Name: How not to be wrong. The power of mathematical thinking
ISBN: 9780143127536

How not to be wrong. The power of mathematical thinking

2014

“Witty, compelling, and just plain fun to read..." —Evelyn Lamb, Scientific American The Freakonomics of math—a math-world superstar unveils the hidden beauty and logic of the world and puts its power in our hands The math we learn in school can seem like a dull set of rules, laid down by the ancients and not to be questioned. In How Not to Be Wrong, Jordan Ellenberg shows us how terribly limiting this view is: Math isn’t confined to abstract incidents that never occur in real life, but rather touches everything we do—the whole world is shot through with it. Math allows us to see the hidden structures underneath the messy and chaotic surface of our world. It’s a science of not being wrong, hammered out by centuries of hard work and argument. Armed with the tools of mathematics, we can see through to the true meaning of information we take for granted: How early should you get to the airport? What does “public opinion” really represent? Why do tall parents have shorter children? Who really won Florida in 2000? And how likely are you, really, to develop cancer? How Not to Be Wrong presents the surprising revelations behind all of these questions and many more, using the mathematician’s method of analyzing life and exposing the hard-won insights of the academic community to the layman—minus the jargon.

What Hacker News says

greenpizza13Aug 2023

This kind of thinking is also explored deeply in Jordan Ellenberg's book "How Not to be Wrong: The Power of Mathematical Thinking". Great read.

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yborisDec 2018

The top 4 this year for me:

How Not to Be Wrong: The Power of Mathematical Thinking

Algorithms to Live By: The Computer Science of Human Decisions

How to Change Your Mind: What the New Science of Psychedelics Teaches Us about Consciousness, Dying, Addiction, Depression, and Transcendence

Moral Tribes: Emotion, Reason, and the Gap Between Us and Them

Phenomenal books. I have a longer list of recommendations I've collected over the decades: http://yboris.com/reading/

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belljustin95Dec 2018

My first exposure to this idea was in Jordan Ellenberg's fantastic book "How Not to Be Wrong: The Power of Mathematical Thinking". Here's a post from him that goes into the same example he uses in the book:

https://slate.com/human-interest/2014/06/berksons-fallacy-wh...

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RegardsyjcOct 2018

A Mind For Numbers: How to Excel at Math and Science (Even If You Flunked Algebra) by Barbara Oakley

How Not to be Wrong: The Power of Mathematical Thinking by Jordan Ellenberg

I'm not sure but I heard Little Brother by Cory Doctorow covers ideas of privacy and information security?

I haven't read it myself yet but I heard great things about Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid by Douglas Hofstadter.

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kqr2Jun 2017

There are quite a few popular books on this topic, e.g. How Not to Be Wrong: The Power of Mathematical Thinking :

https://smile.amazon.com/How-Not-Be-Wrong-Mathematical/dp/01...

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SmudgeFeb 2017

The book How Not to Be Wrong: The Power of Mathematical Thinking[1] by Jordan Ellenberg has a segment on this with similar examples (minus the programming bits), tying it in to human psychology and, with surprising insight, the behavior of slime molds. Would definitely recommend reading if you find these kinds of topics interesting.

[1]: http://amzn.to/2kHiROT

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