100 Essential Things You Didn't Know You Didn't Know: Math Explains Your World

by John D. Barrow

Book Overview

Have you ever considered why you always get stuck in the longest line? Why two's company but three's a crowd? Or why there are six degrees of separation instead of seven? In this hugely informative and endlessly entertaining book, John D. Barrow takes the most baffling of everyday phenomena and--with simple math, lucid explanations, and illustrations--explains why they work the way they do. His witty, crystal-clear answers shed light on the dark and...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0393338673
• ISBN13: 9780393338676
• Release Date: May 2010
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
• Length: 304 Pages
• Weight: 0.65 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 5.6" x 8.2"

Customer Reviews

Mathematical Solutions to Life's Conundrums

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

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

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

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.

Barrow is tremendously interesting for the mathematically and scientifically minded

Hype rules the world. This book is promoted in a misleading way. There is nothing 'essential' about the one- hundred small math and science lessons Barrow gives us here. Ninety- nine percent of humanity will manage to get through their lives without knowing anything of what is written here. On the other hand , for those who love Math, who care to understand the way the world works this book is a little treasure. Barrow is an extremely brilliant person and a very clear writer. He takes all kinds of problems here, and shows how mathematically we come to better understanding of them. Bridge- construction, choosing a card, demographics of the world, are among the subjects he tackles. I began to read this book and found it tremendously interesting. But again this is a work for those who like to understand latest developments in science and math. For them this should be a great read.