Manga "Entertaining statistics", "Secret of disasters" and other similar books

    We are talking about unusual textbooks that are in the middle between university textbooks and purely popular science brochures. Nevertheless, there is a clear dividing line between the scientific lecturer and such textbooks - the latter are aimed specifically at training, entertaining chips are just a form of presentation of serious material. The common thing for all such books, as it seems to me, is the presentation of material in the form of a comic book and / or as a dialogue of two or more people. Usually two interlocutors - a student and a teacher, one constantly asks questions, often silly or funny, the second tries to explain in a playful way.

    There are many screenshots of several books in the post. One of them, which about disasters I completely re-shot and posted pdf. Please take into account that under the habracat there are more than one megabyte of pictures, the text is much smaller. I apologize in advance for the quality of some frames - night shooting was not conducive. Perhaps there are more pictures than necessary, but I tried to show the basic principles - a graphic, game way of presenting material, plot and dialogs.

    I did something like a retrospective: the first book is a fresh Japanese comic book manga on matstatistics of the 2010 edition, then there’s a book from the 80s on mathematics, the catasrof theory. The latter is a beginner's handbook of radio electronics, familiar to several generations of readers around the world since the 1930s.

    To illustrate the post, I’ll give the cover of another manga from the same series as the book on statistics:

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    Quantum, today we quantize stob ... Japanese comic.
    Interesting statistics - manga from Sina Takahashi. A lot of pictures




    Content on Ozone.

    Almost all the people to whom I showed this book said, “Why didn’t I have such a textbook at the institute ?!”
    The plot is this: the Japanese schoolgirl Rui, the daughter of the director of the corporation, is interested in the adult employee of her dad. Upon learning that he is engaged in marketing and statistics at work , she asks her dad to arrange lessons with this guy for her. He happily agrees, but, oh, horror - as a result of "replacement" comes another young man - Yamamoto. Since Rui has already brewed porridge, you have to go through homework on the stated topic - statistics ...





    As a result, in the dialogs in the pictures, from qualitative concepts, they unobtrusively switch to tables, histograms, Gaussian graphs, formulas with distribution density integrals.










    Rui suffers, but gradually moves forward. A girlfriend also appears in the next chapter, with whom it is better to deal with the concept of normalized deviation.














































    It all ends predictably:





    After which there are many pages of applications. These are mainly examples of applying statistical functions with screenshots of Excel tablets.
    In the same series there are books by other authors - on mechanics, electricity, astronomy and matanalysis.


    Let's move on ... More serious mathematics in a simpler language.
    Ian Stewart. The mystery of the disaster. Too many pictures
    A comic book is a qualitative introduction to catastrophe theory. The author has a quite adult textbook on this subject; a comic appeared for a popular introduction to the complex field of mathematics . By definition, mathematician V. Arnold:
    “Catastrophes are called abrupt changes that occur in the form of a sudden response of the system to a smooth change in external conditions. The sources of catastrophe theory are the theory of features of smooth mappings and; bifurcation theory of dynamical systems.




    The characters of Stuart Rosa, Gaston and the animal of clips travel and, in the meanwhile, clarify the topic of bundles, bifurcations. Act is happening on the planet Ombilicus, which has two suns. There are graphs and drawings, there are almost no formulas. There are no serious formulas that are appropriate for the proposed material.





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    Digitized pdf can be taken here



    How it all began ...
    E.D. Iceberg. Radio? It is very easy!
    Perhaps this is where all such publications began. In 1925, the family of the famous Odessa pianist Davyd Iceberg went to France for treatment or, there, on a tour and did not return. His son Eugene Iceberg publishes in the 30s. in Paris, a radio electronics textbook in the form of a conversation between two friends - experienced by the experience Lyuboznaykin and a weak, frivolous newcomer Neznaikin. As a result, at the end of their conversations, Neznaykin collects his own receiver. And not only he alone - according to reviews, in the late 60s and later a lot of people studied and assembled their devices from this book. Although the book is formally - not a comic strip, but close to it - the text accompanies a large number of pictures in the fields, then drawings and radio circuits go further.







    Such books began in the early 1930s, withstood many reprints after the war, and were massively published in many languages. These are not comics, but very similar to them. Books are built as a dialogue between Neznaikin and Lyuboznaykin with drawings in the margins. With the development of radio engineering, Iceberg had to tweak their conversations. In the editorial board of the Soviet editions of all his books, the first on the list is Academician Axel Berg. The history of these books is a story of tremendous success.

    After the lamps went transistors - is there like the publication “ Radio? - It is very simple! “Where the transistors are introduced - after a lengthy part about electrons, pnn junctions, etc.
    Is there a separate book devoted only to transistors Transistor? - It is very simple!(the link is scanned page by page). In the 70s appeared in different variations “ Television - it is very simple! “And the team“ Radio and television? - It is very simple! “A friend of mine told me that he studied a book on television at school and, in the end, assembled his own TV. Surely they helped him, in addition, a separate picture tube and a bunch of specific details could then be obtained only by disassembling the finished TV set. Personally, I had a meeting with the books of Iceberg at the school, but for various reasons the television did not go, but I had the opportunity to solder a lot of small crafts from the radio.

    My father studied these books at one time, and I was in the middle classes. Although now it seems to me that I did not hold out much ... I soldered something on transistors, but without a deep understanding. But he did nothing at all with the lamps - he had never seen “clean” triodes on sale. But the adjustable rectifier from 0.7 to 12V and the VHF receiver from the designer soldered according to the scheme from UT. It was an amazing experience!





    Were there also extensions of at least one other author, Jean-Paul Emishen Electronics,? .. There is nothing easier! . It can be seen that the whole canvas remained the same, all the heroes also migrated, but the drawings and conversation topics changed.



    Also in the 90s, I saw several translated American comics about economics. Common topics were explained - goods, money supply, inflation, laws of supply and demand, etc. A little to the side - I saw game textbooks on chess and the game of go.

    I tried to search the network for something similar, but I really saw only 2-3 books that were really similar in meaning. The rest is just about-scientific jokes. Have you seen anything like this? Further some links.

    References
    1. A comic book blog about science and the history of science
    2. sci-ence.org A lot of small comics, mostly entertaining. Lots of biological and psychological, Google’s “Augmented Reality” goggles are seen.
    3. sci-ence.org/clearing-the-air
    4. Sce-ence.org Allowed and forbidden reactions to the observed interference pattern:

      image
    5. sci-ence.org/dirty-upbringing
    6. www.madsciencecomic.com
    7. XKCD Famous Place
    8. Science Comics plus. The Cartoons of S. Harris Just funny pictures on scientific topics. It seems that some of the bottom are found in “Physicists are joking”
    9. PhD Comics . Almost no science, but funny.
    10. Larry Gonick. Introduction to statistics in pictures
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    11. Larry Gonick. Introduction to Physics in Pictures
    12. Comic dedicated to the device CD-ROM drive, mouse, Internet and other "The New Way Things Work". $ 23 on Amazon
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    13. ifanboy.com/articles/top-5-indie-comics-of-science
    14. How comics teach science This review mentions the reviewed manga on statistics, as well as the similar “Introduction to Biochemistry”, which has not been translated into Russian.
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    15. Alan Turing Biography and Computer Science History Series
    16. A large archive of home-made comics about mathematics and science in general Spiked Math Comics, a few examples.
      [1] , [2] , [3]
    17. V. Arnold Theory of Disasters. Textbook
    18. Eugene Iceberg on Wikipedia Since he was an active Esperantist, there is an article about him in Esperanto. In English - no ...
    19. More about E. Iceberg




    Maybe someday one will be lucky to meet similar books about for different sections of higher mathematics, algorithms and theorphysis. Or, say, one day to see some difficult course in the form of a cartoon. You can even imagine and imagine a series of such books in Russian, written “with a twinkle” by a team of teachers, screenwriters and artists, for different levels from junior high school students to students ... It seems to me that the future is not less for this presentation than for Courser, TedX and other things.

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