A Numerate Life: A Mathematician Explores the Vagaries of Life, His Own and Probably Yours, by John Allen Paulos
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A Numerate Life: A Mathematician Explores the Vagaries of Life, His Own and Probably Yours, by John Allen Paulos
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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 biography 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 vignettes serve as springboards to many telling perspectives: simple arithmetic puts life-long 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.
A Numerate Life: A Mathematician Explores the Vagaries of Life, His Own and Probably Yours, by John Allen Paulos - Amazon Sales Rank: #90667 in Books
- Published on: 2015-11-10
- Released on: 2015-11-10
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 9.00" h x .52" w x 6.00" l, .81 pounds
- Binding: Paperback
- 200 pages
A Numerate Life: A Mathematician Explores the Vagaries of Life, His Own and Probably Yours, by John Allen Paulos Review "There's nothing more enlightening than a view of life's nuances as seen through the lens of a mathematician. Especially when that mathematician is John Allen Paulos, a brilliant educator who persistently empowers the reader to think in ways that render transparent much of what is opaque in the world around us."―NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON, Astrophysicist, American Museum of Natural History“A Numerate Life is the engaging history of a mathematical mind. As always, John Paulos displays his genius for making the abstract and abstruse entirely intuitive.” —SYLVIA NASAR, author of A Beautiful Mind “A quirky and surprisingly poignant book about the struggle to make sense of one’s own life story. With the help of logic and statistical reasoning, Paulos shines a light on the paradoxes and delusions that so often bedevil our remembrance of things past. Where Proust had his madeleine, Paulos has math.” —STEVEN STROGATZ, professor of mathematics, Cornell University, and author of The Joy of X “American editor Ellery Sedgwick wrote once that ‘autobiographies ought to begin with Chapter Two.’ I believe that had he read A Numerate Life, he would have agreed that Chapter One is no less fascinating than any other chapter in this wonderful book. Paulos’s life is a rich tapestry embroidered with mathematical gems.” —MARIO LIVIO, astrophysicist, author of Brilliant Blunders and The Golden Ratio “In this gripping page-turner, John Allen Paulos surprises us once again, with a ‘memoir’ like no other memoir. He may not have made, as he claims, any ‘seminal contributions’ to mathematics, but his impact on ‘meta-mathematics,’ and the interface of math with the real world, far surpasses that of any single living mathematician. You will never be able to read biographies the same way again, since this is not yet-another-memoir, but a thought-provoking, path-breaking, ‘meta-memoir’ and even ‘anti-memoir.’” —DORON ZEILBERGER, Board of Governors professor of Mathematics, Rutgers University, and winner of the Leroy P. Steele Prize and the Euler Medal in Mathematics
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.
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Most helpful customer reviews
8 of 8 people found the following review helpful. Simultaneously Thought-Provoking and Entertaining By James D. Stein John Allen Paulos, who has accomplished the unheard-of double of writing best-sellers about mathematics and inserting a word ('innumeracy') into the language, has attempted another ambitious feat – bringing mathematics to bear on one of the few subjects it has yet to examine: biography and autobiography. A Numerate Life (Prometheus Books, 2015) is simultaneously a charming memoir and a highly entertaining venture into mathematics, literature, and philosophy. This is one of those rare books that, when you have finished a section, you are torn between going on to the next section and re-reading the last section to make sure that you got everything out of it. The subtitle of the book is "A Mathematician Explores the Vagaries of Life, His Own and Probably Yours". You'll be a little skeptical about that subtitle before you read the book, but when you finish it, you'll realize the subtitle nails it — he's talking, not just about himself, but about you. A fascinating read.
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful. A Numerate Life Delivers! By Amazon Customer In his latest book John Allen Paulos brings to bear his considerable experience and expertise in the world of mathematics and applies it to the world of biography and autobiography. Displaying the wit and wisdom and humor that have been the hallmark of his previous eight books, Paulos asks if we can ever truly know ourselves objectively and quantifiably. Conversely the author seems to state how easy it is to know ourselves and others given quantifiable fields.Utilizing topology, scaling, statistics and probability Mr. Paulos suggests that each life is different, and yet, via the benefit of scaling, each life is very much the same. To wrap that idea up in a paragraph las short as this makes the authors findings seem trite, however, they are anything but!!Consider, Mr. Paulos says, an autobiography or even an authorized biography of some "famous" person. Such a biography will only include relevant points to show the famous person's rise to their current celebrity while discounting the outliers, the unusable data, the "small stories" which may provide a more consistent or variable "take" on he person in question! Using statistics Paulos suggests that each life is very much the same in its move forward and its disregard for the outliers. How much do we lose in that disregard for the outliers? Perhaps nothing. Perhaps everything. Even outliers need quantification!Neither completely mathematical instruction, nor autobiography Mr. Paulos' slim book - weighing in at 188 pages, plus notes - provides some curious and thoughtful insight into his life and into our lives. Grounded with firm mathematical knowledge, Mr. Paulos runs the gamut from the mundane - deciding whether the toilet seats should be up or down, establishing a policy or poolicy or even peelicy - to the abstract and almost to the sublime - I considered for a very long time Mr. Paulos' line; "....personal identity is a nominal, evanescent thing and not an unchanging essence that adheres to us throughout our lives."Buy this book! Read it, be challenged by it, throw it down in disgust or confusion, pick it up again in thoughtful consideration and treasure your gleanings. And then finally give thanks for it. It's not every day that someone so intelligent and humble and humorous and gracious gives you this much time and consideration and shares so much.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful. A wonderful meta-memoir By Sinai Robins John Allen Paulos is witty, light, eloquently introspective, and uses his mathematical mind to assess his life-experiences, from his parents and childhood experiences, to random chances in life, stock markets, card tricks, and more. It was an endearing book to cuddle up with, very human, and accessible to all of us.In the current world, where mathematics has become, and will continue to become, increasingly important this book hits a subtle and important balance between our humanity, our finite lives, our smiles, our love, and our frailties, with the power and elegance of mathematics and how it pertains to our daily lives in ways that we may not realize. Paulos admits all of these things about himself, and indeed how all of them often pertain to the rest of us as well.
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A Numerate Life: A Mathematician Explores the Vagaries of Life, His Own and Probably Yours, by John Allen Paulos
A Numerate Life: A Mathematician Explores the Vagaries of Life, His Own and Probably Yours, by John Allen Paulos
A Numerate Life: A Mathematician Explores the Vagaries of Life, His Own and Probably Yours, by John Allen Paulos
