Math Girls


Math Girls is the first in a series of math-themed young adult novels of the same name by Japanese author Hiroshi Yuki. It was published by SoftBank Creative in 2007, followed by Math Girls: Fermat's Last Theorem in 2008, Math Girls: Gödel's Incompleteness Theorems in 2009, and Math Girls: Randomized Algorithms in 2011. As of December 2010, the series had sold over 100,000 books in Japan. On November 23, 2011, an English translation of the book was released by Bento Books, who subsequently released translations of Fermat's Last Theorem and Gödel's Incompleteness Theorems on December 5, 2012 and April 25, 2016, respectively.

Overview

The unnamed narrator and his schoolmates Miruka and Tetra are Japanese high school students with an interest in mathematics. Together they explore the world of mathematics by helping each other solve problems spanning a wide range of difficulty, from extensions of high school mathematics to extremely difficult problems previously addressed by famous mathematicians. While the book is presented as a novel, the bulk of its content is related to finding the solution to complex math problems, so could also be considered a form of textbook.

Synopsis

At the start of his first year of high school, the narrator meets a new classmate, a girl named Miruka. Without introducing herself, she gives him the beginning to number sequences, to which he answers with their continuation. One year later, the narrator is handed a letter by another girl, a new student named Tetra. The letter she wrote is a request for the narrator to tutor her in math. He begins teaching her, making Miruka jealous. The narrator balances his friendship with Tetra and his romantic interest in Miruka until Miruka and Tetra become friends after Tetra demonstrates her dedication to learning mathematics.

Characters

Main characters

The narrator
Miruka
Tetra

Other characters

Ay-Ay
Mr. Muraki
Tsunomiya
Ms. Mizutani

Mathematical topics that appear in the book

Manga

A Math Girls manga, illustrated by Mika Hisaka, serialized 14 chapters between April 2008 and June 2009 in Comic Flapper. The chapters were subsequently published in two tankōbon volumes. This was followed by subsequent manga and tankōbon versions of Math Girls 2: Fermat's Last Theorem and Math Girls 3: Gödel's Incompleteness Theorems. Math Girls Manga appeared in English translation from Bento Books in 2013, followed by Math Girls Manga 2 in 2016.

Math primers

Hiroshi Yuki also authors the Math Girls Talk About... series of mathematics primers. These books take the form of characters from the Math Girls series discussing various topics from mathematics, but can be considered nonfiction in that they are intended to be strictly instructional, and do not advance the storyline of the Math Girls series. The following titles from this series are available in English translation from Bento Books:
Other books in this series currently available only in Japanese cover sequences and series, calculus, vectors, probability, and statistics.

Translations

The English versions of the following books are available.

Other translations

See other language versions of Wikipedia for the translations of the other books in the series "Math Girls."