Numbercrunch

<p<b'Lucid and entertaining. With barely an equation in sight, Numbercrunch makes a passionate case for how just a little bit more numeracy could help us all' </b<br<b- Tom Whipple, <iThe Times</i</b<br<br<b'The perfect introduction to the power of mathematics - fluent, friendly and practical' </b<br<b- Tim Harford, bestselling author of <iHow to Make the World Add Up</i</b<br<brIn our hyper-modern world, we are bombarded with more facts, stats and information than ever before. So, what can we grasp hold of to make sense of it all? <br<brOliver Johnson reveals how mathematical thinking can help us understand the myriad data all around us. From the exponential growth of viruses to social media filter-bubbles; from share-price fluctuations to growth of computing power; from the datafication of our sports pages to quantifying climate change. Not to mention the things much closer to home: ever wondered when the best time is to leave a party? What are the chances of rain ruining your barbecue this weekend? How about which queue is the best to join in the supermarket?<br<brJourneying through the three sections of Randomness, Structure, and Information, we meet a host of brilliant minds such Alan Turing, Enrico Fermi and Claude Shannon, and we learn the tools, tips and tricks to cut through the noise all around us - from the Law of Large Numbers to Entropy to Brownian Motion. <br<brLucid, surprising, and endlessly entertaining, <iNumbercrunch</iequips you with a definitive mathematician's toolkit to make sense of your world.</p