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.

• Murderous Maths, ISBN 0-439-01156-6

File:Murderous Maths.jpg

Book cover for Murderous Maths

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

Titles in Progress

• Codes: How to Make Them and Break Them (5 Feb 2007)

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