In 19th century America, Joseph Ray was the McGuffey of arithmetic. His textbooks, used throughout the United States, laid the mathematical foundations for the generations of inventors, engineers and businessmen who would make the nation a world power.

The fundamental operations. Calculation with decimais. Approximate results in calculation. Factors, multiples and divisors. Fractions. Power and roots. Logarithms. Use of logarithms in arithmetic. Ratio and proportion. Series and progressions. Systems of common measures. Calculation with denominate numbers. Time, temperature and angle measure. Latitude, longitude and time. Dimensions and areas of plane figues. Dimensions, areas and volumes of solids. Graphs. Percentage. Compound interest.

Reprint of the original, first published in 1843.

Paul Lockhart reveals arithmetic not as the rote manipulation of numbers but as a set of ideas that exhibit the surprising behaviors usually reserved for higher branches of mathematics. In this entertaining survey, he explores the nature of counting and different number systems—Western and non-Western—and weighs the pluses and minuses of each.

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