This book uses different mathematical tools that we learned in high school and in college to solve in detail one hundred everyday problems from credit card interest, basal metabolic rate to earthquake magnitude.

"Simple, clear explanations of twenty ways in which mathematics helps us to understand practical issues of everyday life. Suitable for teenagers and adults, and beautifully produced. Highly recommended!" - Professor Ian Stewart, bestselling author of The Cabinet of Mathematical Curiosities Mathematics is an indispensable tool for life. From the systems that underpin our newsfeeds, through to the data analysis that informs our health and financial decisions, to the algorithms that power how we search online – mathematics is at the heart of how our modern world functions. In 20 dip-in lessons, Understanding Numbers explains how and why mathematics fuels your world and arms you with the knowledge to make wiser choices in all areas of your life. • Make sense of health statistics • Understand the mathematics behind political voting systems • Get to grips with how online search tools work • Discover how mathematics can create the perfect city

A brilliant tour of mathematical thought and a guide to becoming a better thinker, How Not to Be Wrong shows that math is not just a long list of rules to be learned and carried out by rote. Math touches everything we do; It's what makes the world make sense. Using the mathematician's methods and hard-won insights-minus the jargon-professor and popular columnist Jordan Ellenberg guides general readers through his ideas with rigor and lively irreverence, infusing everything from election results to baseball to the existence of God and the psychology of slime molds with a heightened sense of clarity and wonder. Armed with the tools of mathematics, we can see the hidden structures beneath the messy and chaotic surface of our daily lives. How Not to Be Wrong shows us how--Publisher's description.

Taking the reader on a wondrous journey through the invisible universe that surrounds us--a universe made visible by mathematics--Devlin shows us what keeps a jumbo jet in the air, explains how we can see and hear a football game on TV, and allows us to predict the weather, the behavior of the stock market, and the outcome of elections. Microwave ovens, telephone cables, children's toys, pacemakers, automobiles, and computers--all operate on mathematical principles. Far from a dry and esoteric subject, mathematics is a rich and living part of our culture.

Using Mathematics to Understand the World: How Culture Promotes Children's Mathematics offers fundamental insight into how mathematics permeates our lives as a way of representing and thinking about the world. Internationally renowned experts Terezinha Nunes and Peter Bryant examine research into children’s mathematical development to show why it is important to distinguish between quantities, relations and numbers. Using Mathematics to Understand the World presents a theory about the development of children’s quantitative reasoning and reveals why and how teaching about quantitative reasoning can be used to improve children’s mathematical attainment in school. It describes how learning about the analytical meaning of numbers is established as part of mathematics at school but quantitative reasoning is emphasized less even though it is increasingly acclaimed as essential for thinking mathematically and for using mathematics to understand the world. This essential text is for all students of mathematics education, developmental psychology and cognitive psychology. By including activities for parents and professionals to try themselves, it may help you to recognize your own quantitative reasoning.

Using Mathematics to Understand the World offers fundamental insight into how mathematics permeates our lives as a way of representing and thinking about the world.

Presents an accessible, in-depth look at the history of numbers and their applications in life and science, from math's surreal presence in the virtual world to the debates about the role of math in science.