How Not to Be Wrong
Paperback edition
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| Author | Jordan Ellenberg |
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| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Mathematics |
| Publisher | Penguin Group |
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Publication date
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May 29, 2014 |
| Media type | |
| Pages | 468 pp. |
| ISBN | |
How Not to Be Wrong: The Power of Mathematical Thinking, written by Jordan Ellenberg, is a book that connects various economic and socialistic philosophies with basic mathematics and statistical principles.
How Not to Be Wrong explains the mathematics behind some of simplest day-to-day thinking. It then goes into more complex decisions people make. For example, Ellenberg explains many misconceptions about lotteries and whether or not they can be mathematically beaten.
Ellenberg uses mathematics to examine real-world issues ranging from the fetishizing of straight lines in the reporting of obesity to the game theory of missing flights, from the relevance to digestion of regression to the mean to the counter-intuitive Berkson's paradox.
Bill Gates endorsed How Not to Be Wrong and included it in his 2016 "5 Books to Read This Summer" list. Please visit www.gatesnotes.com
The Washington Post reported that the book is “brilliantly engaging… part of the sheer intellectual joy of the book is watching the author leap nimbly from topic to topic, comparing slime molds to the Bush–Gore Florida vote, criminology to Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. The final effect is of one enormous mosaic unified by mathematics.”
The Wall Street Journal said, “Mr. Ellenberg writes, a kind of 'X-ray specs that reveal hidden structures underneath the messy and chaotic surface of the world.”The Guardian wrote, “Ellenberg's prose is a delight – informal and robust, irreverent yet serious.”How Not to Be Wrong has also garnered reviews from The New York Times, Kirkus Reviews, Times Higher Education, Salon, Scientific American, Publishers Weekly, among others.
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