Fun reading for nonmathematicians.
A pleasant exploration of our deeply held incompetence at mathematics.
Comedian and YouTube performer Parker (Things To Make and Do in the Fourth Dimension: A Mathematician's Journey Through Narcissistic Numbers, Optimal Dating Algorithms, at Least Two Kinds of Infinity, and More, 2014), who hosts a show on the Science Channel called Outrageous Acts of Science, claims bluntly that humans are stupid at dealing with numbers. “We were not born with any kind of ability to understand fractions, negative numbers, or the many other strange concepts developed by mathematics,” he writes, “but, over time, your brain can slowly learn how to deal with them.” Ironically, it is engineering and computer glitches, not pure math, that make up much of the book. Buildings and bridges collapse because someone gets the numbers wrong. A squadron of advanced jets crossing the Pacific suddenly lost their electronics because their navigation computer program, which must keep track of time, couldn’t deal with crossing the International Date Line. They followed an older plane nearby to a safe landing. A corporation, searching for an employee named Jack Null, could never find him because “null” to a computer means “no data.” People named Blank, Sample, and Test also cause trouble. A number divided by a really tiny number becomes very large. The result of dividing by zero is meaningless; no proper computer will deal with it. Humans yearn to predict the unpredictable; the author shows how a truly random event (a lottery draw, a coin flip) has no influence on the following event. No matter how many times heads appears, the chance of tails remains 50-50. The only way to increase your chance of winning the lottery is to buy more tickets. If black comes up four, five, or 10 times in a row on the roulette wheel, gamblers rush to bet on red because it is “due”—but it isn’t. Nonsense, blunders, and delusions make for good reading, so Parker’s relentless litany will have a wide appeal.
Fun reading for nonmathematicians.Pub Date: Jan. 21, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-593-08468-7
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Riverhead
Review Posted Online: Sept. 28, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
An extravaganza in Bemelmans' inimitable vein, but written almost dead pan, with sly, amusing, sometimes biting undertones, breaking through. For Bemelmans was "the man who came to cocktails". And his hostess was Lady Mendl (Elsie de Wolfe), arbiter of American decorating taste over a generation. Lady Mendl was an incredible person,- self-made in proper American tradition on the one hand, for she had been haunted by the poverty of her childhood, and the years of struggle up from its ugliness,- until she became synonymous with the exotic, exquisite, worshipper at beauty's whrine. Bemelmans draws a portrait in extremes, through apt descriptions, through hilarious anecdote, through surprisingly sympathetic and understanding bits of appreciation. The scene shifts from Hollywood to the home she loved the best in Versailles. One meets in passing a vast roster of famous figures of the international and artistic set. And always one feels Bemelmans, slightly offstage, observing, recording, commenting, illustrated.
Pub Date: Feb. 23, 1955
ISBN: 0670717797
Page Count: -
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Oct. 25, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1955
From the national correspondent for PBS's MacNeil-Lehrer Newshour: a moving memoir of her youth in the Deep South and her role in desegregating the Univ. of Georgia. The eldest daughter of an army chaplain, Hunter-Gault was born in what she calls the ``first of many places that I would call `my place' ''—the small village of Due West, tucked away in a remote little corner of South Carolina. While her father served in Korea, Hunter-Gault and her mother moved first to Covington, Georgia, and then to Atlanta. In ``L.A.'' (lovely Atlanta), surrounded by her loving family and a close-knit black community, the author enjoyed a happy childhood participating in activities at church and at school, where her intellectual and leadership abilities soon were noticed by both faculty and peers. In high school, Hunter-Gault found herself studying the ``comic-strip character Brenda Starr as I might have studied a journalism textbook, had there been one.'' Determined to be a journalist, she applied to several colleges—all outside of Georgia, for ``to discourage the possibility that a black student would even think of applying to one of those white schools, the state provided money for black students'' to study out of state. Accepted at Michigan's Wayne State, the author was encouraged by local civil-rights leaders to apply, along with another classmate, to the Univ. of Georgia as well. Her application became a test of changing racial attitudes, as well as of the growing strength of the civil-rights movement in the South, and Gault became a national figure as she braved an onslaught of hostilities and harassment to become the first black woman to attend the university. A remarkably generous, fair-minded account of overcoming some of the biggest, and most intractable, obstacles ever deployed by southern racists. (Photographs—not seen.)
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1992
ISBN: 0-374-17563-2
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1992
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
