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Humble pi : when math goes wrong in the real world / Matt Parker.

By: Material type: TextTextPublisher: New York : Riverhead Books, 2020Copyright date: ©2019Description: 314 pages : illustrations ; 24 cmContent type:
  • text
Media type:
  • unmediated
Carrier type:
  • volume
ISBN:
  • 9780593084687
  • 0593084683
Other title:
  • Humble pie
Subject(s):
Contents:
Losing track of time -- Engineering mistakes -- Little data -- Out of shape -- You can't count on it -- Does not compute -- Probably wrong -- Put your money where your mistakes are -- A roundabout way -- Too small to notice -- Units, conventions, and why can't we all just get along? -- Stats the way I like it -- Titloay Rodanm -- Does not compute -- So, what have we learned from our mistakes?
Summary: "This tour of real-world mathematical disasters reveals the importance of math in everyday life. All sorts of seemingly innocuous mathematical mistakes can have significant consequences. 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 ways math trips us up." -- Provided by publisher.
List(s) this item appears in: Happy Pi Day! (Math)
Holdings
Item type Home library Collection Call number Materials specified Status Date due Barcode Item holds
Adult Book Adult Book Main Library NonFiction 510 P242 Checked out 05/21/2024 33111009603503
Total holds: 0

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

#1 INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER

AN ADAM SAVAGE BOOK CLUB PICK

The book-length answer to anyone who ever put their hand up in math class and asked, "When am I ever going to use this in the real world?"

"Fun, informative, and relentlessly entertaining, Humble Pi is a charming and very readable guide to some of humanity's all-time greatest miscalculations--that also gives you permission to feel a little better about some of your own mistakes." --Ryan North, author of How to Invent Everything

Our whole world is built on math, from the code running a website to the equations enabling the design of skyscrapers and bridges. Most of the time this math works quietly behind the scenes . . . until it doesn't. All sorts of seemingly innocuous mathematical mistakes can have significant consequences.

Math is easy to ignore until a misplaced decimal point upends the stock market, a unit conversion error causes a plane to crash, or someone divides by zero and stalls a battleship in the middle of the ocean.

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. Getting it wrong has never been more fun.

Page numbers are in reverse order.

First published in Great Britain as: Humble pi : a comedy of maths errors by Allen Lane, an imprint of Penguin Random House Uk, 2019--Title page verso.

Includes index.

Losing track of time -- Engineering mistakes -- Little data -- Out of shape -- You can't count on it -- Does not compute -- Probably wrong -- Put your money where your mistakes are -- A roundabout way -- Too small to notice -- Units, conventions, and why can't we all just get along? -- Stats the way I like it -- Titloay Rodanm -- Does not compute -- So, what have we learned from our mistakes?

"This tour of real-world mathematical disasters reveals the importance of math in everyday life. All sorts of seemingly innocuous mathematical mistakes can have significant consequences. 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 ways math trips us up." -- Provided by publisher.

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