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Maybe someday
36
/100
I Index Overall Rating
Readers
62/100Critics
10/100Scholars
Author:
Matt Parker
Publisher:
Riverhead Books
Date:
January 21, 2020
Exploring and explaining a litany of glitches, near misses, and mathematical mishaps involving the internet, big data, elections, street signs, lotteries, the Roman Empire, and an Olympic team, Matt Parker uncovers the bizarre ways math trips us up, and what this reveals about its essential place in our world.
What The Reviewers Say
Math isn’t a subject most people consider humorous or arbitrary. But Matt Parker manages to portray the science of mathematics as both of these things in his brilliant new book.
Parker examines a bewildering array of math mishaps with a light touch and dry wit ...There are several pitfalls for books like this, and Parker largely manages to avoid them. The first is simply being too technical. I’ve encountered such books before. But, along with wit, Humble Pi is conversational in style. It’s also largely conceptual, rather than focused on the nitty-gritty of equations and formulae. Many of the foibles described aren’t about math itself so much as about what can go wrong when it’s done by computers.
The only topic that is somewhat technical and requires a bit of effort to follow is Parker’s explanation of how the inexactitudes introduced by inputting and outputting date in decimal form leads to problems because the internal computations are actually done in binary. Yet, Parker has a sly wit; so, although all this sounds very serious, in fact, the writing style is breezy and, in some parts, extremely funny.
... enjoyable but off-target.
