Too brief! ( )

This audio series is billed as a BRIEF history of mathematics, so it is hardly surprising that it contains only a superficial look at the subject. And, as other reviewers have pointed out, it covers only Western mathematics since the time of Newton.

The format of each episode is to give you a bit of historical detail about the individual, together with a summary of their main contributions to the subject and some illustrations of how/where that area of maths is used. The style is anecdotal and accessible; personally I didn’t find it patronising, but I can see why other people might.

For me, the mix didn’t quite work The anecdotal history was probably intended to provide colour and personal interest (and that may work for some listeners) – to me it felt like irrelevant detail. And the maths veered between painfully detailed (two or three sentences explaining what a ratio of 1:2 is) and skating completely over the surface leaving me with unanswered questions (eg, how exactly did a Gaussian distribution help Gauss plot the path of asteroid Ceres???)

Of course, I suppose it would be exceedingly difficult to put across any more than the most basic mathematical ideas in an audio presentation – which made me wonder why DuSautoy chose this particular medium.

In terms of the audio CD itself, yes, it would have been nicer if they had removed the starting and ending jingles for each episode, and especially that nasty scraping sound (which I eventually worked out was supposed to be chalk on a blackboard!) which dashed unpleasantly from one ear to the other giving me a moment’s dizziness every time.

Overall – I didn’t think this was as good as his TV programmes. ( )