The Universe and the Teacup: The Mathematics of Truth and Beauty

This book ostensibly shows how mathematics permeates all we do, how it is not only necessary but beautiful. KC Cole is an award-winning science writer, and I can see why. She tackles in each chapter a different mathematical concept that everyone should be comfortable with. One chapter covers orders of magnitude and the difficulties comprehending the very large and the very small. She explains the bell curve, and why stating two groups have different averages (average IQ for example) tells nothing of the span of overlap. She talks briefly about relativity and newtonian mechanics and quantum mechanics, and explains why principles relevant to one scale may be completely irrelevant to another, akin to measuring time with a spoon.

I found show more her to be precise without using jargon, and simple without treating the reader as a simpleton. However, I had pretty much been exposed to every concept in here a long long time ago. This book would be perfect as a prize to a high school Mathlete. It would also be perfect for any adult with little science knowledge who wanted to become familiar enough with the concepts of science to understand a New York Times science article. This is, in short, a great book ... for someone else. Nonetheless, I give KC Cole props. It's not easy to explain science at this level without losing too much substance. show less

I'm a big fan of popular math and physics books, and I found this one enjoyable, if awfully broad. All in all, Cole does a nice job of making even pretty difficult topics (like general and special relativity) accessible even for a beginner. The book doesn't take very long at all to read, and Cole's enthusiasm for the topic is charming and contagious. My only complaint would be that it covers so much ground that there isn't room to go into very much depth on any one topic, but since Cole's admitted goal is simply to make the reader more conscious of the mathematics of everyday life, I'd say she achieves that admirably.

Maybe I would have enjoyed this more if it weren't covering so much ground that I'm already familiar with.?á But Cole belabored the obvious, gave us almost nothing about the apparently amazing Emmy Noether, and didn't bother with notes.?á Even her selected biography is ridiculously incomplete.?á So-and-so figured something new" out - new to him, I suppose, but no idea if it's new to us, as there's no way to know who this person is from info. in the book.?á And, of course, in many ways it's dated, as being from 1998.

She does report a neat visualization of Big Numbers that my geeky young adult son really likes, one that some college professor shares with his students:?á Write "Zero" on one side of a blackboard.?á Write "One show more Billion" on the other side.?á Where should you write "One Million?"?á Are you sure?... My son and I believe that, to make the point very clear, the student should next be asked, "Now, where do you write One Trillion?"

She also shares with us a great quote by Frank Oppenheimer: "Science is the search for the ever juicier mystery."

And Darrell Huff (author of How to Lie with Statistics) is noted to have said, "A difference is a difference only if it makes a difference."

Thomas W. Hazlett is given credit for a great concept: "It might be more instructive to compare IQs of people who care about racial IQs versus those who do not care."

I do want to find out more about this strategy for making "fair" decisions, called Adjusted Winner.

So, yeah, Cole collected a lot of neat ideas.?á Putting them together with coherence and relevance, though....?á Too bad.

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