100 Essential Things You Didn't Know You Didn't Know: Math Explains Your WorldMathematics can reveal and illuminate things about the complex world we live in that can't be found any other way. In this 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 any more.--From publisher description. |
Contents
Monkey Business | 7 |
Wagons Roll | 14 |
Pylon of the Month | 21 |
On the Cards | 30 |
Relationships | 37 |
High Jumping | 43 |
VAT in Eternity | 50 |
Emergence | 56 |
An Arch Problem | 157 |
Getting a Mandate | 161 |
How to Rig an Election | 169 |
How Many Guards Does an Art Gallery Need? | 176 |
A Snooker Trick Shot | 183 |
Playing Fair with a Biased Coin | 189 |
Packing Your Stuff | 197 |
Crouching Tiger | 204 |
Positive Feedback | 62 |
The Flaw of Averages | 69 |
Is This a Record? | 76 |
Flash Fires | 83 |
the WinWin Solution | 90 |
Tilting at Windmills | 96 |
A Thought for Your Pennies | 104 |
A President who Preferred the Triangle to the Pentagon | 112 |
Calculus Makes You Live Longer | 122 |
Double Your Money | 129 |
The Most Infamous Mathematician | 135 |
A Taylormade Explosion | 143 |
The Planet of the Deceivers | 150 |
Diamond Geezer | 212 |
Thinking Outside the Box | 219 |
Loss Aversion | 226 |
The Gherkin | 232 |
Omniscience can be a Liability | 238 |
There are No Uninteresting Numbers | 244 |
The Rule of Two | 252 |
Segregation and Micromotives | 254 |
Some Benefits of Irrationality | 261 |
Chaos | 270 |
The Global Village | 276 |
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Common terms and phrases
angle average number ball become best candidate bigger birthday cards catenary cent centimetres centre of gravity chance choice Clothoid coin counting create crowd diamond digits distance divide equal example formula gallery golden goal guard half happens interesting large number length look match mathematician mathematics means metres per second million mirror Möbius strip move nanometres odds packages paper sizes pencil pick pieces play possible predict prime numbers probability problem Professor James Moriarty race walkers random record rectangles Reliant Robin result robot score sequence shape side simple simulated simulated realities sort speed square square wheels strategy Suppose surface tails tell things ticket tion tosses total number triangles Universe Valley of Fear votes wall weight wheel wind windmill zero