Jessica Lewinson -The Number Devil

Jessica Lewinson

 The Number Devil by Hans Magnus Enzensberg 


1. In the children's book, The Number Devil we see a beetle (the number devil) who has entered a little boys dream/ nightmare. He talks to the boy about numbers and how simple they are and how complicated that has made math. They can go on forever and the number devil scares Robert showing him his reasoning behind why infinity exists.

2. The book addresses the concept of infinity and exponential growth. The beetle addresses the concept of infinity by asking the kid where he would stop counting. He asks how many people have chewed how many pieces of gum in their life and the kid says more then a trillion. He doesn't know how to express a number that great and he says its impossible because it could go on forever. Thus the concept of infinity is introduced. Robert cannot find an end to numbers and the beetle is the one who shows him this.

3. Literature is an extremely effective way to learn a mathematical concept. Especially in a kids book when the story is simple and the concept is clear it makes it easy for any age to understand. No matter how old we get pictures and stories will always help us understand things better. We learn from examples and that is exactly what a story gives us. It allows the student to have something to relate back to and it gives them a good base to build off of. Once a student understands the most basic version of the concept it is easy to understand harder problems rather then skipping to the most difficult problems (which is sometimes the issue with higher level math).