What’s the book? Number Freak: From 1 to 200, the Hidden Language of Numbers Revealed by Derrick Niederman.
Why is it useless? Each chapter just lists weird facts about each number from one to two hundred. For instance, 31 lists four different problems involving the number and gives a math problem for you to solve (answers are in the back of the book.) Not all of them are mathematical problems, either: 28 mentions that there is an Australian parrot whose call sounds like the word “twenty-eight,” which is trivia, but it is at least interesting trivia.
Could anyone enjoy this book? Actually, I kind of like this one. It’s totally an obsessive-compulsive’s dream come true, and a list based on numbers is so nerdy that I feel a real fondness for it. It is useless, but I adore it.
I know it’s weird, but some people are really into to this sort of thing. REALLY into it. (Not me, BTW. I think their brains are wired differently than mine.) I once took care of a math professor during her labor, and her natural childbirth technique was to do math. Seriously. Her husband would call out an integer at the beginning of each contraction, and she would recite all the facts she knew about that integer until the contraction ended, e.g., “2, the only even prime,” and so forth. One of the freakiest things I ever saw, and I have seen some very freaky things. Worked for her…..