The number e, the base of the natural logarithm, has been know to exist for many years. The constant e was discovered by the Swiss mathematician Jacob Bernoulli while studying compound interest. It is named e to honor Leonard Euler. The first references to the constant were published in 1618 in the table of an appendix of a work on logarithms by John Napier. John Napier did not actually define the constant, but he used it. The discovery of the constant itself is credited to Jacob Bernoulli in 1683, who attempted to find the value of the following expression (which is equal to e): limit as n approaches infinity of (1+1/n)^n.
After 30 years of software development, David McAdams was looking for something new to do. He turned his attention to how math is taught. Through his coursework at Utah Valley University, he learned how critical vocabulary acquisition is to all learning, and especially to math. Math has long been regarded as its having its own language, with its own syntax and symbols. The acquisition of this language has been found to be a barrier to many students.
After the completion of his internship, Mr. McAdams finished compiling math vocabulary words into a comprehensive dictionary, written for middle school and high school students. All Math Words Dictionary is the culmination of ten years work collecting, classifying and describing all of the words a student might encounter in their studies of algebra, geometry, and calculus. This book has over 3000 entries; more than 140 notations defined; in excess of 790 illustrations; an IPA pronunciation guide; and greater than 1400 formulas and equations.
While working on the dictionary, between playing with his grandchildren, Mr. McAdams started developing other ideas for math literacy. The results are Numbers, What is Bigger than Anything (Infinity), Swing Sets (Set Theory), and Learning with Play Money.
Branching out, Mr. McAdams took a departure from tools for teaching math, moving into the arena of pure mathematical delight. This results in two volumes of My Favorite Fractals.
While reading a book on color names to his grandson Sawyer, he got to thinking how boring books on color names are for adults. "What in nature," he mused, "has enough of the primary and secondary colors to teach color names to children?" His first answer was either frogs or parrots. He created Parrot Colors, Flower Colors, and Space Colors.
Returning to math, Mr. McAdams created a book to help children learn shapes, called Shapes. He remembered how, in his youth, he found a few printouts of geometric nets and was fascinated how they folded together into complex, 3-dimensional objects. He prepared Geometric Nets Project Book, then Geometric Nets Mega Project Book with many geometric nets to cut out and assemble.
What can one get for the math aficionado who has everything? Mr McAdams created the books The First Million Digits of Pi, The First Million Digits of e, The Square Root of Two to One Million Digits, The First Hundred Thousand Prime Numbers.
Many young math learners become fascinated with how math works. Mr. McAdams wrote One Penny, Two to illustrate through a stories how fast powers of two increase with each iteration. Jerry is given a magic box. If you put a penny in it, the pennies double each day as long as none are taken out. Jerry decides he wants a dark green convertible sports car. Follow Jerry's trials as he sets his sights on his goal.
