Jordan Ellenberg

I was the student who got lost on the first day of geometry class in high school and never got found again. I was glad to find this book, because I thought maybe it would fill in the missing pieces of my geometric education; for example, I thought it would explain to me, in simple terms, why I should care about geometry (admittedly, there is some of that in the last chapter). Renowned mathematician Jordan Ellenberg begins with a section that quotes Wordsworth, and I thought, good! I am in show more familiar territory! Yet the rest of the book is a highly technical look at earthly phenomena such as pandemics, elections, and artificial intelligence to name a few. I got to the end, but I didn't absorb much.

I'm not sure for whom this book was written, but I am sure it wasn't written for me. show less

Если вы, как и гипотетическая студентка в начале этой книги, иногда задаетесь вопросом «Зачем нужно учить все эти логарифмы и интегралы, неужели все это в жизни потребуется?», то вам стоит ее прочесть. Потому что автор показывает, где и как математика, а вернее, умение show more рассуждать математически, приходит на помощь в реальном мире обывателя. Впрочем, добавляет он, наиболее востребованных во взрослой жизни разделов в школе как раз и не преподают (да и в большинстве вузов лишь мимоходом): речь о теории вероятности и статистике. Что прискорбно, ибо и СМИ, и политики любят бомбардировать людей статистикой и прогнозами, которые трудно воспринимать критически. Однако теперь книга Элленберга, написанная с хорошим юмором (да, математикам он совсем не чужд) и парадоксальными на первый взгляд примерами из окружающей действительности, позволит не только лучше разбираться в происходящем, но и даст немало возможностей продемонстрировать приятелям в баре, какие они, в сущности, двоечники. show less

It is becoming a more common disappointment to find that the author of a book that one admires and found enlightening is younger than oneself. The writing here is very good, the math, mostly number theory, probability and statistics, is very interesting. Ellenberg tells the story of the WWII statistician that came up with the idea that armor plating on aircraft needed to be where the bullet holes were not. He also tells the story of the MIT mathematicians who outfoxed the Massachusetts show more Lottery, and the story of the Baltimore stockbroker sending letters again only to the random people for whom he got the predictions correct.
There is a lot of wisdom in this book, for someone who is 35 years of age show less

Ellenberg’s paean to geometry. Sadly, I didn’t like it as much as his first popular book; he tells you that eigenvalues can do important things, but doesn’t quite explain what they are. Still, it’s amusingly written: “If you’re finding it hard to imagine what a fourteen-dimensional landscape looks like, I recommend following the advice of Geoffrey Hinton, one of the founders of the modern theory of neural nets: ‘Visualize a 3-space and say “fourteen” to yourself very show more loudly. Everyone does it.’” Ellenberg loves geometry because it offers real answers—not necessarily important ones, but indisputable ones. Geometry can also offer insights for things like gerrymandering; he excoriates the Supreme Court’s willful misunderstanding of what anti-gerrymandering advocates seek (not equal representation—that would actually be weird—but representation that doesn’t reflect extreme partisan bias in drawing boundaries). As he explains about states like Wisconsin, “where Republicans get a majority of the statewide vote, the gerrymander doesn’t have much effect; those are elections where the GOP would get an assembly majority anyway. It’s only in Democratic-leaning environments that the gerrymander really kicks in, acting as a firewall.” show less