After reading the book The Man Who Counted by Malba Tahan, I learned a lot more about mathematics and how it can be viewed as an art form. The two main characters, Hanak Tade Maia, the man that became friends with the man who counted, and Beremiz Samir, the counting man, talk about their adventures and their jobs they both get with royalty. The book is basically filled with the stories and adventures of the Counting Man told by him and what Maia views. The book is told in sequential order starting from a memory of how Maia and Beremiz met, which was when Maia found him dressed in rags on the side of the road in the desert blurting out random seven digit numbers. This book was very well written and interesting enough to keep the reader’s …show more content…

There are many examples of Beremiz’s ability to think this quickly throughout the book, each as equally impressive, which in the end, lands him a wife that is famous and basically a princess. Many of the stories were the counting man thinking on his feet ridiculously fast, when Beremiz and Maia were traveling on their way to Baghdad, they came across three brothers in dispute over their inheritance of camels. Their father had left them 35 camels, 1/2 (17.5 camels) would go to his eldest son, 1/3 (11.66camels) to the middle one, and 1/9 (3.88camels) to the youngest. To solve brother's dilemma, Beremiz persuades Maia to donate his only camel to the dead man's estate thus making 36 camels. Beremiz tells the heirs that the first born will receive 18, the second born 12, and to the youngest, 4 animals, making all of them profit and then in return, Beremiz receives a camel, and Maia gets his camel back because of the two extra. In the book this literally took not even five minutes to divvy up just showing off the first of many stories in which the Counting Man does incredible math that’s as equally impressive as what he actually gains from doing it. He also tells the story of the inn that him and his traveling partner plan on