Author: Hannah Fry
Publisher: Abrams
ISBN: 1468316133
Category : Mathematics
Languages : en
Pages : 193
Book Description
Two merry mathematicians explore the geometry of gift-wrapping, board game theory, and much more in this hilarious holiday treat. How do you apply game theory to select who should be on your Christmas shopping list? What equations should you use to decorate the Christmas tree? Will calculations show Santa is getting steadily thinner—shimmying up and down chimneys for a whole night—or fatter—as he munches on cookies and milk in billions of houses across the world? In The Indisputable Existence of Santa Claus, distinguished mathematicians Hannah Fry and Thomas Oléron Evans demonstrate, with eminently readable clarity, how applied mathematics are so thoroughly interwoven throughout our everyday lives by explaining mathematical concepts through one very merry motif: Christmas. In their quest to provide mathematical proof for the existence of Santa, the authors take readers on a festive journey through a traditional holiday season, wherein every activity, from wrapping presents to playing board games to cooking the perfect turkey, is painstakingly and hilariously analyzed. Because who hasn’t always wondered how to set up a mathematically perfect Secret Santa? Lighthearted and diverting with Christmasy diagrams, sketches and graphs, equations, Markov chains, and matrices, The Indisputable Existence of Santa Claus brightens up the bleak midwinter with a stockingful of mathematical marvels.
The Indisputable Existence of Santa Claus
Author: Hannah Fry
Publisher: Abrams
ISBN: 1468316133
Category : Mathematics
Languages : en
Pages : 193
Book Description
Two merry mathematicians explore the geometry of gift-wrapping, board game theory, and much more in this hilarious holiday treat. How do you apply game theory to select who should be on your Christmas shopping list? What equations should you use to decorate the Christmas tree? Will calculations show Santa is getting steadily thinner—shimmying up and down chimneys for a whole night—or fatter—as he munches on cookies and milk in billions of houses across the world? In The Indisputable Existence of Santa Claus, distinguished mathematicians Hannah Fry and Thomas Oléron Evans demonstrate, with eminently readable clarity, how applied mathematics are so thoroughly interwoven throughout our everyday lives by explaining mathematical concepts through one very merry motif: Christmas. In their quest to provide mathematical proof for the existence of Santa, the authors take readers on a festive journey through a traditional holiday season, wherein every activity, from wrapping presents to playing board games to cooking the perfect turkey, is painstakingly and hilariously analyzed. Because who hasn’t always wondered how to set up a mathematically perfect Secret Santa? Lighthearted and diverting with Christmasy diagrams, sketches and graphs, equations, Markov chains, and matrices, The Indisputable Existence of Santa Claus brightens up the bleak midwinter with a stockingful of mathematical marvels.
Publisher: Abrams
ISBN: 1468316133
Category : Mathematics
Languages : en
Pages : 193
Book Description
Two merry mathematicians explore the geometry of gift-wrapping, board game theory, and much more in this hilarious holiday treat. How do you apply game theory to select who should be on your Christmas shopping list? What equations should you use to decorate the Christmas tree? Will calculations show Santa is getting steadily thinner—shimmying up and down chimneys for a whole night—or fatter—as he munches on cookies and milk in billions of houses across the world? In The Indisputable Existence of Santa Claus, distinguished mathematicians Hannah Fry and Thomas Oléron Evans demonstrate, with eminently readable clarity, how applied mathematics are so thoroughly interwoven throughout our everyday lives by explaining mathematical concepts through one very merry motif: Christmas. In their quest to provide mathematical proof for the existence of Santa, the authors take readers on a festive journey through a traditional holiday season, wherein every activity, from wrapping presents to playing board games to cooking the perfect turkey, is painstakingly and hilariously analyzed. Because who hasn’t always wondered how to set up a mathematically perfect Secret Santa? Lighthearted and diverting with Christmasy diagrams, sketches and graphs, equations, Markov chains, and matrices, The Indisputable Existence of Santa Claus brightens up the bleak midwinter with a stockingful of mathematical marvels.
The Mathematics of Love
Author: Hannah Fry
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1476784892
Category : Family & Relationships
Languages : en
Pages : 128
Book Description
In this must-have for anyone who wants to better understand their love life, a mathematician pulls back the curtain and reveals the hidden patterns—from dating sites to divorce, sex to marriage—behind the rituals of love. The roller coaster of romance is hard to quantify; defining how lovers might feel from a set of simple equations is impossible. But that doesn’t mean that mathematics isn’t a crucial tool for understanding love. Love, like most things in life, is full of patterns. And mathematics is ultimately the study of patterns—from predicting the weather to the fluctuations of the stock market, the movement of planets or the growth of cities. These patterns twist and turn and warp and evolve just as the rituals of love do. In The Mathematics of Love, Dr. Hannah Fry takes the reader on a fascinating journey through the patterns that define our love lives, applying mathematical formulas to the most common yet complex questions pertaining to love: What’s the chance of finding love? What’s the probability that it will last? How do online dating algorithms work, exactly? Can game theory help us decide who to approach in a bar? At what point in your dating life should you settle down? From evaluating the best strategies for online dating to defining the nebulous concept of beauty, Dr. Fry proves—with great insight, wit, and fun—that math is a surprisingly useful tool to negotiate the complicated, often baffling, sometimes infuriating, always interesting, mysteries of love.
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1476784892
Category : Family & Relationships
Languages : en
Pages : 128
Book Description
In this must-have for anyone who wants to better understand their love life, a mathematician pulls back the curtain and reveals the hidden patterns—from dating sites to divorce, sex to marriage—behind the rituals of love. The roller coaster of romance is hard to quantify; defining how lovers might feel from a set of simple equations is impossible. But that doesn’t mean that mathematics isn’t a crucial tool for understanding love. Love, like most things in life, is full of patterns. And mathematics is ultimately the study of patterns—from predicting the weather to the fluctuations of the stock market, the movement of planets or the growth of cities. These patterns twist and turn and warp and evolve just as the rituals of love do. In The Mathematics of Love, Dr. Hannah Fry takes the reader on a fascinating journey through the patterns that define our love lives, applying mathematical formulas to the most common yet complex questions pertaining to love: What’s the chance of finding love? What’s the probability that it will last? How do online dating algorithms work, exactly? Can game theory help us decide who to approach in a bar? At what point in your dating life should you settle down? From evaluating the best strategies for online dating to defining the nebulous concept of beauty, Dr. Fry proves—with great insight, wit, and fun—that math is a surprisingly useful tool to negotiate the complicated, often baffling, sometimes infuriating, always interesting, mysteries of love.
The Complete Guide to Absolutely Everything (Abridged)
Author: Adam Rutherford
Publisher: National Geographic Books
ISBN: 1324051035
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 0
Book Description
The complete story of the universe and absolutely everything in it (minus the boring parts). Despite our clever linguistic abilities, humans are spectacularly ill-equipped to comprehend what’s happening in the universe. Our senses and intuition routinely mislead us. The Complete Guide to Absolutely Everything (Abridged) tells the story of how we came to suppress our monkey minds and perceive the true nature of reality. Written with wit and humor, this brief book tells the story of science—tales of fumbles and missteps, errors and egos, hard work, accidents, and some really bad decisions—all of which have created the sum total of human knowledge. Geneticist Adam Rutherford and mathematician Hannah Fry guide readers through time and space, through our bodies and brains, showing how emotions shape our view of reality, how our minds tell us lies, and why a mostly bald and curious ape decided to begin poking at the fabric of the universe. Rutherford and Fry shine as science sleuths, wrestling with some truly head-scratching questions: Where did time come from? Do we have free will? Does my dog love me? Hilarious sidebars present memorable scientific oddities: for example, hypnotized snails, human-sized ants, and the average time it takes most animals to evacuate their bladders. (A surprisingly consistent twenty-one seconds, if you must know.) Both rigorous and playful, The Complete Guide to Absolutely Everything (Abridged) is a celebration of the weirdness of the cosmos, the strangeness of humans, and the joys and follies of scientific discovery.
Publisher: National Geographic Books
ISBN: 1324051035
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 0
Book Description
The complete story of the universe and absolutely everything in it (minus the boring parts). Despite our clever linguistic abilities, humans are spectacularly ill-equipped to comprehend what’s happening in the universe. Our senses and intuition routinely mislead us. The Complete Guide to Absolutely Everything (Abridged) tells the story of how we came to suppress our monkey minds and perceive the true nature of reality. Written with wit and humor, this brief book tells the story of science—tales of fumbles and missteps, errors and egos, hard work, accidents, and some really bad decisions—all of which have created the sum total of human knowledge. Geneticist Adam Rutherford and mathematician Hannah Fry guide readers through time and space, through our bodies and brains, showing how emotions shape our view of reality, how our minds tell us lies, and why a mostly bald and curious ape decided to begin poking at the fabric of the universe. Rutherford and Fry shine as science sleuths, wrestling with some truly head-scratching questions: Where did time come from? Do we have free will? Does my dog love me? Hilarious sidebars present memorable scientific oddities: for example, hypnotized snails, human-sized ants, and the average time it takes most animals to evacuate their bladders. (A surprisingly consistent twenty-one seconds, if you must know.) Both rigorous and playful, The Complete Guide to Absolutely Everything (Abridged) is a celebration of the weirdness of the cosmos, the strangeness of humans, and the joys and follies of scientific discovery.
Can Reindeer Fly?
Author: Roger Highfield
Publisher: Weidenfeld & Nicolson
ISBN: 147460272X
Category : Humor
Languages : en
Pages : 325
Book Description
How does snow form? Why are we always depressed after Christmas? How does Santa manage to deliver all those presents in one night? (He has, in fact, little over two ten-thousandths of a second to get between each of the 842 million households he must visit.) This book contains information on how drugs might make us see flying reindeer, how pollution is affecting the shape of Christmas trees, and the intriguing correlation between the length of our Christmas card list and brain size.
Publisher: Weidenfeld & Nicolson
ISBN: 147460272X
Category : Humor
Languages : en
Pages : 325
Book Description
How does snow form? Why are we always depressed after Christmas? How does Santa manage to deliver all those presents in one night? (He has, in fact, little over two ten-thousandths of a second to get between each of the 842 million households he must visit.) This book contains information on how drugs might make us see flying reindeer, how pollution is affecting the shape of Christmas trees, and the intriguing correlation between the length of our Christmas card list and brain size.
Hello World
Author: Hannah Fry
Publisher: Black Swan Books, Limited
ISBN: 9781784163068
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 0
Book Description
_______________ 'One of the best books yet written on data and algorithms. . .deserves a place on the bestseller charts.' (The Times) You are accused of a crime. Who would you rather determined your fate - a human or an algorithm? An algorithm is more consistent and less prone to error of judgement. Yet a human can look you in the eye before passing sentence. Welcome to the age of the algorithm, the story of a not-too-distant future where machines rule supreme, making important decisions - in healthcare, transport, finance, security, what we watch, where we go even who we send to prison. So how much should we rely on them? What kind of future do we want? Hannah Fry takes us on a tour of the good, the bad and the downright ugly of the algorithms that surround us. In Hello World she lifts the lid on their inner workings, demonstrates their power, exposes their limitations, and examines whether they really are an improvement on the humans they are replacing. A BBC RADIO 4- BOOK OF THE WEEK SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2018 BAILLIE GIFFORD PRIZE AND 2018 ROYAL SOCIETY SCIENCE BOOK PRIZE
Publisher: Black Swan Books, Limited
ISBN: 9781784163068
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 0
Book Description
_______________ 'One of the best books yet written on data and algorithms. . .deserves a place on the bestseller charts.' (The Times) You are accused of a crime. Who would you rather determined your fate - a human or an algorithm? An algorithm is more consistent and less prone to error of judgement. Yet a human can look you in the eye before passing sentence. Welcome to the age of the algorithm, the story of a not-too-distant future where machines rule supreme, making important decisions - in healthcare, transport, finance, security, what we watch, where we go even who we send to prison. So how much should we rely on them? What kind of future do we want? Hannah Fry takes us on a tour of the good, the bad and the downright ugly of the algorithms that surround us. In Hello World she lifts the lid on their inner workings, demonstrates their power, exposes their limitations, and examines whether they really are an improvement on the humans they are replacing. A BBC RADIO 4- BOOK OF THE WEEK SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2018 BAILLIE GIFFORD PRIZE AND 2018 ROYAL SOCIETY SCIENCE BOOK PRIZE
Rutherford and Fry's Complete Guide to Absolutely Everything (Abridged)
Author: Adam Rutherford
Publisher: Corgi
ISBN: 9780552176712
Category : Body, Mind & Spirit
Languages : en
Pages : 0
Book Description
In Rutherford and Fry's comprehensive guidebook, they tell the complete story of the universe and absolutely everything in it - skipping over some of the boring parts. This is a celebration of the weirdness of the cosmos, the strangeness of humans and the fact that amid all the mess, we can somehow make sense of life. Our brains have evolved to tell us all sorts of things that feel intuitively right but just aren't true- the world looks flat, the stars seem fixed in the heavenly firmament, a day is 24 hours... This book is crammed full of tales of how stuff really works. With the power of science, Rutherford and Fry show us how to bypass our monkey-brains, taking us on a journey from the origin of time and space, via planets, galaxies, evolution, the dinosaurs, all the way into our minds, and wrestling with some truly head-scratching questions that only science can answer- What is time, and where does it come from? Why are animals the size and shape they are? What is a thought? How horoscopes work (Spoiler- they don't, but you think they do) Does my dog love me? Why nothing is truly round Do you need your eyes to see?
Publisher: Corgi
ISBN: 9780552176712
Category : Body, Mind & Spirit
Languages : en
Pages : 0
Book Description
In Rutherford and Fry's comprehensive guidebook, they tell the complete story of the universe and absolutely everything in it - skipping over some of the boring parts. This is a celebration of the weirdness of the cosmos, the strangeness of humans and the fact that amid all the mess, we can somehow make sense of life. Our brains have evolved to tell us all sorts of things that feel intuitively right but just aren't true- the world looks flat, the stars seem fixed in the heavenly firmament, a day is 24 hours... This book is crammed full of tales of how stuff really works. With the power of science, Rutherford and Fry show us how to bypass our monkey-brains, taking us on a journey from the origin of time and space, via planets, galaxies, evolution, the dinosaurs, all the way into our minds, and wrestling with some truly head-scratching questions that only science can answer- What is time, and where does it come from? Why are animals the size and shape they are? What is a thought? How horoscopes work (Spoiler- they don't, but you think they do) Does my dog love me? Why nothing is truly round Do you need your eyes to see?
Humble Pi
Author: Matt Parker
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0593084683
Category : Mathematics
Languages : en
Pages : 338
Book Description
#1 INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER AN ADAM SAVAGE BOOK CLUB PICK The book-length answer to anyone who ever put their hand up in math class and asked, “When am I ever going to use this in the real world?” “Fun, informative, and relentlessly entertaining, Humble Pi is a charming and very readable guide to some of humanity's all-time greatest miscalculations—that also gives you permission to feel a little better about some of your own mistakes.” —Ryan North, author of How to Invent Everything Our whole world is built on math, from the code running a website to the equations enabling the design of skyscrapers and bridges. Most of the time this math works quietly behind the scenes . . . until it doesn’t. All sorts of seemingly innocuous mathematical mistakes can have significant consequences. Math is easy to ignore until a misplaced decimal point upends the stock market, a unit conversion error causes a plane to crash, or someone divides by zero and stalls a battleship in the middle of the ocean. Exploring and explaining a litany of glitches, near misses, and mathematical mishaps involving the internet, big data, elections, street signs, lotteries, the Roman Empire, and an Olympic team, Matt Parker uncovers the bizarre ways math trips us up, and what this reveals about its essential place in our world. Getting it wrong has never been more fun.
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0593084683
Category : Mathematics
Languages : en
Pages : 338
Book Description
#1 INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER AN ADAM SAVAGE BOOK CLUB PICK The book-length answer to anyone who ever put their hand up in math class and asked, “When am I ever going to use this in the real world?” “Fun, informative, and relentlessly entertaining, Humble Pi is a charming and very readable guide to some of humanity's all-time greatest miscalculations—that also gives you permission to feel a little better about some of your own mistakes.” —Ryan North, author of How to Invent Everything Our whole world is built on math, from the code running a website to the equations enabling the design of skyscrapers and bridges. Most of the time this math works quietly behind the scenes . . . until it doesn’t. All sorts of seemingly innocuous mathematical mistakes can have significant consequences. Math is easy to ignore until a misplaced decimal point upends the stock market, a unit conversion error causes a plane to crash, or someone divides by zero and stalls a battleship in the middle of the ocean. Exploring and explaining a litany of glitches, near misses, and mathematical mishaps involving the internet, big data, elections, street signs, lotteries, the Roman Empire, and an Olympic team, Matt Parker uncovers the bizarre ways math trips us up, and what this reveals about its essential place in our world. Getting it wrong has never been more fun.
Things to Make and Do in the Fourth Dimension
Author: Matt Parker
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
ISBN: 0374710376
Category : Games & Activities
Languages : en
Pages : 465
Book Description
A book from the stand-up mathematician that makes math fun again! Math is boring, says the mathematician and comedian Matt Parker. Part of the problem may be the way the subject is taught, but it's also true that we all, to a greater or lesser extent, find math difficult and counterintuitive. This counterintuitiveness is actually part of the point, argues Parker: the extraordinary thing about math is that it allows us to access logic and ideas beyond what our brains can instinctively do—through its logical tools we are able to reach beyond our innate abilities and grasp more and more abstract concepts. In the absorbing and exhilarating Things to Make and Do in the Fourth Dimension, Parker sets out to convince his readers to revisit the very math that put them off the subject as fourteen-year-olds. Starting with the foundations of math familiar from school (numbers, geometry, and algebra), he reveals how it is possible to climb all the way up to the topology and to four-dimensional shapes, and from there to infinity—and slightly beyond. Both playful and sophisticated, Things to Make and Do in the Fourth Dimension is filled with captivating games and puzzles, a buffet of optional hands-on activities that entices us to take pleasure in math that is normally only available to those studying at a university level. Things to Make and Do in the Fourth Dimension invites us to re-learn much of what we missed in school and, this time, to be utterly enthralled by it.
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
ISBN: 0374710376
Category : Games & Activities
Languages : en
Pages : 465
Book Description
A book from the stand-up mathematician that makes math fun again! Math is boring, says the mathematician and comedian Matt Parker. Part of the problem may be the way the subject is taught, but it's also true that we all, to a greater or lesser extent, find math difficult and counterintuitive. This counterintuitiveness is actually part of the point, argues Parker: the extraordinary thing about math is that it allows us to access logic and ideas beyond what our brains can instinctively do—through its logical tools we are able to reach beyond our innate abilities and grasp more and more abstract concepts. In the absorbing and exhilarating Things to Make and Do in the Fourth Dimension, Parker sets out to convince his readers to revisit the very math that put them off the subject as fourteen-year-olds. Starting with the foundations of math familiar from school (numbers, geometry, and algebra), he reveals how it is possible to climb all the way up to the topology and to four-dimensional shapes, and from there to infinity—and slightly beyond. Both playful and sophisticated, Things to Make and Do in the Fourth Dimension is filled with captivating games and puzzles, a buffet of optional hands-on activities that entices us to take pleasure in math that is normally only available to those studying at a university level. Things to Make and Do in the Fourth Dimension invites us to re-learn much of what we missed in school and, this time, to be utterly enthralled by it.
Albion's Seed
Author: David Hackett Fischer
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 019974369X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 981
Book Description
This fascinating book is the first volume in a projected cultural history of the United States, from the earliest English settlements to our own time. It is a history of American folkways as they have changed through time, and it argues a thesis about the importance for the United States of having been British in its cultural origins. While most people in the United States today have no British ancestors, they have assimilated regional cultures which were created by British colonists, even while preserving ethnic identities at the same time. In this sense, nearly all Americans are "Albion's Seed," no matter what their ethnicity may be. The concluding section of this remarkable book explores the ways that regional cultures have continued to dominate national politics from 1789 to 1988, and still help to shape attitudes toward education, government, gender, and violence, on which differences between American regions are greater than between European nations.
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 019974369X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 981
Book Description
This fascinating book is the first volume in a projected cultural history of the United States, from the earliest English settlements to our own time. It is a history of American folkways as they have changed through time, and it argues a thesis about the importance for the United States of having been British in its cultural origins. While most people in the United States today have no British ancestors, they have assimilated regional cultures which were created by British colonists, even while preserving ethnic identities at the same time. In this sense, nearly all Americans are "Albion's Seed," no matter what their ethnicity may be. The concluding section of this remarkable book explores the ways that regional cultures have continued to dominate national politics from 1789 to 1988, and still help to shape attitudes toward education, government, gender, and violence, on which differences between American regions are greater than between European nations.
Blood Done Sign My Name
Author: Timothy B. Tyson
Publisher: Crown
ISBN: 0307419932
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 370
Book Description
The “riveting”* true story of the fiery summer of 1970, which would forever transform the town of Oxford, North Carolina—a classic portrait of the fight for civil rights in the tradition of To Kill a Mockingbird *Chicago Tribune On May 11, 1970, Henry Marrow, a twenty-three-year-old black veteran, walked into a crossroads store owned by Robert Teel and came out running. Teel and two of his sons chased and beat Marrow, then killed him in public as he pleaded for his life. Like many small Southern towns, Oxford had barely been touched by the civil rights movement. But in the wake of the killing, young African Americans took to the streets. While lawyers battled in the courthouse, the Klan raged in the shadows and black Vietnam veterans torched the town’s tobacco warehouses. Tyson’s father, the pastor of Oxford’s all-white Methodist church, urged the town to come to terms with its bloody racial history. In the end, however, the Tyson family was forced to move away. Tim Tyson’s gripping narrative brings gritty blues truth and soaring gospel vision to a shocking episode of our history. FINALIST FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD “If you want to read only one book to understand the uniquely American struggle for racial equality and the swirls of emotion around it, this is it.”—Milwaukee Journal Sentinel “Blood Done Sign My Name is a most important book and one of the most powerful meditations on race in America that I have ever read.”—Cleveland Plain Dealer “Pulses with vital paradox . . . It’s a detached dissertation, a damning dark-night-of-the-white-soul, and a ripping yarn, all united by Tyson’s powerful voice, a brainy, booming Bubba profundo.”—Entertainment Weekly “Engaging and frequently stunning.”—San Diego Union-Tribune
Publisher: Crown
ISBN: 0307419932
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 370
Book Description
The “riveting”* true story of the fiery summer of 1970, which would forever transform the town of Oxford, North Carolina—a classic portrait of the fight for civil rights in the tradition of To Kill a Mockingbird *Chicago Tribune On May 11, 1970, Henry Marrow, a twenty-three-year-old black veteran, walked into a crossroads store owned by Robert Teel and came out running. Teel and two of his sons chased and beat Marrow, then killed him in public as he pleaded for his life. Like many small Southern towns, Oxford had barely been touched by the civil rights movement. But in the wake of the killing, young African Americans took to the streets. While lawyers battled in the courthouse, the Klan raged in the shadows and black Vietnam veterans torched the town’s tobacco warehouses. Tyson’s father, the pastor of Oxford’s all-white Methodist church, urged the town to come to terms with its bloody racial history. In the end, however, the Tyson family was forced to move away. Tim Tyson’s gripping narrative brings gritty blues truth and soaring gospel vision to a shocking episode of our history. FINALIST FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD “If you want to read only one book to understand the uniquely American struggle for racial equality and the swirls of emotion around it, this is it.”—Milwaukee Journal Sentinel “Blood Done Sign My Name is a most important book and one of the most powerful meditations on race in America that I have ever read.”—Cleveland Plain Dealer “Pulses with vital paradox . . . It’s a detached dissertation, a damning dark-night-of-the-white-soul, and a ripping yarn, all united by Tyson’s powerful voice, a brainy, booming Bubba profundo.”—Entertainment Weekly “Engaging and frequently stunning.”—San Diego Union-Tribune