A Numerate Life : A Mathematician Explores the Vagaries of Life, His Own and Probably Yours

A Numerate Life : A Mathematician Explores the Vagaries of Life, His Own and Probably Yours
ISBN: 9781633881181
Publication Date: 1 February 2016

Employing intuitive ideas from mathematics, this quirky 'meta-memoir' raises questions about our lives that most of us don't think to ask, but arguably should: what part of memory is reliable fact, what part creative embellishment? Which favorite presuppositions are unfounded, which statistically biased? By conjoining two opposing mindsets--the suspension of disbelief required in storytelling and the skepticism inherent in the scientific method--bestselling mathematician John Allen Paulos has created an unusual hybrid, a composite of personal memories and mathematical approaches to re-evaluating them.

Entertaining vignettes from Paulos's life abound--ranging from a bullying math teacher and a fabulous collection of baseball cards to romantic crushes, a grandmother's petty larceny, and his quite unintended role in getting George Bush elected president in 2000. These stories serve as springboards to many telling perspectives, utilizing math as a vehicle: simple arithmetic puts lifelong habits in a dubious new light; higher dimensional geometry helps us see that we're all rather peculiar; nonlinear dynamics explains the narcissism of small differences cascading into very different siblings; logarithms and exponentials yield insight on why we tend to become bored and jaded as we age; and there are tricks and jokes, probability and coincidences, and much more.

For fans of Paulos or newcomers to his work, this witty commentary on his life--and yours--is fascinating reading.

About the Author

John Allen Paulos is a professor of mathematics at Temple University and the author of eight previous books, including the best-selling

Innumeracy and A Mathematician Reads the Newspaper.