John Allen Paulos

Why do even well-educated people often understand so little about maths - or take a perverse pride in not being a 'numbers person'? In his now-classic book Innumeracy, John Allen Paulos answers questions such as: Why is following the stock market exactly like flipping a coin? How big is a trillion? How fast does human hair grow in mph? Can you calculate the chances that a party includes two people who have the same birthday? Paulos shows us that by arming yourself with some simple maths, you don't have to let numbers get the better of you.

Mathematical Illiteracy and Its Consequences

Innumeracy

Examines the mathematical perspective of societal violence, offering insight into the probability and randomness associated with any given scenario

A Mathematician Reads the Newspaper

A Mathematician Explains Why the Arguments for God Just Don't Add Up

Irreligion

El hombre anumérico

In A Mathematician Plays the Stock Market best-selling author John Allen Paulos demonstrates what the tools of mathematics can tell us about the vagaries of the stock market. Employing his trademark stories, vignettes, paradoxes, and puzzles (and even a film treatment), Paulos addresses every thinking reader's curiosity about the market: Is it efficient? Is it rational? Is there anything to technical analysis, fundamental analysis, and other supposedly time-tested methods of picking stocks? How can one quantify risk? What are the most common scams? What light do fractals, network theory, and common psychological foibles shed on investor behavior? Are there any approaches to investing that truly outperform the major indexes? Can a deeper knowledge of mathematics help beat the odds?All of these questions are explored with the engaging erudition that made Paulos's A Mathematician Reads the Newspaper and Innumeracy favorites with both armchair mathematicians and readers who want to think like them. Paulos also shares the cautionary tale of his own long and disastrous love affair with WorldCom. In the tradition of Burton Malkiel's A Random Walk Down Wall Street and Jeremy Siegel's Stocks for the Long Run, this wry and illuminating book is for anyone, investor or not, who follows the markets-or knows someone who does.

A Mathematician Plays The Stock Market

I Think, Therefore I Laugh

Argues that there is no logical reason to believe in God, refuting twelve arguments commonly proposed to prove the existence of God, while offering commentary on such topics as miracles, cognitive illusions, and creationist probability.

What two things could be more different than numbers and stories? Numbers are abstract, certain, and eternal, but to most of us somewhat dry and bloodless. Good stories are full of life: they engage our emotions and have subtlety and nuance, but they lack rigor and the truths they tell are elusive and subject to debate. As ways of understanding the world around us, numbers and stories seem almost completely incompatible.Once Upon a Number shows that stories and numbers aren't as different as you might imagine, and in fact they have surprising and fascinating connections. The concepts of logic and probability both grew out of intuitive ideas about how certain situations would play out. Now, logicians are inventing ways to deal with real world situations by mathematical means—by acknowledging, for instance, that items that are mathematically interchangeable may not be interchangeable in a story. And complexity theory looks at both number strings and narrative strings in remarkably similar terms.Throughout, renowned author John Paulos mixes numbers and narratives in his own delightful style. Along with lucid accounts of cutting-edge information theory we get hilarious anecdotes and jokes; instructions for running a truly impressive pyramid scam; a freewheeling conversation between Groucho Marx and Bertrand Russell (while they're stuck in an elevator together); explanations of why the statistical evidence against OJ Simpson was overwhelming beyond doubt and how the Unabomber's thinking shows signs of mathematical training; and dozens of other treats. This is another winner from America's favorite mathematician.

The Hidden Mathematical Logic Of Stories

Once Upon A Number

Gli snumerati. Impariamo a far di conto per fare i conti con il mondo

A Study of the Logic of Humor

Mathematics and Humor

Erase Una Vez Un Numero

Introduces a broad spectrum of mathematical concepts, from the basic to the complex, in a study that integrates concise definitions with witty mathematical essays

Ruminations of a Numbers Man

Beyond Numeracy

From the author of the national bestseller Innumeracy, a delightful exploration and explanation of mathematical concepts from algebra to zero in easily accessible alphabetical entries. "Paulos . . . does for mathematics what The Joy of Sex did for the boudoir. . . ."--Washington Post Book World. First time in paperback.

la sfida più controversa e affascinante della storia

La prova matematica dell'inesistenza di Dio

John Allen Paulos cleverly scrutinizes the mathematical structures of jokes, puns, paradoxes, spoonerisms, riddles, and other forms of humor, drawing examples from such sources as Rabelais, Shakespeare, James Beattie, René Thom, Lewis Carroll, Arthur Koestler, W. C. Fields, and Woody Allen. "Jokes, paradoxes, riddles, and the art of non-sequitur are revealed with great perception and insight in this illuminating account of the relationship between humor and mathematics."—Joseph Williams, New York Times "'Leave your mind alone,' said a Thurber cartoon, and a really complete and convincing analysis of what humour is might spoil all jokes forever. This book avoids that danger. What it does. . .is describe broadly several kinds of mathematical theory and apply them to throw sidelights on how many kinds of jokes work."—New Scientist "Many scholars nowadays write seriously about the ludicrous. Some merely manage to be dull. A few—like Paulos—are brilliant in an odd endeavor."—Los Angeles Times Book Review

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 Mathematician Explores the Vagaries of Life, His Own and Probably Yours

A Numerate Life

Inspired by Wittgenstein's quip that a book on philosophy might consist entirely of jokes I Think, Therefore I Laugh explores topics such as misunderstandings of mathematics and science and of the relation between them, pseudo-science and its appeal, the uses and misuses of probability and statistics, humour and higher order endeavours and the interplay between narrative and numbers. This is a new edition of John Allen Paulos' second of six books and fans will recognise themes he later went on to pursue in other words.

The Flip Side of Philosophy

Paulos offers a hillarious account of how the stock market both follows and defies mathematical principals. He offers an enagaing overview of everything from "betas" to the efficient market hypothesis.

John Allen Paulos

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