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Chargement... The Universe and the Teacup: The Mathematics of Truth and Beautypar K. C. Cole
Chargement...
Inscrivez-vous à LibraryThing pour découvrir si vous aimerez ce livre Actuellement, il n'y a pas de discussions au sujet de ce livre. I'm a big fan of popular math and physics books, and I found this one enjoyable, if awfully broad. All in all, Cole does a nice job of making even pretty difficult topics (like general and special relativity) accessible even for a beginner. The book doesn't take very long at all to read, and Cole's enthusiasm for the topic is charming and contagious. My only complaint would be that it covers so much ground that there isn't room to go into very much depth on any one topic, but since Cole's admitted goal is simply to make the reader more conscious of the mathematics of everyday life, I'd say she achieves that admirably. This book ostensibly shows how mathematics permeates all we do, how it is not only necessary but beautiful. KC Cole is an award-winning science writer, and I can see why. She tackles in each chapter a different mathematical concept that everyone should be comfortable with. One chapter covers orders of magnitude and the difficulties comprehending the very large and the very small. She explains the bell curve, and why stating two groups have different averages (average IQ for example) tells nothing of the span of overlap. She talks briefly about relativity and newtonian mechanics and quantum mechanics, and explains why principles relevant to one scale may be completely irrelevant to another, akin to measuring time with a spoon. I found her to be precise without using jargon, and simple without treating the reader as a simpleton. However, I had pretty much been exposed to every concept in here a long long time ago. This book would be perfect as a prize to a high school Mathlete. It would also be perfect for any adult with little science knowledge who wanted to become familiar enough with the concepts of science to understand a New York Times science article. This is, in short, a great book ... for someone else. Nonetheless, I give KC Cole props. It's not easy to explain science at this level without losing too much substance. aucune critique | ajouter une critique
Mathematics, the most robust and breathtaking creation of the human mind, reveals the tiniest particles that make up our world and takes us to the farthest points of the universe. Its power is daunting. In this work, the author seeks to demystify mathematics using real-life concepts such as risk, scale, cause-and-chance and probability to help us to break the mind barrier; in its elegance, maths simplifies problems so we can understand and solve them. Our search for the truths of the universe could not succeed without it. Einstein's theory of relativity would never have worked had it not been for a little-known woman mathematician who, in the 19th century, discovered the crucial importance of symmetry to maths and physics. The story of Emmy Noether and Albert Einstein ends in an amazing journey that begins in the human mind and finishes at the edges of the universe. Aucune description trouvée dans une bibliothèque |
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Google Books — Chargement... GenresClassification décimale de Melvil (CDD)510Natural sciences and mathematics Mathematics General MathematicsClassification de la Bibliothèque du CongrèsÉvaluationMoyenne:
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She does report a neat visualization of Big Numbers that my geeky young adult son really likes, one that some college professor shares with his students:?á Write "Zero" on one side of a blackboard.?á Write "One Billion" on the other side.?á Where should you write "One Million?"?á Are you sure?... My son and I believe that, to make the point very clear, the student should next be asked, "Now, where do you write One Trillion?"
She also shares with us a great quote by Frank Oppenheimer: "Science is the search for the ever juicier mystery."
And Darrell Huff (author of How to Lie with Statistics) is noted to have said, "A difference is a difference only if it makes a difference."
Thomas W. Hazlett is given credit for a great concept: "It might be more instructive to compare IQs of people who care about racial IQs versus those who do not care."
I do want to find out more about this strategy for making "fair" decisions, called Adjusted Winner.
So, yeah, Cole collected a lot of neat ideas.?á Putting them together with coherence and relevance, though....?á Too bad.
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