Mathematics Minus Fear

Download or read book Mathematics Minus Fear written by Lawrence Potter and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2021-11-15 with total page 190 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Forget your classroom nightmares and discover how numbers can enhance and illuminate your world! How can math help you bet on horses or win in Vegas? What’s the foolproof way to solve Sudoku? How can probability teach you to calculate your chances of survival in Russian roulette? In this irreverent and entertaining guide to mathematics, Lawrence Potter takes the fear out of everything from long division to percentages. Using fascinating puzzles and surprising examples, from M.C. Escher to Pascal, he shows us how math is connected with the world we encounter every day, from how the VAT works to why weather forecasts are wrong, from winning at Monopoly to improving your mental arithmetic. Along the way you’ll also discover who invented numbers, whether animals can count, and what nuns have to do with multiplication.