How Not to Be Wrong The Power of Mathematical Thinking

How Not to Be Wrong : The Power of Mathematical Thinking
ISBN: 9780143127536
Publication Date: 26 May 2015

The Freakonomics of matha math-world superstar unveils the hidden beauty and logic of the world and puts its power in our hands

The math we learn in school can seem like a dull set of rules, laid down by the ancients and not to be questioned. In How Not to Be Wrong, Jordan Ellenberg shows us how terribly limiting this view is: Math isnt confined to abstract incidents that never occur in real life, but rather touches everything we dothe whole world is shot through with it.

Math allows us to see the hidden structures underneath the messy and chaotic surface of our world. Its a science of not being wrong, hammered out by centuries of hard work and argument. Armed with the tools of mathematics, we can see through to the true meaning of information we take for granted: How early should you get to the airport What does public opinion really represent Why do tall parents have shorter children Who really won Florida in 2000 And how likely are you, really, to develop cancer

How Not to Be Wrong presents the surprising revelations behind all of these questions and many more, using the mathematicians method of analyzing life and exposing the hard-won insights of the academic community to the laymanminus the jargon. Ellenberg chases mathematical threads through a vast range of time and space, from the everyday to the cosmic, encountering, among other things, baseball, Reaganomics, daring lottery schemes, Voltaire, the replicability crisis in psychology, Italian Renaissance painting, artificial languages, the development of non-Euclidean geometry, the coming obesity apocalypse, Antonin Scalias views on crime and punishment, the psychology of slime molds, what Facebook can and cant figure out abo...