Why is math so hard? And why, despite this difficulty, are some people so good at it? If there’s some inborn capacity for mathematical thinkingwhich there must be, otherwise no one could do it why can’t we all do it well? Keith Devlin has answers to all these difficult questions, and in giving them shows us how mathematical ability evolved, why it’s a part of language ability, and how we can make better use of this innate talent.He also offers a breathtakingly new theory of language developmentthat language evolved in two stages, and its main purpose was not communicationto show that the ability to think mathematically arose out of the same symbol-manipulating ability that was so crucial to the emergence of true language. Why, then, can’t we do math as well as we can speak? The answer, says Devlin, is that we can and dowe just don’t recognize when we’re using mathematical reasoning.

基思·德夫林（Keith Devlin，1947—）是美国加利福尼亚州莫拉加市圣玛丽学院科学系主任，斯坦福大学语言与信息研究中心高级研究员，美国科学院数学科学教育委员会委员，世界经济论坛成员，美国科学促进会成员，美国全国公共电台数学普及节目主持人。他是22本书的作者，其中包括《数字化的生命》（Life by the Numbers）、《数学：模式的科学》（Mathematics：The Science of Patterns）与《千年难题》（The Millennium Problems）等。