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George Shaffner is an entrepreneur and computer maven, so when he started writing essays on mathematics he did it in a very practical way, to help people answer questions such as "Should I stay in school?" or "Is there life after death?" Soon he expanded into a whole book, but kept his focus on the practical: The design criteria for Arithmetic became: Use real-life examples, use actual words and numbers, keep it short, and exterminate all equations with unknown stuff in them. Shaffner uses a light touch: most of his essays involve one or another member of two imagined Seattle families, the Sharpes and the DeNialls. Shaffner puts together an unusual but effective mix of humor, logic, statistics, and insight: he is probably correct that there would be less innumeracy if most math education was like this. --Mary Ellen Curtin
| Price | Condition | Delivery | Seller | Action |
| $99.99 | Digital |
| WonderClub |
Pamela Holschuh
reviewed The arithmetic of life on August 19, 2013
The arithmetic of life
Human beings are terribly bad at numbers especially large numbers and probability. This books consists of short fictional episodes that explain many aspects of our lives in numbers such as sports, incomes, life expectancy, risks and etc. that are indeed matters of life and death. Some of data are outdated - the book was published first in early 2000s, I believe,- some of the topics are not very interesting at least to me, but the way the author explains rather hard numbers and probability with interesting fictional omnibus episodes helps feel the numbers well.
If a reader does not like numbers at all, this book may bring a little headache though none of arithmetic or statistics goes too wonkish. One possible complain about the book is that the book loses its focus a bit because it tries to cover wide range of topics in very short episodes. The whole book runs just about 200 pages.
Overall, I enjoyed the book and would recommend it. We needs to be numerically more literate.
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