Humble Pi

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!