Murderous Maths

Murderous Maths is a series of British educational books by author Kjartan Poskitt. The books teach maths spanning from the simple (such as 1+1=2) to $x={\frac {-b\pm {\sqrt {b^{2}-4ac}}}{2a}}$ although, being related to the Horrible Histories books, they do this in a rather offbeat manner, involving evil geniuses, gangsters, and the occasional flying chutney-and-marmalade burger.

Titles

The following are the books that are currently released in the series. These first two books do not cover any particular topics; rather, they were originally proposed to stand alone as an interesting read. The first two books were originally part of The Knowledge until a complete series was proposed.

1. Murderous Maths, ISBN 0-439-01156-6

File:Murderous Maths.jpg

Book cover for Murderous Maths

1. More Murderous Maths, ISBN 0-439-01153-1
2. The Essential Arithmetricks: How to + - × ÷, ISBN 0-439-01157-4
3. The Mean & Vulgar Bits: Fractions and Averages, ISBN 0-439-01270-8
4. Desperate Measures: Length, Area and Volume, ISBN 0-439-01370-4
5. Do You Feel Lucky?: The Secrets of Probability, ISBN 0-439-99607-4
6. Vicious Circles and Other Savage Shapes, ISBN 0-439-99747-X
7. Numbers: The Key To The Universe, ISBN 0-439-98116-6
8. The Phantom X: Algebra, ISBN 0-439-97729-0
9. The Fiendish Angletron: Trigonometry, ISBN 0-439-96859-3
10. The Perfect Sausage and other Fundamental Formulas, ISBN 0-439-95901-2

Three related puzzle books have been published as well:

• Professor Fiendish's Book of Diabolical Brain-benders, ISBN 0-439-98226-X
• Professor Fiendish's Book of Brain-benders
• Sudoku: 100 Fun Number Puzzles, ISBN 0-439-84570-X
• Kakuro and Other Fiendish Number Puzzles, ISBN 0-439-95164-X

One final book, titled Codes, Keys and Crackers, is scheduled for release in Spring 2007, and will be released as part of a 'gift pack with extra bits' later in the year according to Poskitt.

Recurring characters

There are a number of recurring characters in the MM books. These include:

• Colonel Cancel and his Valiant Vector Warriors
• Thag the Mathemagician
• Urgum the Axeman, Grizelda the Grisly and other barbarians
• Professor Fiendish and his pet pig, Truffles
• The Fogsworth family, including the Duchess, the Colonel, Auntie Crystal, Rodney Bounder, Primrose Poppet, Binky Smallbrain and Croak the Butler
• Pongo McWhiffy, burger seller, and Veronica Gumfloss
• Riverboat Lil and Brett Shuffler
• Sheerluck Holmes (parody of Sherlock Holmes)
• The Boccellis, the Gabriannis and Dolly Snowlips
• The Evil Gollarks (from the planet Zog)
• The Great Rhun of Jepatti, and his Ghinji
• The Pure Mathematicians (Janet, Kimpton and Winch [the identity of the final pure Mathematican is unknown]. Apparently named after a real-world teacher and a pair of real-world pure mathematicians, respectively.)

Book credits

All written by Kjartan Poskitt

MM and MMM illus. by Trevor Dunton

TEA and TM&VB illus. by Daniel Postgate

Others illus. by Philip 'The Evil' Reeve

Published by Scholastic

External links

• The official Murderous Maths website
• The Unofficial Murderous Maths Forum
• The Fans of Murderous Maths Forum