100 Essential Things You Didn't Know You Didn't Know: Math Explains Your WorldEminent cosmologist and writer John D. Barrow uses simple mathematics to answer one hundred perplexing questions from everyday life. 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. |
Contents
Twos Company Threes a Crowd | 1 |
Monkey Business | 7 |
Wagons Roll | 14 |
Pylon of the Month | 21 |
On the Cards | 30 |
Relationships | 37 |
High Jumping | 43 |
VAT in Eternity | 50 |
The Planet of the Deceivers | 150 |
An Arch Problem | 157 |
Emergence 56 | 161 |
Positive Feedback | 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 |
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 |
40 | 109 |
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 |
Living in a Simulation | 146 |
Crouching Tiger | 204 |
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
Adam Worth average number ball become best candidate better bigger birthday cards cent centimetres centre of gravity cheque choice Clothoid codes counting system create diamond digits divide equal example explosion face Flintoff formula gallery goal golden goal greedy algorithm Grenada half happens interesting large number league length look loop Lottery match mathematicians mathematics means metres per second million mirror move odds picks a box pieces play points possible postcodes predict prime numbers probability problem Professor James Moriarty race walkers random record Reliant Robin result robot score sequence shape share simple simulated realities simulation sort square strategy Suppose surface tell things ticket tion total number triangles Trinity test Universe Valley of Fear vertical votes walking weight windmill zero