments about religion, and musings about how different another civilization would be from us if it were millions of years ahead of us. And the ending...digging so much deeper into the possibilities that would arise from communicating with another civilization, and giving Ellie a much more satisfying and concrete answer to her lifelong questions.
And to end, a bit of a spoiler, but a detail has been nagging me (don't read ahead if you don't want to be tantalized): they said the Five brought back no evidence, but what of the sand found in the dodec? Wouldn't an isotopic analysis show that it was not from Earth? I kept waiting for that to resolve all of their problems, but no.
And to end, a bit of a spoiler, but a detail has been nagging me (don't read ahead if you don't want to be tantalized): they said the Five brought back no evidence, but what of the sand found in the dodec? Wouldn't an isotopic analysis show that it was not from Earth? I kept waiting for that to resolve all of their problems, but no.