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Humble Pi
A Comedy of Maths Errors
336 pages
A hilarious, eye-opening tour through the catastrophic and comical consequences of getting the math wrong.
What it feels like
Reading this book feels like sitting at a pub with your smartest, funniest friend as they gleefully recount the most spectacular ways humanity has messed up. The pace is brisk and episodic, bouncing from exploding rockets to wobbly bridges with an infectious, geeky enthusiasm. It cultivates a mood of lighthearted astonishment, making you laugh out loud while simultaneously instilling a mild, existential dread about the fragile numerical foundations of our modern world. The prose is incredibly accessible, stripping away the intimidation factor of mathematics and replacing it with pure, unadulterated curiosity. It is an absolute delight for trivia nerds, pop-science fans, and anyone who has ever made a silly mistake and wants to feel a little better about it.
- Mood
- lighthearted
- curious
- amused
- mind-boggling
- Tone
- wry
- enthusiastic
- geeky
- accessible
- self-deprecating
- Pace
- brisk
- Themes
- the fragility of modern systems · human fallibility · the hidden architecture of the world · finding joy in mistakes
- The writing
- Conversational, witty, and relentlessly engaging, breaking down complex concepts with the breezy charm of a favorite teacher.
- The arc
- Moves from amused curiosity at minor blunders to a profound, slightly terrified appreciation for the fragile mathematical threads holding our modern world together.
- Who it's for
- Curious minds, trivia lovers, and anyone who enjoys a good disaster story, regardless of their actual math skills.
Content notes
- descriptions of engineering disasters
- historical plane crashes
About the book
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.
Description from Open Library.
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