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A review by bookwormjimmy
Humble Pi: A Comedy of Maths Errors by Matt Parker
funny
informative
reflective
fast-paced
5.0
If you love anything math, read this book. If the idea of reading about math scares you...still read this book. It's really less about the math and more about the entertaining but true stories of the world gone wrong when people make gargantuan or even sometimes microscopic mistakes in their math that has tremendous effects in real life. Something as simple as not having the correct length of a bolt for a bridge or not understanding a coding error on a medical machine. You can just imagine what could go wrong.
But this book is more than just the math mistakes. It's the human story behind the world that we live in, and how easy it is for us as a species to overlook something and it lead to critical failures in safety for others. You should not be surprised at the amount of mistakes that are made in pretty much every company...it's just that none of that gets released to the public. Unless of course it's a public mistake, such as a door flying off of a plane mid-flight. But really, much of what we see, it's somehow kept together with tape and glue behind the scenes.
This is an entertaining read, and I'd recommend this for anyone. I'd actually highly recommend this for high school math teachers to assign to students, especially if you're looking for a way to do some interdisciplinary work. I absolutely loved this one, and I think you would too.
But this book is more than just the math mistakes. It's the human story behind the world that we live in, and how easy it is for us as a species to overlook something and it lead to critical failures in safety for others. You should not be surprised at the amount of mistakes that are made in pretty much every company...it's just that none of that gets released to the public. Unless of course it's a public mistake, such as a door flying off of a plane mid-flight. But really, much of what we see, it's somehow kept together with tape and glue behind the scenes.
This is an entertaining read, and I'd recommend this for anyone. I'd actually highly recommend this for high school math teachers to assign to students, especially if you're looking for a way to do some interdisciplinary work. I absolutely loved this one, and I think you would too.