From the New York Times-bestselling author of How Not to Be Wrong, himself a world-class geometer, a far-ranging exploration of the power of geometry, which turns out to help us think better about practically everything

He’s approaching the problem just the way a mathematician would – starting from the end of the game. That’s no surprise; we are all mathematicians in the deep strategic parts of our brain, whether it says that on our business cards or not. p. 115 So chess, for all its lore and mystique, is the same kind of thing as Nim and tic-tac-toe. If two absolutely perfect players faced off, either white would always win, white would always lose, or the game would always end in a draw. Unreasonably entertaining . . . reveals how geometric thinking can allow for everything from fairer American elections to better pandemic planning.” — The New York TimesLinear algebra allows one to extend one’s intuition about three-dimensional space to spaces of whatever dimension you like;

The book is loosely related by the theme of geometry. It isn't only about plane geometry, though, and has fun explorations of topology, random walks (the mathematical kind), neural networks via gradient descent, networks/graph theory, and even a chapter on the math of gerrymandering. That was not an all-comprehensive list, either. Serious mathematics at its intriguing, transporting best . . . [a] humorous, anecdotally rich dive into numerous mathematical theories.” —Kirkus Confession: I glossed over some parts when my energy at the time wasn’t into full grasping of the topic in that section. a connected graph stays connected only if the connections at each point >=2, interesting to think what this says about friendships and networks This was just all over the place for me. At times, it was a two star read and somewhat boring (quite possibly because I know most of the math Ellenberg is describing); at times, it was a wonderful application of mathematical principles.

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Math professor Ellenberg ( How Not to Be Wrong) shows how challenging mathematics informs real-world problems in this breezy survey . . . Math-minded readers will be rewarded with a greater understanding of the world around them.” —Publishers Weekly What really carried this book for me was the author's ability to explain things clearly and enthusiastically, often with diagrams and concrete examples. The book is quite accessible. It starts off with the author talking about how he thinks geometry should be taught. He also mentions that he initially wasn't good at geometry. It's clear that he wants to students to have fun and understand things, not just memorize them. As someone who's essentially going to be his student reading this book, that was nice to hear. what makes a gerrymander work is that your party wins a lot of districts by a little and loses a few districts by a lot. When we say the lesson at hand is “easy” or “simple,” and it manifestly isn’t, we are telling the student that the difficulty isn’t with the mathematics, it’s with them. And they will believe us. Students, for better or worse, trust their teachers. “If I didn’t even get this and it was easy,” they’ll say, “why bother trying to understand something hard?” The convex hull of a shape is the union of every line segment joining every pair of points in the shape:

Imagine a 2D or 3D shape. Can your child guess which shape you are thinking of by asking questions about its properties? Can they draw or make it from modelling dough just from your description? Can they identify shapes by touch alone? This book has many excellent pieces but they are poorly linked together and surrounded by bloat. In my opinion, it could be polished into another masterpiece (like his previous book "How Not to be Wrong") if the theme was more concrete and topics were more carefully strung together. the hilarious story of how the Electoral College came about as an exhausted compromise rather than the brilliant design we tout it to be People often complain that no one likes facts and numbers and reason and science anymore, but as someone who talks about those things in public, I can tell you that’s not true. People love numbers, and are impressed by them, sometimes more than they should be. An argument dressed up in math carries with it a certain authority. If you’re the one who outfitted it that way, you have a special responsibility to get it right. You don’t need to be an expert to support your child with maths! Here are four simple but effective ways to help your child develop their understanding of geometry.I loved Jordan Ellenberg's earlier book, How Not to Be Wrong: The Power of Mathematical Thinking, and it was a hard act to follow. But not for Ellenberg, as this book is also great. While the title, "Shape" implies that this book is about geometry--and it is--it is also about so much more. This book shows how mathematics is applicable to just about everything under the sun. And Ellenberg manages to make it all so fascinating! The sheer depth at which he covers an incredibly diverse range of topics is staggering. This is the type of book that I love! Ellenberg is a professor of mathematics, so he certainly knows what he is talking about! Jordan Ellenberg] is up to the engaging standard of his prior book . . . almost anyone is likely to enjoy Ellenberg’s prose, and mind.” — Harvard Magazine From the New York Times-bestselling author of How Not to Be Wrong—himself a world-class geometer—a far-ranging exploration of the power of geometry, which turns out to help us think better about practically everything If my grandma had wheels, she'd be a wagon" -- comparing this to the hypothetical incorrect statistical practice of "if we only consider xyz then we find abc"

The book is supposedly about geometry, although I found the relation sometimes tangential. Anyway, it was engaging and mind-opening. If you'd like to know about many applications of mathematics in real life (with a hint of geometry), this book can be a good choice.How Many Mice Make An Elephant? and other big questions about size and distance’ will be an invaluable addition to any KS1 or KS2 classroom wishing to engage the students with maths and its uses. there is no reason to know very many digits of π. There are real-world contexts where you’d want to know seven or eight digits, sure. But the hundredth digit? It’s hard to imagine what you’d need that for. Forty digits is already enough to compute the circumference of a circle the size of the Milky Way to within the size of a proton. Help your child to draw a map of your house or garden on a coordinate grid. Take turns to hide ‘treasure’ around the house and give each other coordinates from the map as clues for the position of hidden objects. You can find a treasure map to help you here .