Product Description

Explodes the myth that maths is best left to the geeks. Covering subjects from adding to algebra, from set theory to statistics, and from logarithms to logical paradoxes, this title explains how mathematical ideas underpin just about everything in our lives. It also explains the strategy of how best to gamble in a casino.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #52102 in Books
• Published on: 2010-04-05
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 448 pages

Features

• New
• Mint Condition
• Dispatch same day for order received before 12 noon
• Guaranteed packaging
• No quibbles returns

Review
In a charming, conversational prose style, and with diagrams to ease brain stress, he draws us into a forbidding world, often going into the history of famous bits of maths, including the origins of Tetris and Rubik's Cube.

The most immediately fascinating chapter is on the application of probability theory to gambling, with insights into slot machines, insurance, lotteries and a neat explanation of Pascal's wager on the existence of God. --Metro

What Bellos calls "the wow factor" of mathematics leaps out at the reader from every page ... The stories prove so engaging, the personalities so colorful, that readers may forget
they are mastering some powerful mathematical concepts. --Booklist

`A mathematical wonder that will leave you hooked on numbers' --Daily Telegraph

`Spectacularly successful introduction to the excitement and wonder of mathematics.' --Sunday Times

`He renders the world of numbers accessible and captivating' --Daily Express

`A truly marvellous survey of modern mathematics' --Martin Gardner, for more than 25 years author of the 'Mathematical Games' column in Scientific American

`An unforgettable journey of intellectual discovery'
--Apostolos Doxiadis, author of Logicomix and Uncle Petros and Goldbach's Conjecture

Starting with chapter zero, all twelve chapters are a fascinating exploration of the wonders of maths.
--City A.M Newspaper

About the Author
Alex Bellos has a degree in Mathematics and Philosophy from Oxford University. He has worked for the Guardian in London and Rio de Janeiro, where he was the paper's unusually numerate foreign correspondent. In 2002 he wrote a critically acclaimed book about Brazilian football and in 2006 ghostwrote Pele's autobiography, which was a number one bestseller.