Humble Pi by Matt Parker

We would all be better off if everyone saw mathematics as a practical ally. Sadly, most of us fear maths and seek to avoid it. This is because mathematics doesn't have good 'people skills' - it never hesitates to bluntly point out when we are wrong. But it is only trying to help! Mathematics is a friend which can fill the gaps in what our brains can do naturally. Luckily, even though we don't like sharing our own mistakes, we love to read about what happens when maths errors make the everyday go horribly wrong. Matt Parker explores and explains near misses and mishaps with planes, bridges, the internet and big data as a way of showing us not only how important maths is, but how we can use it to our advantage. This comedy of errors is a brilliantly told series of disaster stories with a happy ending.

Yippee ki yay number function!

The recipe is repetitive, but execution is well made and funny.

I won this book through the Goodreads giveaways, and I'm really glad I did. It's not something I would normally buy, but as a math teacher, when I saw it on the giveaway list, I thought it might be something fun. It was! I tell my kids all the time that everyone makes mistakes, and we should be celebrating those, analyzing them, learning from them. This book gets that.

Mind you the mistakes here range from the comedic (Did you know Ghandi in the Civilization games is a jerk because of a math error?) to the unimaginably tragic, so “celebrate” may be the wrong word, but the thesis is that people should not necessarily be punished for making mistakes. Generally, a lot of things have to go wrong for a mistake, a lot of people and arbitrary acts of fate share the blame, and when we punish people for mistakes, we only end up with people who “don't make mistakes” i.e., are good at avoiding blame and covering up mistakes. These mistakes aren't learned from and are destined to be repeated.

This is all told through Matt Parker's easy to understand, often humorous, TED talk style voice. Even if you're not a math expert (I'm a math teacher, but only through 5th grade... don't test me beyond that), Parker makes it very easy to understand the basics of the principles involved in the many stories. Check this out if you enjoy math, random trivia, or TED talks, and as I always tell my students, check your work!

Pretty fun read! More IT-focused than expected, and I've heard of many of the examples from the book but it was very entertaining (and scary) nonetheless.