One Hundred Essential Things You Didn't Know You Didn't Know Math Explains Your World

by Barrow, John D.

• ISBN13: 9780393070071
• ISBN10: 0393070077
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2009-05-18
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company

Summary

Mathematics can reveal and illuminate things about the complex world we live in that can't be found any other way. In this hugely informative and entertaining book, John D. Barrow takes the most perplexing of everyday phenomena'”from the odds of winning the lottery and the method of determining batting averages to the shapes of roller coasters and the reasoning behind the fairest possible divorce settlements'”and explains why things work the way they do. With elementary math and accompanying illustrations, he sheds light on the mysterious corners of the world we encounter every day. Have you ever considered why you always seem to get stuck in the longest line? Why two's company but three's a crowd? Or why there are six degrees of separation instead of seven? This clever little book has all the answers to these puzzling, everyday questions of existence that need not perplex us anymore.

Table of Contents

Preface	p. xiii
Two's Company, Three's Crowd	p. 1
It's a Small World After All	p. 4
Monkey Business	p. 7
Independence Day	p. 10
Rugby and Relativity	p. 12
Wagons Roll	p. 14
A Sense of Proportion	p. 16
Why Does the Other Queue Always Move Faster?	p. 19
Pylon of the Month	p. 21
A Sense of Balance	p. 24
Bridging That Gap	p. 26
On the Cards	p. 30
Tally Ho	p. 34
Relationships	p. 37
Racing Certainties	p. 40
High Jumping	p. 43
Superficiality	p. 47
VAT in Eternity	p. 50
Living in a Simulation	p. 52
Emergence	p. 56
How to Push a Car	p. 59
Positive Feedback	p. 62
The Drunkard's Walk	p. 64
Faking It	p. 66
The Flaw of Averages	p. 69
The Origami of the Universe	p. 71
Easy and Hard Problems	p. 73
Is This a Record?	p. 76
A Do-It-Yourself Lottery	p. 79
I Do Not Believe It!	p. 81
Flash Fires	p. 83
The Secretary Problem	p. 86
Fair Divorce Settlements: the Win-Win Solution	p. 90
Many Happy Returns	p. 93
Tilting at Windmills	p. 96
Verbal Conjuring	p. 99
Financial Investment with Time Travellers	p. 101
A Thought for Your Pennies	p. 104
Breaking the Law of Averages	p. 107
How Long are Things Likely to Survive?	p. 109
A President who Preferred the Triangle to the Pentagon	p. 112
Secret Codes in Your Pocket	p. 116
I've Got a Terrible Memory for Names	p. 120
Calculus Makes You Live Longer	p. 122
Getting in a Flap	p. 124
Your Number's Up	p. 127
Double Your Money	p. 129
Some Reflections on Faces	p. 131
The Most Infamous Mathematician	p. 135
Roller Coasters and Motorway Junctions	p. 139
A Taylor-made Explosion	p. 143
Walk Please, Don't Run!	p. 146
Mind-reading Tricks	p. 148
The Planet of the Deceivers	p. 150
How to Win the Lottery	p. 152
A Truly Weird Football Match	p. 155
An Arch Problem	p. 157
Counting in Eights	p. 159
Getting a Mandate	p. 161
The Two-headed League	p. 164
Creating Something out of Nothing	p. 166
How to Rig an Election	p. 169
The Swing of the Pendulum	p. 172
A Bike with Square Wheels	p. 174
How Many Guards Does an Art Gallery Need?	p. 176
...and What About a Prison?	p. 181
A Snooker Trick Shot	p. 183
Brothers and Sisters	p. 186
Playing Fair with a Biased Coin	p. 189
The Wonders of Tautology	p. 191
What a Racket	p. 193
Packing Your Stuff	p. 197
Sent Packing Again	p. 199
Crouching Tiger	p. 204
How the Leopard Got His Spots	p. 207
The Madness of Crowds	p. 209
Diamond Geezer	p. 212
The Three Laws of Robotics	p. 216
Thinking Outside the Box	p. 219
Googling in the Caribbean - The Power of the Matrix	p. 222
Loss Aversion	p. 226
The Lead in Your Pencil	p. 228
Testing Spaghetti to Destruction	p. 230
The Gherkin	p. 232
Being Mean with the Price Index	p. 235
Omniscience can be a Liability	p. 238
Why People aren't Cleverer	p. 240
The Man from Underground	p. 242
There are No Uninteresting Numbers	p. 244
Incognito	p. 246
The Ice Skating Paradox	p. 249
The Rule of Two	p. 252
Segregation and Micromotives	p. 254
Not Going with the Flow	p. 256
Venn Vill They Ever Learn	p. 258
Some Benefits of Irrationality	p. 261
Strange Formulae	p. 266
Chaos	p. 270
All Aboard	p. 273
The Global Village	p. 276
Notes	p. 279
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