Innumeracy:
"To combat [innumeracy] John Allen Paulos has concocted
the perfectvaccine: this book, which is in many ways better than an entire
high school math eductation! Our society would be unimaginably different if the
average person truly understood the ideas in this marvelous and important book.
It is probably hopelessly optimistic to dream this way, but I hope that
Innumeracy might help launch a revolution in math education that would do for
innumeracy what Sabin and Salk did for polio." - Douglas Hofstadter,
author of Godel, Escher, and Bach
The innumerate will surely profit from this entertaining
book. - Morris Kline, New York Times Book Review
The world, as seen by Paulos, is less mysterious, yet
somehow more elegant, less magical, yet more wonderful. So many apparently
strange events do, in fact, become all the more magnificent in their
not-so-fearful symmetry. - Arthur Salm, San Diego Tribune
This elegant survival manual is brief, witty, and full of
practical applications. - Stefan Kanfer, Time Magazine.
Beyond Innumeracy:
If you've ever wanted to recapture that sense of near-mystical rapture, there is no better place than
this book, and no more humane and enthusiastic mentor than John Allen Paulos,
who does for mathematics what The Joy of Sex did for the boudoir interface.
..... Paulos painstakingly presents even the most recondite ideas in concrete,
easily visualizable terms. ..... But Paulos's principal genius lies in the
recognition that many of those humans are "unknowing mathophiles" who
"have been thinking math all their lives without realizing it." For
those, for anyone, who ever sat rapt at the austere beauty of a proof and later
wondered where the wonder went, it's here. -- Curt Suplee. Washington Post
Beyond Numeracy will uundoubtedly entertain and educate many
people and open up for them the mysterious and closed book - the book of the
universe, as Galileo had it - of mathematics. -- Brian Rotman. London Times
Literary Supplement
http://www.math.temple.edu/~paulos/reviews.html
That post on the human condition is making me tear-up a little.
That is because I threw-up a little in my throat.
It is under control now. It is called being human.
I double-dare you boys to read the book Innumeracy. Do it in spite of me so you can
really tell me all about it because I have not read it. You can be the expert
on it. You can be cleaver.
I would think that any numeric who is looking for a fresh view would read the book for new insight. But, like they say "what you don't know won't hurt you". No one ever gives you an education, it is what you take that qualifies you.
What have you to fear? Is an opinion more important than fact? Don't trust me that the world is not flat. I will be reading both books soon because any topic that gets attacked like innumeracy as seen in this thread has to be good. I wonder what the book will have to say about how most participated in this thread? Can your egos take it? Can you check yourself? Get the audio book if reading bores you.
I had only heard about the concept of innumeracy from something I came across. I had no idea there as a book published on it. Thanks Jimmy. Do you think the Author ever sat in Abe's lap at the end of the city mall near the old Gashouse?
DD
PS Joey, what did you think about Pumpi's thoughts and comments on having sex with babies? Have a man child relative killed by such a sex freak and let me know what you think then. Go to trial and be forced to have the pictures of the victim on review and then tell me what is acceptable and what you learned from that. Celebrate that kind of diversity.