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100 Essential Things You Didn't Know You Didn't Know |  | Author: John D. Barrow
Publisher: Vintage Books
This item is no longer available
Rating:  7 reviews
Format: Import
Media: Paperback
Pages: 304
Number Of Items: 1
ISBN: 0099520427
EAN: 9780099520429
ASIN: 0099520427
Publication Date: February 23, 2010 (In 93 Days)
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Product Description
“If people do not believe that mathematics is simple, it is only because they do not realize how complicated life is.” –John von Neuman
Mathematics can tell you things about the world that can’t be learned in any other way. This hugely informative and wonderfully entertaining little book answers one hundred essential questions about existence. It unravels the knotty, clarifies the conundrums and sheds light onto dark corners. From winning the lottery, placing bets at the races and escaping from bears, to sports, Shakespeare, Google, game theory, drunks, divorce settlements and dodgy accounting. From chaos to infinity and everything in between, 100 Essential Things You Didn’t Know You Didn’t Know has all the answers!
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| Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 1-5 of 7
 Great book but the Kindle edition has no illustrations! November 8, 2009
Michael Bayne (Seattle, WA USA)
Numerous of the 100 essays in the book have illustrations which were strangely omitted from the Kindle version. It makes it rather annoying to have the text reference the illustration and have to simply imagine it in your mind. If you want to read this, I recommend taking the trouble to track down a paper copy.
Mathematical Solutions to Life's Conundrums October 5, 2009
Larry Underwood (Scottsdale, AZ)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
John D Barrow's interesting guide to the confusing world of mathematics helps clarify many of the conundrums of life; in the process, the reader becomes more knowledable about the tremendous impact mathematics has on virtually every human endeavor. Although the title is more than a bit confusing for me, it succeeds in establishing a solid foundation.
In the final analysis, mathematics can be applied to much more problem solving techniques than we perhaps ever thought possible. For anyone attempting to understand even more than one hundred essential things we never knew much about, this book delivers a wealth of information.
A treasure for math trivia, entertainingly written September 1, 2009
WT (Ridgecrest, CA USA)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Professor Barrows takes a slight diversion from his recent books, by assemblying 100 precis-like mathematical topics for one' s amusement. Each topic is no greater than a couple of pages, and makes incremental reading (such as while at an airport or train/subway station) convenient. His style is easy to digest, and his introductory quotations aptly ensconces the topics to be discussed. For those wanting more background or details, most of the topics are footnoted at the back of the book.
This book is a fun read for any mathematics afficionado.
"Pocket Barrow" Get And Share With Friends August 30, 2009
James Neville (Katy (Houston), TX)
4 out of 4 found this review helpful
I've just finished John D. Barrow's "100 Essential Things You Didn't Know You Didn't Know" and recommend it highly.
In some ways it's more accessible than two of his other books I've just read, "The Infinite Book" and "Cosmic Imagery".
True they have more discussion (Infinite) and pictures (Imagery) but "100 Essential" manages to present key concepts in 2 to 4 pages each AND to tie them to immediately understandable real life examples.
For example, if you had 100 people to choose from to hire, your best strategy is to interview 37 and rate and dismiss them, then hire the next person you interview who's as good or better than the highest in the first 37 (sounds strange doesn't it!).
Or: Why the fact that interest rates are non-zero is evidence for the lack of time travel to the past (wait til you read that one!).
Or: Global Village Stats
Or: The whole world in a sheet of A4 paper
True some of the 100 points are repeats of things in "Infinite" and "Imagery" - but not too many and the numbers of new topics more than make up for the occasional repeat.
Truly this is a "Pocket Barrow" worth getting and sharing with your friends when you need an evocative discussion topic or three.
Not a great title, but a great book August 27, 2009
Edward Durney (San Francisco)
8 out of 8 found this review helpful
Scientific American listed this book as "Also Notable," and the subtitle interested me, so I got it and read it. The title makes little sense -- I didn't find any essential things I didn't know that I didn't know. But I did find a lot about how math explains things in the real world. That I liked.
In the book John Barrow collects his thoughts on 100 topics, ranging from "Why Does the Other Queue [Barrow's British] Move Faster" to "How to Push a Car." Although the substance is rather similar to John Allen Paulos's A Mathematician Reads the Newspaper, the style is quite different. In Barrow's book, each topic has a few pages each in an independent section. Paulos takes more of a chapter essay approach, with each chapter covering a broad topic and Paulos taking a rambling walk from beginning to end. Barrow writes well, and his approach works fine.
Some of the topics Barrow chooses are more interesting than others. I read them all, but did skim over some that did not quickly catch my interest. There are 100 of them, after all. For me, that was probably about 50 too many.
The main complaint I have about the book is that someone, perhaps the author or maybe an editor, decided that they had to convince the reader that each topic is important. They are not. These topics are interesting (to me, at least), but far from "essential." If you like math and physics, like me, you'll probably like the book. If you don't like math and physics, you probably won't like the book. It won't convert you.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 7
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