The Mathematics of Juggling

This is a beautifully written book. The mathematics ranges from the simple to research level. I’ve actually been teaching a freshman seminar using this book for a number of years to students with minimal background. I can actually get a coverage of about 2/3 of the book by distilling some of the topics down to easier examples. Just leafing through this book is a real pleasure as it is filled with bizarre diagrams and graphs. It’s a great motive to go off on number theory and graph theory. Not for the casual reader however.

I have a master's degree in math and an interest in juggling. I am sure the author has a good understanding of the mathematics of juggling; however he does not seem to be able to convey it in a clear or understandable fashion. I tried reading through this several times and found it too confusing to get through, as things seemed to appear out of thin air with no background exposition. I feel I learned a few things from the book, but overall am disappointed.

Level of content is unmatched. I've never found a source that covers this topic with such depth. Most sources assume things like a finite number of objects being juggled or a finite pattern length. Examples are not always the clearest and writing is very dense though.

As a fan of math and juggling, I must say that this is the greatest thing along with jugglinglab

I had no idea this much had been written about the mathematics of juggling, or that Claude Shannon was a juggler, until I stumbled across this book. It was a bit much for me to delve into deeply at the time, but I hope to come back and read it properly at some point. Definitely worth a look for my fellow math and juggling geeks.

I am a mathematical dunce. I have a better than average IQ, I passed high school algebra, I have been juggling for 35 years, and I even came up with diagrams on my own to remember and devise patterns. I thought I would enjoy this book, and I imagine I would if it were at all comprehensible to me. Though the book is hyped as "useful," "accessible" and "entertaining," buyers should be warned that Polster's book is about math and is written entirely in the language of math. There is no effort to bridge the gap between a practical understanding of juggling logic and his numeric abstractions. He writes in plain English prose until 3/4 of the way down page 8, and by the bottom of that page he has ditched you and disappeared into a world of opaque notation that might as well have been written by G.E. Moore and Bertrand Russell. If page after page of greek letters, academic jargon and abstract equations is easy reading for you, get this book. If you don't already speak higher math, Polster isn't going to teach you how.For a book that does what Polster does not, find Laws of Form by G. Spencer Brown.

Das Buch ist nicht gut gedruckt. Habe ein weiteres Exemplar zuhause und die Schrift ist im Vergleich dazu sehr pixelig und blass gedruckt.Auch das Cover ist dünner und das Buch erscheint mir insgesamt qualitativ weniger hochwertig.