Pluses and Minuses
How Math Solves Our Problems
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- $13.99
Publisher Description
A guide to changing how you think about numbers and mathematics, from the prodigy changing the way the world thinks about math.
We all know math is important: we live in the age of big data, our lives are increasingly governed by algorithms, and we're constantly faced with a barrage of statistics about everything from politics to our health. But what might be less obvious is how math factors into your daily life, and what memorizing all of those formulae in school had to do with it. Math prodigy Stefan Buijsman is beginning to change that through his pioneering research into the way we learn math. Plusses and Minuses is based in the countless ways that math is engrained in our daily lives, and shows readers how math can actually be used to make problems easier to solve. Taking readers on a journey around the world to visit societies that have developed without the use of math, and back into history to learn how and why various disciples of mathematics were invented, Buijsman shows the vital importance of math, and how a better understanding of mathematics will give us a better understanding of the world as a whole.
Stefan Buijsman has become one of the most sought-after experts in math education after he completed his PhD at age 20. In Plusses and Minuses, he puts his research into practice to help anyone gain a better grasp of mathematics than they have ever had.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Buijsman, a philosophy of mathematics wunderkind who earned his doctorate at age 20, delivers an illuminating history of mathematics that also touches on fascinating philosophical questions surrounding math. One of the central debates, he explains, is between those who contend numbers are a preexisting natural phenomenon waiting to be discovered and those who view them as a human-made set of principles with no intrinsic basis in reality. Buijusman doesn't subscribe to either position, holding that the question of why math works is still unresolved. He does have a major thesis about math, which is that its primary value lies in its ability to simplify reality, as he demonstrates with lucid and accessible descriptions of mathematical breakthroughs and their applications throughout history. These include the simultaneous invention of calculus by rival 17th-century mathematicians Newton and Leibniz; graph theory, which provides a fascinating look at the driving force behind web searches; and probability and statistics, which enable the art of polling. Buijsman's enjoyable survey makes a convincing argument that understanding these basics will provide the tools necessary to better evaluate the modern world's information onslaught.
