Ben Orlin

I found this book enthralling, if a little disjointed. The author, a math teacher, seems like one of the teachers I always wanted to have, and rarely got...one who loves the subject they teach and their enthusiasm is infectious. I find math to be relatively dull but the excitement the author has for it was so sincere that it made me reconsider my perception of math. I found his prose and cartoons amusing and engaging. My only complaint, and its minor, is that the book is so scattered...the show more chapters are all so different, jumping from shorter chapters to longer ones, and from sillier concepts to more serious concerns. At the same time, this could be seen as a feature, not a bug...it made the book even harder to put down, because you never knew what you would get from chapter to chapter. show less

Very little math is needed to enjoy this book. An interest in math is plenty enough. The book is divided in five parts: how to think like mathematician (a gentle introduction to reaccustom the mind to mathematical thinking for those of us who have been finished with school and mathematics for a long time); design: the geometry of stuff that works (about geometry, the most technical and mathematical part); probability: the mathematics of maybe (dealing among other things with the math of show more lottery, insurance and the economic crisis of 2008); statistics: the fine art of honest lying (with examples taken from baseball, school rankings and literature); on the cusp: the power of a step (with chapters on the value of things, income tax, the Electoral College and chaos theory).

The math concepts are presented in a very clear way, in small chunks that are easy to understand. Though the subject of math is somehow serious, the author made me giggle quite a few times, and the drawings, for which the epithet bad is indeed apt, make the reading even more entertaining. I think the author is at his best in the chapters about probability and statistics. It is the sort of math with which we are confronted in our daily lives, which makes it more interesting.

For a book about a universal subject, it is very US-centric, with its examples taken from baseball, the banking system, the Electroral College... It is not a problem in and of itself, but it becomes a problem when it seeps into facts. On page 331, it is said that a research about a snowstorm in 1961 "marked the birth of a new experimental style of mathematics, an interdisciplinary insurgency that soon became known as "chaos theory."" It should have been mentioned that it was the begining of "chaos theory" in the computer age, because the origins of chaos theory are generally attributed to 19th century French mathematician Henri Poincarré.

On the whole, I found it an entertaining read. If you parted ways with maths on bad terms, this is an excellent opportunity for reconciliation. show less

A very attractive book about mathematical ideas illustrated with the author and blogger's stick figures. It is both thought-provoking and entertaining.

There might be a little too much about insurance but from my viewpoint nearly all of the discussions are successful. I found the treatments of p values, the electoral college, and bad metrics to be especially satisfying.

A readable spin through geometry, probability, statistics, and discrete math, in the "anecdotes then a moment of reflection" style.

I'd hand this book to a math-inclined middle schooler in an instant. As a math-inclined adult, eh, it was well written but not surprising.