Don't Be Too Sure

The Sunday Times-bestselling author of How Not to Be Wrong shows us what maths can teach us about navigating and even embracing uncertainty

Humans are wired to worry, and there’s plenty to worry about. It’s almost a cliché to say we’re living in an age of high anxiety. It takes training to learn to peacefully coexist with such uncertainty, and it turns out that maths can be part of that training. In Don’t Be Too Sure, bestselling author and mathematician Jordan Ellenberg shows us how.

There are two kinds of uncertainty, he explains: the kind that’s about the randomness of the world, for which we need to understand probability, and the kind that’s about not knowing what other people will do, which calls for game theory. Armed with this mental technology, he shows us that it isn’t harder to get into university these days, it’s just more random; how to know when to give up on online dating; what it might mean for creativity to be mechanised, and much much more.

Don’t Be Too Sure won’t dispatch all of your anxieties, and it would be terrifying if it did, but it is an immensely helpful, wise and witty guide to embracing the unknown.