Numbercrunch : 12 Ways Numbers Make Sense of the World

This is a mathematician's toolkit for cutting through wall-to-wall information overload and making sense of our modern world.

<p><b>'Lucid and entertaining. With barely an equation in sight, Numbercrunch makes a passionate case for how just a little bit more numeracy could help us all' </b><br><b>- Tom Whipple, <i>The Times</i></b><br><br><b>'The perfect introduction to the power of mathematics - fluent, friendly and practical' </b><br><b>- Tim Harford, bestselling author of <i>How to Make the World Add Up</i></b><br><br>In our hyper-modern world, we are bombarded with more facts, stats and information than ever before. So, what can we grasp hold of to make sense of it all? <br><br>Oliver Johnson reveals how mathematical thinking can help us understand the myriad data all around us. From the exponential growth of viruses to social media filter-bubbles; from share-price fluctuations to growth of computing power; from the datafication of our sports pages to quantifying climate change. Not to mention the things much closer to home: ever wondered when the best time is to leave a party? What are the chances of rain ruining your barbecue this weekend? How about which queue is the best to join in the supermarket?<br><br>Journeying through the three sections of Randomness, Structure, and Information, we meet a host of brilliant minds such Alan Turing, Enrico Fermi and Claude Shannon, and we learn the tools, tips and tricks to cut through the noise all around us - from the Law of Large Numbers to Entropy to Brownian Motion. <br><br>Lucid, surprising, and endlessly entertaining, <i>Numbercrunch</i> equips you with a definitive mathematician's toolkit to make sense of your world.</p>