100 Essential Things You Didn't Know You Didn't Know Math Explains Your World
by Barrow, John D.Edition: 00
Format: Paperback
Pub. Date: 2010-05-24
Publisher(s): W. W. Norton & Company
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Summary
Have you ever considered why you always get stuck in the longest line? Why two's company but three's a crowd? Or why there are six degrees of separation instead of seven? In this hugely informative and endlessly entertaining book, John D. Barrow takes the most baffling of everyday phenomena and'”with simple math, lucid explanations, and illustrations'”explains why they work the way they do. His witty, crystal-clear answers shed light on the dark and shadowy corners of the physical world we all think we understand so well.
Author Biography
JOHN D. BARROW is a professor of mathematical sciences and director of the Millennium Mathematics Project at Cambridge University. A Fellow of the Royal Society, he is the author of The Book of Nothing, The Constants of Nature, and the award-winning play Infinities. In 2008, he was awarded The Royal Society's Faraday Prize for the communication of science. He lives in Cambridge, England.
Table of Contents
| Preface | p. xiii |
| Two's Company, Three's a Crowd | p. 1 |
| It's a Small World After All | p. 4 |
| Monkey Business | p. 7 |
| Independence Day | p. 10 |
| Rugby and Relativity | p. 12 |
| Wagons Roll | p. 14 |
| A Sense of Proportion | p. 16 |
| Why Does the Other Queue Always Move Faster? | p. 19 |
| Pylon of the Month | p. 21 |
| A Sense of Balance | p. 24 |
| Bridging That Gap | p. 26 |
| On the Cards | p. 30 |
| Tally Ho | p. 34 |
| Relationships | p. 37 |
| Racing Certainties | p. 40 |
| High Jumping | p. 43 |
| Superficiality | p. 47 |
| VAT in Eternity | p. 50 |
| Living in a Simulation | p. 52 |
| Emergence | p. 56 |
| How to Push a Car | p. 59 |
| Positive Feedback | p. 62 |
| The Drunkard's Walk | p. 64 |
| Faking It | p. 66 |
| The Flaw of Averages | p. 69 |
| The Origami of the Universe | p. 71 |
| Easy and Hard Problems | p. 73 |
| Is This a Record? | p. 76 |
| A Do-It-Yourself Lottery | p. 79 |
| I Do Not Believe It! | p. 81 |
| Flash Fires | p. 83 |
| The Secretary Problem | p. 86 |
| Fair Divorce Settlements: the Win-Win Solution | p. 90 |
| Many Happy Returns | p. 93 |
| Tilting at Windmills | p. 96 |
| Verbal Conjuring | p. 99 |
| Financial Investment with Time Travellers | p. 101 |
| A Thought for Your Pennies | p. 104 |
| Breaking the Law of Averages | p. 107 |
| How Long are Things Likely to Survive? | p. 109 |
| A President who Preferred the Triangle to the Pentagon | p. 112 |
| Secret Codes in Your Pocket | p. 116 |
| I've Got a Terrible Memory for Names | p. 120 |
| Calculus Makes You Live Longer | p. 122 |
| Getting in a Flap | p. 124 |
| Your Number's Up | p. 127 |
| Double Your Money | p. 129 |
| Some Reflections on Faces | p. 131 |
| The Most Infamous Mathematician | p. 135 |
| Roller Coasters and Motorway Junctions | p. 139 |
| A Taylor-made Explosion | p. 143 |
| Walk Please, Don't Run! | p. 146 |
| Mind-reading Tricks | p. 148 |
| The Planet of the Deceivers | p. 150 |
| How to Win the Lottery | p. 152 |
| A Truly Weird Football Match | p. 155 |
| An Arch Problem | p. 157 |
| Counting in Eights | p. 159 |
| Getting a Mandate | p. 161 |
| The Two-headed League | p. 164 |
| Creating Something out of Nothing | p. 166 |
| How to Rig an Election | p. 169 |
| The Swing of the Pendulum | p. 172 |
| A Bike with Square Wheels | p. 174 |
| How Many Guards Does an Art Gallery Need? | p. 176 |
| ...and What About a Prison? | p. 181 |
| A Snooker Trick Shot | p. 183 |
| Brothers and Sisters | p. 186 |
| Playing Fair with a Biased Coin | p. 189 |
| The Wonders of Tautology | p. 191 |
| What a Racket | p. 193 |
| Packing Your Stuff | p. 197 |
| Sent Packing Again | p. 199 |
| Crouching Tiger | p. 204 |
| How the Leopard Got His Spots | p. 207 |
| The Madness of Crowds | p. 209 |
| Diamond Geezer | p. 212 |
| The Three Laws of Robotics | p. 216 |
| Thinking Outside the Box | p. 219 |
| Googling in the Caribbean - The Power of the Matrix | p. 222 |
| Loss Aversion | p. 226 |
| The Lead in Your Pencil | p. 228 |
| Testing Spaghetti to Destruction | p. 230 |
| The Gherkin | p. 232 |
| Being Mean with the Price Index | p. 235 |
| Omniscience can be a Liability | p. 238 |
| Why People aren't Cleverer | p. 240 |
| The Man from Underground | p. 242 |
| There are No Uninteresting Numbers | p. 244 |
| Incognito | p. 246 |
| The Ice Skating Paradox | p. 249 |
| The Rule of Two | p. 252 |
| Segregation and Micromotives | p. 254 |
| Not Going with the Flow | p. 256 |
| Venn Vill They Ever Learn | p. 258 |
| Some Benefits of Irrationality | p. 261 |
| Strange Formulae | p. 266 |
| Chaos | p. 270 |
| All Aboard | p. 273 |
| The Global Village | p. 276 |
| Notes | p. 279 |
| Table of Contents provided by Ingram. All Rights Reserved. |
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