- 288 pages
- English
- ePUB (mobile friendly)
- Available on iOS & Android
About this book
Brilliant and entertaining mathematician Kit Yates illuminates seven mathematical concepts that shape our daily lives. From birthdays to birth rates to how we perceive the passing of time, mathematical patterns shape our lives. But for those of us who left math behind in high school, the numbers and figures we encounter as we go about our days can leave us scratching our heads, feeling as if we're fumbling through a mathematical minefield. In this eye-opening and "welcome addition to the math-for-people-who-hate-math" ( Kirkus Reviews ), Kit Yates illuminates hidden principles that can help us understand and navigate the chaotic and often opaque surfaces of our world.In The Math of Life and Death, Yates takes us on a "dizzying, dazzling" ( Nature ) tour of everyday situations and grand-scale applications of mathematical concepts, including exponential growth and decay, optimization, statistics and probability, and number systems. Along the way he reveals the mathematical undersides of controversies over DNA testing, Ponzi schemes, viral marketing, and historical events such as the Chernobyl disaster and the Amanda Knox trial. Readers will finish this book with an enlightened perspective on the news, the law, medicine, and history, and will be better equipped to make personal decisions and solve problems with math in mind, whether it's choosing the shortest checkout line at the grocery store or halting the spread of a deadly disease.
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Information
Table of contents
- Cover
- Title Page
- Dedication
- Introduction: Almost Everything
- Chapter 1: Thinking Exponentially: The Sobering Limits of Power
- Chapter 2: Sensitivity, Specificity, and Second Opinions: How Math Makes Medicine Manageable
- Chapter 3: The Laws of Mathematics: Investigating the Role of Mathematics in the Law
- Chapter 4: Don’t Believe the Truth: Debunking Media Statistics
- Chapter 5: Wrong Place, Wrong Time: When Our Number Systems Let Us Down
- Chapter 6: Relentless Optimization: From Evolution to E-commerce, Life Is an Algorithm
- Chapter 7: Susceptible, Infective, Removed: How to Stop an Epidemic
- Epilogue: Mathematical Emancipation
- Acknowledgments
- About the Author
- References
- Index
- Copyright