Humble Pi A Comedy of Maths Errors
Ratings66
Average rating4.1
Excellent book for math lovers and even otherwise. Lots of interesting stories around Math errors in real life.
Interesting selection of math errors (and a good math refresher in general) showing how small errors can have big consequences.
Occasionally digressing too much (for my taste). I will most likely use it every now and then as a reference.
Przyjemna, rozrywkowa lektura, ale większość przykładów jest już dość dobrze znana. Kilka tematów warto sobie dodatkowo rozgryźć w sieci.
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.
An amusing yet sobering read on how small errors lurk into seemingly routine or simple engineering work and sometimes lead to tragic results.
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!
I really like Parker's youtube content, and decided I should support him by buying his book! Unfortunately there is no kindle version available, and shipping of physical books doesn't work during CoVID, so I had to pirate it. Sorry Matt, though if you read this, I'd be more than happy to send you (or a charity) the cash!
Writing about math is a terribly difficult job. The vast majority of the population doesn't give a shit, and the people who do probably already know the things you're going to tell them. We're all starved for good math content! Humble Pi's target audience appears to be “people who liked math in high-school, and haven't touched it since. “ It's got enough detail of the math problems to catch your attention, but not enough to actually help you understand what's really happening here. You won't learn any math here, but you'll probably learn about some things to wikipedia later. I liked a lot of the intuitive explanations of some of the described phenomena, but overall felt the book was lacking in substance.
If you follow Parker on youtube, this book doesn't have much to offer you, and his book persona doesn't come off as being as fun as his online one. I'd suggest giving this book a skip, but checking out his videos online instead.
A very interesting and funny math adventure. I learned a lot while I had a lot of fun.
Maths errors and geeky humor. A combination that works for me. Very entertaining book.