
Humble Pi
A Comedy of Maths Errors
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Buy Now for $26.99
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Narrated by:
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Matt Parker
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By:
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Matt Parker
About this listen
Penguin presents the audiobook edition of Humble Pi written and read by Matt Parker.
What makes a bridge wobble when it's not meant to? Billions of dollars mysteriously vanish into thin air? A building rock when its resonant frequency matches a gym class leaping to Snap's 1990 hit I've Got The Power? The answer is maths. Or, to be precise, what happens when maths goes wrong in the real world.
As Matt Parker shows us, our modern lives are built on maths: computer programmes, finance, engineering. And most of the time this maths works quietly behind the scenes, until...it doesn't. Exploring and explaining a litany of glitches, near-misses and mishaps involving the internet, big data, elections, street signs, lotteries, the Roman empire and a hapless Olympic shooting team, Matt Parker shows us the bizarre ways maths trips us up, and what this reveals about its essential place in our world.
Mathematics doesn't have good 'people skills', but we would all be better off, he argues, if we saw it as a practical ally. This book shows how, by making maths our friend, we can learn from its pitfalls. It also contains puzzles, challenges, geometric socks, jokes about binary code and three deliberate mistakes. Getting it wrong has never been more fun.
Critic Reviews
"Matt Parker has pulled off something wonderful...his stories are superb." (Marcus Berkmann)
"Bought it yesterday, enjoying it enormously, well done!" (Dara Ó Briain)
"[Matt Parker] shows off math at its most playful and multifarious." (Jordan Ellenberg, author of How to Not Be Wrong)
too much repetition of YouTube channel
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Entertaining, definitely not a Parker Audiobook.
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Matt Parker has a very dry sense of humour when it comes to explaining the failures of what most would consider a "perfect" field like mathematics.
The examples shown in the book are real time examples, explained in pretty much understandable language, and it has actually tweaked my interest in maths again.... 35 years after leaving school.
who would have thought that there was such a thing as "recreational mathematics"!
Making Maths, and its mistakes, unmistakable
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Super Enjoyable
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Maths is fun
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Thoroughly entertaining
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Laughed the whole way through.
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Thanks Matt, well read.
Very entertaining.
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The reader, or rather listener, does not need any mathematics background as Matt explains things well enough for anyone to understand.
Thanks Matt! And I would like to also thank Bradly Haran for introducing me to your work.
A great read! or listen?
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A great listen/read
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