Review of "The Red Violin," DVD version

Review of

The Red Violin, DVD version 

Five out of five stars

 The star of this movie is a violin, the last one made by master violin-maker Nicolò Bussotti in 1681. His wife Anna is pregnant and she asks her trusted servant to use tarot cards to read her future. It is a complicated one, told in snippets, one card at a time.

 When Anna dies in childbirth the distraught Bussotti finishes the violin currently in production, using a varnish with very unusual properties. That violin survives over three centuries of travel and use, it becomes known as “the red violin” and eventually ends up in a Montreal auction house that sells rare musical instruments.

 The star of the movie is the violin as it passes from person to person and is moved from country to country. Several different languages are used in the course of the movie as the location is changed. At times the language is Italian, then German, French, Mandarin Chinese and even Romani. English subtitles are available. The use of the language of the situation is a powerful positive feature of the movie, it would have been ridiculous if the people in the different locations would have all conversed in English.

 Some knowledge of history will be helpful in understanding some aspects of the movie. Specifically the events of the cultural revolution that took place in China in the late 1960s. It was a time when anti-western sentiment was very high, leading to the demotion of western music and even the destruction of musical instruments.

 The temporal flow of the movie is not sequential, when the servant is using the tarot cards to read the future of Anna she is in fact declaring the future of the violin. A card is overturned, the servant speaks and then the time is shifted to a new phase in the life of the violin. There are many situations where it is very fortunate that the violin survives to be used again and eventually be appreciated.

 This is in many ways an artsy movie, not for every viewer. There is very little physical action, but some tension regarding the fate of the violin. All of the loose ends are tied up as each of the cards are revealed and the trials and tribulations of a musical instrument are displayed and explained.

Review of "Lessons From Shadow: My Life Lessons for Boys and Girls," by Shadow Bregman

Review of

Lessons From Shadow: My Life Lessons for Boys and Girls, by Shadow Bregman ISBN 9781524673741

Five out of five stars

 While the level is roughly that of the second grade reader, this is a book that younger children will enjoy having read to them. Relatively speaking, there are few illustrations, some of the pages contain a great deal of text with no images.

 The story is told from the perspective of Shadow, a ten-year-old lab. While Shadow is black, his name comes from his tendency to follow people everywhere. He was found at a rescue event and little is known about his life before living with Daddy, Mommy and Betsy. Daddy and Mommy are his two humans and Betsy is a small, yippy dog with the dibs of being there first.

 Shadow does not always know what is happening in the human world and how it affects him, but he does try. Shadow watches his Mommy get sick, recover, get sicker, recover a bit and then die. Betsy also goes away and never comes back. Shadow experiences loneliness when Mommy and Betsy are gone, writing the book is in many ways a cathartic event.

 At the end of chapters there is a short piece called “Shadow’s lesson.” It is an explanation of what Shadow experienced in the chapter and what it means for life. The lessons are simple and of course just as applicable to the life of a human.

 Children will enjoy this book about the life of Shadow, it will be very easy for them to relate to what he does. As he learns about the world he is in many ways recapitulating the life of a child.

Review of "Teaching Statistics Using Baseball, Second Edition," by Jim Albert

Review of

Teaching Statistics Using Baseball, Second Edition, by Jim Albert, The Mathematical Association of America, Washington, D. C., 2017. 256 pp., $55.00 (paper). ISBN 9781939512161.

Five out of five stars

If you understand baseball, this book is an excellent way to learn statistics. However, if you are a novice regarding the basic actions, such as hits, outs, runs and sacrifice bunts, then you could experience a rarity. A book where the math is understood, but the events being described are not.

 As a longtime follower of baseball as well as a teacher of statistics, I found the exercises at the end of the chapters especially interesting. Debates about the relative quality of players have been a staple since baseball was organized, seeing those debates enhanced and codified by the use of mathematics swells you with pride.

 Unlike some other math textbooks, the strength of this one is the exercises. It is a rare occasion (nearly never) that I stop and work through some of the exercises when I am reading a math book for review. In many books the end of chapter exercises are sets of ditto problems where all in a group are essentially the same with the numbers changed. For example, a set of quadratic equations to be factored.

That is not the case here. One problem can be a computation of the value of a stolen base and the next the determination of the value of a sacrifice bunt. Hard data, not just impressions. All of the results are well known, yet the baseball traditionalists have yet to learn some of the better ways to do things. As opening day of the 2017 season approaches, the reader is pleased to learn once again that math is leading the way.

 If you spend the time explaining some of the basics of the game of baseball to the students that have no familiarity to it, this is an excellent text for the teaching of statistics. People that know the game will understand the value of mathematics in making and settling the universal arguments regarding which one is the better player.