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Thinking In Numbers: On Life, Love, Meaning, and Math
Daniel Tammet · back to the book
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24 books with the same feel
Include books by the same authorMetamagical Themas: Questing for the Essence of Mind and Pattern
Douglas R. Hofstadter · 852 pages
Toen 'Godel, Escher, Bach' verscheen in 1979 was Hofstadter in een klap wereldberoemd. Het is maar weinigen gegeven zo met taal en kennis te spelen: briljant, erudiet, creatief, humoristisch, en didaktisch van zeer hoog niveau. Dezelfde kwaliteiten bepalen het gezicht van 'Metamagische thema's'. Het is een bundeling van artikelen die in de jaren 1981-1983 in de Scientific American verschenen en di
What If?: Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions
Randall Munroe · 312 pages
Millions of people visit xkcd.com each week to read Randall Munroe's iconic webcomic. His stick-figure drawings about science, technology, language, and love have a large and passionate following. Fans of xkcd ask Munroe a lot of strange questions. What if you tried to hit a baseball pitched at 90 percent the speed of light? How fast can you hit a speed bump while driving and live? If there was a
The Joy of x: A Guided Tour of Math, from One to Infinity
Steven H. Strogatz · 336 pages
Many people take math in high school and promptly forget much of it. But math plays a part in all of our lives all of the time, whether we know it or not. In The Joy of x, Steven Strogatz expands on his hit New York Times series to explain the big ideas of math gently and clearly, with wit, insight, and brilliant illustrations. Whether he is illuminating how often you should flip your mattress
Why Do Buses Come in Threes?: The Hidden Mathematics of Everyday Life
Robert Eastaway, Jeremy Wyndham · 156 pages
Rob Eastaway and Jeremy Wyndham take you on a mesmerizing journey through the logic of life in a quest for the hidden mathematics in everyday events. It's a world in which Newton's laws explain bar fights and there may be solid reasons why your shower always runs either too hot or too cold. Did you think it was all a matter of coincidence? Universal randomness? To put it in a more philosophic pers
The Infinite Book: A Short Guide to the Boundless, Timeless and Endless
John D. Barrow · 328 pages
The Man of Numbers: Fibonacci's Arithmetic Revolution
Keith J. Devlin · 192 pages
From NPR's Math Guy, the story of Leonardo of Pisa, the medieval mathematician who introduced Arabic numbers to the West and helped launch the modern era. In 1202, a young Italian published one of the most influential books of all time, introducing modern arithmetic to Western Europe. Leonardo of Pisa (better known today as Fibonacci) had learned the Hindu-Arabic number system when as a teenager h
Innumeracy: Mathematical Illiteracy and Its Consequences
John Allen Paulos · 152 pages
Mathematical Illiteracy and its Consequences is a 1988 book by mathematician John Allen Paulos about innumeracy (deficiency of numeracy) as the mathematical equivalent of illiteracy: incompetence with numbers rather than words. Innumeracy is a problem with many otherwise educated and knowledgeable people.
A History of π
Petr Beckmann · 204 pages
The history of pi, says the author, though a small part of the history of mathematics, is nevertheless a mirror of the history of man. Petr Beckmann holds up this mirror, giving the background of the times when pi made progress and also when it did not, because science was being stifled by militarism or religious fanaticism. The mathematical level of this book is flexible, and there is plenty for
The Poincaré Conjecture: In Search of the Shape of the Universe
Donal O'Shea · 304 pages
Conceived in 1904, the Poincaré conjecture, a puzzle that speaks to the possible shape of the universe and lies at the heart of modern topology and geometry, has resisted attempts by generations of mathematicians to prove or to disprove it. Despite a million-dollar prize for a solution, Russian mathematician Grigory Perelman, posted his solution on the Internet instead of publishing it in a peer-
Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything
Steven D. Levitt, Stephen J. Dubner · 320 pages
*A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything* Which is more dangerous, a gun or a swimming pool? What do schoolteachers and sumo wrestlers have in common? Why do drug dealers still live with their moms? How much do parents really matter? How did the legalization of abortion affect the rate of violent crime? These may not sound like typical questions for an economist to ask. But
Perfect Rigour: A Genius And The Mathematical Breakthrough Of The Century
Masha Gessen · 256 pages
A thrilling account of an utterly brilliant and utterly eccentric Russian mathematician which sheds a rare light on the unique burden of genius In 2006, an eccentric Russian mathematician named Grigori Perelman solved one of the world's greatest intellectual puzzles. The Poincare conjecture is an extremely complex topological problem that had eluded the best minds for over a century. In 1998, the
The Calculus Diaries: How Math Can Help You Lose Weight, Win in Vegas, and Survive a Zombie Apocalypse
Jennifer Ouellette · 318 pages
A mathphobe explores calculus by starting at the quotidian (more or less) and working to the underlying principles described by calculus.
The Mathematics of Life
Ian Stewart · 366 pages
Presents an overview of the role mathematics plays in revealing the hidden complexities of the natural world, and explains how mathematicians and biologists now work together on difficult scientific problems such as the origin of life.
How to Lie with Statistics
Darrell Huff · 142 pages
Darrell Huff runs the gamut of every popularly used type of statistic, probes such things as the sample study, the tabulation method, the interview technique, or the way the results are derived from the figures, and points up the countless number of dodges which are used to fool rather than inform.
E: The Story of a Number
Eli Maor · 234 pages
The interest earned on a bank account, the arrangement of seeds in a sunflower, and the shape of the Gateway Arch in St. Louis are all intimately connected with the mysterious number e. In this informal and engaging history, Eli Maor portrays the curious characters and the elegant mathematics that lie behind the number. Designed for a reader with only a modest mathematical background, this biograp
Numbers Rule Your World: The Hidden Influence of Probabilities and Statistics on Everything You Do
Kaiser Fung · 224 pages
The Fractal Geometry of Nature
Benoit B. Mandelbrot · 468 pages
Mathematics for the Nonmathematician (Books Explaining Science)
Morris Kline · 641 pages
Proofiness: The Dark Arts of Mathematical Deception
Charles Seife · 312 pages
In the tradition of Stephen Colbert's concept of truthiness, Proofiness explores the intersection of chicanery and mathematics. The author explores regression, false correlation, Potemkin numbers, and a variety of other sketchy techniques used to make people think that the data reflect patterns that don't exist in actuality. How to Lie With Statistics would strike me as a readalike.
The Fourth Dimension: A Guided Tour of the Higher Universes
Rudy Rucker · 228 pages
In text, pictures, and puzzles, the author immerses his readers in an amazing exploration of a mysterious realm -- a realm once seen only by mystics, physicists, and mathematicians.