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—）是美國加利福尼亞州莫拉加市聖瑪麗學院科學係主任，斯坦福大學語言與信息研究中心高級研究員，美國科學院數學科學教育委員會委員，世界經濟論壇成員，美國科學促進會成員，美國全國公共電颱數學普及節目主持人。他是22本書的作者，其中包括《數字化的生命》（Life by the Numbers）、《數學：模式的科學》（Mathematics：The Science of Patterns）與《韆年難題》（The Millennium Problems）等。