Most Interesting Books of 2006
Coincidence, Chaos, and All That Math Jazz
Making Light of Weighty Ideas
by Edward B. Burger and Michael Starbird
published by W.W. Norton
Did you know that the year Bill Gates made 20 billion dollars, his wages were slightly above minimum wage: $ 168,000 per hour? ... Or that the national debt of the United States, which hit seven trillion dollars ($ 7,000,000,000,000) in 2004, could be repaid at the rate of one million dollars per hour --- for the next 800 years? ... These tidbits are a mere taste of the countless unexpected facts which fill this entertaining book. Four areas of mathematics are surveyed: uncertainty; quantification; aesthetics of the physical world; and transcending reality (via the study of the fourth dimension and infinity). Deep ideas are explained here with humor and elegant simplicity. I was captivated by sections about the Lincoln-Kennedy coincidences; twins separated at birth who share the same traits; unintended consequences; and the butterfly effect --- small changes today that wreak havoc in the future. I especially enjoyed the section about computer crytopgraphy, an ingenious method, yet uncracked, for sending secure secret messages. For mathomaniacs or mathophobes -- whether you once wondered at the beauty of mathematics, or whether you often wondered what was going on in math class -- this book will inspire new interest in the surprising mathematics behind ordinary and extraordinary things.
— Michael Pastore
