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Humble Pi

£10.99

Matt Parker, the brilliant stand-up mathematician, shows us what happens when maths goes wrong in the real world. We would all be better off if everyone saw mathematics as a practical ally. Sadly, most of us fear maths and seek to avoid it. This is because mathematics doesn’t have good ‘people skills’ – it never hesitates to bluntly point out when we are wrong. But it is only trying to help! Mathematics is a friend which can fill the gaps in what our brains can do naturally. Luckily, even though we don’t like sharing our own mistakes, we love to read about what happens when maths errors make the everyday go horribly wrong. Matt Parker explores and explains near misses and mishaps with planes, bridges, the Internet and big data as a way of showing us not only how important maths is, but how we can use it to our advantage.

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SKU: 9780141989143 Category: Tags: , ,

Description

**The First Ever Maths Book to be a No.1 Bestseller**
‘Wonderful … superb’ Daily Mail

What makes a bridge wobble when it’s not meant to? Billions of dollars mysteriously vanish into thin air? A building rock when its resonant frequency matches a gym class leaping to Snap’s 1990 hit I’ve Got The Power? The answer is maths. Or, to be precise, what happens when maths goes wrong in the real world.

As Matt Parker shows us, our modern lives are built on maths: computer programmes, finance, engineering. And most of the time this maths works quietly behind the scenes, until … it doesn’t. Exploring and explaining a litany of glitches, near-misses and mishaps involving the internet, big data, elections, street signs, lotteries, the Roman empire and a hapless Olympic shooting team, Matt Parker shows us the bizarre ways maths trips us up, and what this reveals about its essential place in our world.

Mathematics doesn’t have good ‘people skills’, but we would all be better off, he argues, if we saw it as a practical ally. This book shows how, by making maths our friend, we can learn from its pitfalls. It also contains puzzles, challenges, geometric socks, jokes about binary code and three deliberate mistakes. Getting it wrong has never been more fun.

Read a sample here

Additional information

Weight 0.247 kg
Dimensions 19.6 × 12.8 × 1.8 cm
Author

Publisher

Imprint

Cover

Paperback

Pages

314

Language

English

Edition
Dewey

510.2 (edition:23)

Readership

General – Trade / Code: K