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Why do they print the number of Illustrations on some mathematics books? For example:

enter image description here

In my whole life, I've seen this only on maths books and I can't figure out why they do this or why it's important.

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Sorry if the tag is not plausible, but I couldn't find a better tag. – Gustavo Bandeira Sep 26 '12 at 16:28
My guess is that it's a selling point. – Joe Johnson 126 Sep 26 '12 at 16:41
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Some people like pictures, such as fans of Oliver Byrne's edition of Euclid. – Henry Sep 26 '12 at 16:43
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It's not just math books. Books on many topics will have in the front matter a statement of the number of figures or illustrations. – Michael Hardy Sep 26 '12 at 17:25
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Why do you think it is restricted to math books? In my experience there is no such restriction. E.g. searching Google Books for with 22 illustrations yields over $37000$ books on many subjects, most not mathematics. – Gone Sep 26 '12 at 17:57
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closed as off topic by Peter Tamaroff, William, Avatar, Jasper Loy, Hans Lundmark Sep 27 '12 at 18:30

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1 Answer

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I guess this is only tradition. At some point in time it was huge work and very costly to make and print figures, so at that point in time it was a selling point.

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