Math with Bad Drawings: Illuminating the Ideas That Shape Our Reality

Ben Orlin is a very funny guy. Let me give you a couple of examples."Pop quiz! What is the basic activity of Wall Street banks?"A. Powering the world economy via the intelligent allocation of capital B. Buying Italian suits with blood money snatched from the pockets of the working class C. Pricing things"If you answered A, then you work for Wall Street. (Hey, nice suit! Is that Italian?) If you answered B, then I’m honored that you’re reading my book, Senator Sanders."Here's another one, with a point:'You can tell your dinner guests that the “average human” has one ovary and one testicle, but will this not bring conversation to an awkward standstill? (I’ve tried; it does.)'That joke is not just funny. (Well, it made me laugh, especially the final parenthetical comment -- as a scientist I always appreciate the person who's willing to Do The Experiment.) It also illustrates what's wrong with averages -- the average does not exist.In his Introduction, Orlin struggles to explain why people don't see the beauty and pervasiveness of mathematics. These words put my back up, 'If this description rings false to you, it’s perhaps because you’ve been to a place called “school.” If so, you have my condolences.' I come from a family of teachers and have been one myself -- I was not overjoyed to see Orlin bash schools. But as I read on I realized that he was talking about himself. He teaches math, and he has struggled to do it effectively and to help his students understand why they should want to learn math.Here he sets out to show why math is worth studying. He does this mostly with examples. The result, for person who makes jokes about his dinner guests' nads, is surprisingly deep and subtle.The Introduction is followed by 24 chapters of applications. To me they were convincing. Now, to be clear, when Orlin seeks to illustrate applications of math, he doesn't do it by telling you how it'll put food in your belly or money in your pocket. No, Orlin provides deep explanations of the way the world is. That means the physical world, the biological, human and social worlds, and the world of ideas. You come away with a deeper understanding of all these areas.If I have one criticism, it is that the emphasis on probability and statistics was too heavy. I am one of the few people I know (well, perhaps the one person I know) who actually finds statistics interesting. If it's too much for me, then yeah, it's probably too much. It is fairly clear to me why he does this -- he wants something the people can relate to in their daily lives, and of course we all see stats used and abused every day.

loved the book

While the title (which includes “math”) made scare some away, this book initiates the non-mathematician to sensible and easy to understand utility and pervasiveness of mathematical principles in our conception of the world around us…it presents the a,b,c’s of how the universal language of mathematics underlies most of what we “know” or at least believe to be true (beliefs can become fact or fiction simply by changing initial assumptions)— acceptance of such truths are another matter. In short—if you love math you’ll enjoy the simplicity with which the author presents it—if you”hate” math (or just have bad memories of head-banging trying to figure out what the point of a, b, and c is anyway), you’ll see that, when presented simple, it actually makes sense!

Very nice book with cute illustrations. It also explains some fairly complex maths concepts in a way that is super easy to understand. It's not for little kids. I would recommend this book to anyone in grade 6 through college. It covers a lot of different aspects of maths.

This book is suggested for extra reading on the Ambleside Online lists. Enjoyable reading. Go for it. My 13yr old really liked reading it. I found that it influenced and improved my foundational math teaching with his little brothers.

My son got the book when he was approaching 10. Since then, he has read the book multiple times and enjoyed reading it very much.A nice book also for me as I could use some of the examples for my college statistics teaching!!

I don’t recall ever writing an Amazon review for anything. Ever. And given that most of my disposable income somehow finds itself in the mitts of this site that is quite a statement.What prompted me to write this review was something that I had never thought possible. While reading Mr Orlin’s excellent tome on math(s) (I’m English.....I’ll always be maths). “What was that?” I hear you clamor. Well, what we have here is a book about mathematics that actually made me laugh out loud. Yes, a math(s) book. Yes, a book about math(s). Laugh. Heartily. Page 153, paragraph 4 to be exact, about 10 minutes prior to me posting this review. In the probability section. Ironically the probability of me laughing while reading a math(s) book should really be close to zero but as Mr Orlin takes pains to make clear, sometimes low probability things happen. And happen it did. To me and to a certain Mrs Clinton as outlined on page 153.I’m just less than half way through this fantastic book and I already believe in equal parts that Mr Orlin and his (no so bad) drawings are both a national treasure and that he should be given complete control over all school curriculums.Yes, it is that good. I mean he made me laugh. Out loud. While reading a math(s) book.

A Pixar movie of a book: the plot is for the kids; the jokes are for the adults.With that said, the jokes are AWESOME, the little cartoons much better than the title suggests and the (ninth grade) math is explained so well I wish I had this book in ninth grade. Perhaps these days it’s an eighth grade book, I don’t know. (My kids are still too young.)Also, rather embarrassingly, I LEARNED STUFF FROM HERE. No, I did not learn math. I learned stuff I ought to have figured out for myself but was too focused on my grades to ponder. Like, why elephants have thick legs: for the same reason the sky is black! I’m serious, it’s the same reason and you can read it here…Halfway through the book the author actually runs out of amazing things about the natural world and from there he takes you to the mathematics of Wall Street and the IRS, which I did not find as captivating, let us say. It all remains just as funny, though.So this was a fun book to read. Probably an awesome gift for your friends’ kids. If the little ones don’t read it, the adults will at least get some good laughs out of it.

Do not buy this book expecting to learn anything beyond a few facts that might come up in your local pub quiz night.If you are already looking at maths books to learn about maths, then you don’t need to buy this book to tell you why you should learn maths.If however, you are interested in maths and want a chuckle here and a giggle there then Ben Orlin does a good job of providing a few evenings of entertainment.The entertainment is the only reason for scoring as high as two stars. Beyond that I just find the book offers no purpose.

Really well written, the bad drawings are great, too!Kids interested in maths and science should really read this book, as it promotes not just mathematical knowledge, but passion, too. We need more passion for science in this dark times, and our kids are the future.

I enjoy popular math books for the insights in to deal world problems without needing to complete a math degree. I did find myself skipping through parts of this and wasn't as others I have read. Not overall happy to have read this book.

If you think you hate maths; this book will make you love it. As a science teacher, I’m going to be pillaging his fabulous analogies, stories and explanations to the max. As a former mathsophobe, I wish I had been a student of this guy when he was a teacher

This book is not a text book or anything like it. It’s waaaay more fun and enjoyable to read and super interesting. I have a degree in pure physics and Ben takes some of the maths I know and made it so much fun. I highly recommend it.