This book, like the others in the Series, is written in simple English – chosen only because it is the language most widely used in science and technology, industry, commerce, and international business and travel. Its subject “Number and symbols” is basic to the whole of science; but it introduces a new language, nothing like the one we use in everyday writing and speaking. The spoken word came first in the evolution of language; then the written word (starting about four thousand years ago). Mathematics began to develop somewhat later – in China, India, and the countries around the Mediterranean. But the symbols of mathematics, though still just marks on paper, are not connected in any way with speech, or sounds, or the written word: usually they stand for operations such as counting or moving things through space, operations which are often performed only in the mind. It is this abstract and symbolic nature of mathematics that makes it seem difficult to so many people and shuts them off from an increasingly large part of Science.

The aim of this first book in the Series is to open the door into Mathematics, ready for going on into Physics, Chemistry, and the other Sciences.