'Lucid and entertaining. With barely an equation in sight, Numbercrunch makes a passionate case for how just a little bit more numeracy could help us all'
- Tom Whipple, The Times
'The perfect introduction to the power of mathematics - fluent, friendly and practical'
- Tim Harford, bestselling author of How to Make the World Add Up
In our hyper-modern world, we are bombarded with more facts, stats and information than ever before. So, what can we grasp hold of to make sense of it all?
Oliver Johnson reveals how mathematical thinking can help us understand the myriad data all around us. From the exponential growth of viruses to social media filter-bubbles; from share-price fluctuations to growth of computing power; from the datafication of our sports pages to quantifying climate change. Not to mention the things much closer to home: ever wondered when the best time is to leave a party? What are the chances of rain ruining your barbecue this weekend? How about which queue is the best to join in the supermarket?
Journeying through the three sections of Randomness, Structure, and Information, we meet a host of brilliant minds such Alan Turing, Enrico Fermi and Claude Shannon, and we learn the tools, tips and tricks to cut through the noise all around us - from the Law of Large Numbers to Entropy to Brownian Motion.
Lucid, surprising, and endlessly entertaining, Numbercrunch equips you with a definitive mathematician's toolkit to make sense of your world.
'Lucid and entertaining. With barely an equation in sight, Numbercrunch makes a passionate case for how just a little bit more numeracy could help us all'
- Tom Whipple, The Times
'The perfect introduction to the power of mathematics - fluent, friendly and practical'
- Tim Harford, bestselling author of How to Make the World Add Up
In our hyper-modern world, we are bombarded with more facts, stats and information than ever before. So, what can we grasp hold of to make sense of it all?
Oliver Johnson reveals how mathematical thinking can help us understand the myriad data all around us. From the exponential growth of viruses to social media filter-bubbles; from share-price fluctuations to growth of computing power; from the datafication of our sports pages to quantifying climate change. Not to mention the things much closer to home: ever wondered when the best time is to leave a party? What are the chances of rain ruining your barbecue this weekend? How about which queue is the best to join in the supermarket?
Journeying through the three sections of Randomness, Structure, and Information, we meet a host of brilliant minds such Alan Turing, Enrico Fermi and Claude Shannon, and we learn the tools, tips and tricks to cut through the noise all around us - from the Law of Large Numbers to Entropy to Brownian Motion.
Lucid, surprising, and endlessly entertaining, Numbercrunch equips you with a definitive mathematician's toolkit to make sense of your world.
This is a mathematician's toolkit for cutting through wall-to-wall information overload and making sense of our modern world.
Oliver Johnson is Professor of Information Theory in the Institute for Statistical Science in the School of Mathematics at the University of Bristol. He was previously a research fellow at the University of Cambridge and Fellow of Christ's College, Cambridge. He has frequently appeared on BBC Radio 4 and written for the Spectator, and has been quoted in a variety of newspapers including The Times, Guardian, Daily Telegraph and New York Times. Oliver is on Twitter as @BristOliver, where he tweets about maths, music and Aston Villa. He lives in Bristol.
The perfect introduction to the power of mathematics - fluent,
friendly and practical.
*Tim Harford, author of 'How to Make the World Add Up'*
A clear, straightforward, informative guide to understanding
numbers. I wish I'd read it years ago.
*Tom Chivers, author of 'How to Read Numbers'*
An excellent, straightforward introduction to usefulness of
numbers, which gets to the heart of why maths is so important to
all of us.
*David Sumpter, author of 'The Ten Equations that Rule the
World'*
A fine and valuable read. Johnson applies careful analysis and
great common sense to an extraordinary range of applications of
mathematical ideas, from football to filter bubbles - explaining
formal ideas with minimum technicalities, and weighing their
relevance to the real world.
*David Spiegelhalter, author of 'The Art of Statistics'*
Lucid and entertaining. With barely an equation in sight,
Numbercrunch makes a passionate case for how just a little bit more
numeracy could help us all.
*Tom Whipple, Science Editor, 'The Times'*
Numbers don't lie but they often speak a foreign language.
Professor Oliver Johnson is a superb maths-whisperer on a mission
to arm his readers with the tools to distinguish sound claims from
the many phoney ones that bombard us every day. Numbercrunch is an
invaluable addition to the modern baloney-detection kit.
*Ananyo Bhattacharya, author of 'The Man from the Future'*
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