Ballparking: Practical Math for Impractical Sports Questions [Paperback]

Aaron Santos (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 1, 2012

How fat would you need to be to completely block a hockey goal? How much weight could you lift if you were ant-sized? How hard would you have to hit a baseball to hit the Goodyear blimp? In this amusing and enlightening book of offbeat sports estimations, physicist Aaron Santos poses these and many other outrageous problems and shows how to answer them with Enrico Fermi’s method of approximation. Covering a wide range of sports—from football, baseball, basketball, and hockey to more far-flung sports like curling and competitive eating—these amusing estimations make boring old math fun and informative.

Whether you’re a rabid sports fan, math junkie, trivia-loving math hater, or a frustrated Sunday-paper puzzle lover, with the right formula and a little imagination you can start estimating on some of the most bizarre—and previously unanswered—sports trivia, while learning how to answer your own sports questions that have kept you up at night.

 

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Aaron Santos received a Ph.D. in Physics from Boston University in 2007, and is currently a visiting assistant professor in the Physics and Astronomy Department at Oberlin College. He is the author of How Many Licks?: Or How to Estimate Damn Near Anything, and enjoys writing his Diary of Numbers blog (diaryofnumbers.blogspot.com). He lives in Oberlin, Ohio.

Product Details

• Paperback: 224 pages
• Publisher: Running Press (May 1, 2012)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0762443456
• ISBN-13: 978-0762443451
• Product Dimensions: 5.4 x 0.7 x 8.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,092,092 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars A Light-Hearted Look at Math Applied to Sports May 23, 2012

By G. Poirier

Format:Paperback

In this very appropriately-titled book, the author ponders various physical problems in the world of sports - problems whose estimated solutions can often be quite surprising.

On the positive side, I found this book highly entertaining. The Fermi method of estimating solutions to various problems is very well illustrated. The formulas used are many; they are mostly quite simple and are fun to go through. Also, of particular note is that I found several comments/passages in this book to be absolutely hilarious; in fact, on many occasions I had to take a pause to wipe the tears out of my eyes before continuing on (some of the author's choices of words in various contexts are priceless!).

On the negative side, the author assumes that the reader possesses knowledge of much of the popular lingo commonly associated with various sports. Not being that well-informed, I found myself scratching my head on several occasions because of this; eventually the contexts in most cases made it clear to me what was meant. Also, someone trying to solve the equations presented by using the indicated numbers must be careful to ensure that the units are all consistent - in many cases, some conversions will be necessary. Finally, I found several unfortunate editorial mistakes scattered throughout.

Overall, I enjoyed this book very much. The author's writing style is chatty, friendly, captivating and, as mentioned above, often quite humorous. This book should appeal the most to readers who are familiar with very basic math and physics. If, in addition, they are avid sports fans, then this book will surely be a must.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Perfect gift August 7, 2012

By lora lackaff

Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase

Looking for graduation gifts for my son's athletic friends, I found, to my delight, Dr. Santos' second book Ballparking: Practical Math for Impractical Sports Questions. With fun and spot-on, timely examples, Dr. Santos fascinated even this older mom/grandma whose math skills are also graying. Ballparking: Practical Math for Impractical Sports Questions was an ideal choice for sparking my little gray cells, and engaging digitally absorbed teens.
P.S. The grads loved it!

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars a must for sports nerds August 3, 2012

By Pauline Chen

Format:Paperback

I'll start this review with the caveat that I have happily avoided math and physics since high school, and generally start to glaze over when large numbers are thrown around. I received this book as a gift and was startled to find how entertaining it was. The questions it considers are amusing: Could Michael Phelps swim if his feet were encased in cement blocks? How likely was it that Wilt Chamberlain would have contracted a sexually transmitted disease? On top of that, the prose is laugh-out-loud funny. I was not familiar with Fermi approximations previously, and think that the mathematical explanations are presented in a clear and non-threatening way. I think that for those who have an interest in sports and math (and I suspect there are many of your out there) , this book would make a delightful gift.