Why Do Buses Come in Threes? The Hidden Mathematics of Everyday Life [Paperback]

Rob Eastaway (Author), Jeremy Wyndham (Author), Tim Rice (Foreword)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 25, 2000 | ISBN-10: 0471379077 | ISBN-13: 978-0471379072 | Edition: 1

"Deals in a very entertaining way with problems in normal life related to mathematics, luck, coincidence, gambling." ? The Independent (London)

Why do your chances of winning the lottery increase if you buy your ticket on Friday? Why do traffic lights always seem to be red when you?re in a hurry? Is bad luck just chance, or can it be explained?

The intriguing answers to these and other questions about the curiosities of everyday life can be found in this delightfully irreverent and highly informative book. Why Do Buses Come in Threes? explains how math and the laws of probability are constantly at work in our lives, affecting everything we do, from getting a date to catching a bus to cooking dinner. With great humor and a genuine love for the subject, Rob Eastaway and Jeremy Wyndham present solutions to such conundrums as how fast one should run in the rain to stay dry and who was the greatest sportsman of all time.Discover the mathematical explanations for the strange coincidence of two.

Presidents dying on July 4, the uncanny "accuracy" of horoscopes, and other not-so-coincidental coincidences. Eastaway and Wyndham also reveal how television ratings work, which numbers are more likely to be big winners in the lottery, and why bad things, just like buses, always seem to happen in threes.

Whether you have a degree in astrophysics or haven?t touched a math problem since high school, this book sends you on a fascinating journey through the logic of life where Newton?s laws explain bar fights, exploding rabbit populations, and why showers always run either too hot or too cold. Why Do Buses Come in Threes? is a delightfully entertaining ride that reveals the relevance of math in absolutely everything we do.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

If you've ever bought a Lotto ticket and wondered about your bad luck afterward, you've had to deal with math. From timing to probability, it pervades our every waking moment, and even the most crippling math phobia can't make it go away. Writers Rob Eastaway and Jeremy Wyndham throw up their hands in defeat and give in to the amusing, interesting, and practical aspects of math in Why Do Buses Come in Threes? Taking their title from the oft-noticed phenomenon of clumping in mass transit, they explain in clear, commonsense language why this must be so. At the end of their description, you might be left with the uneasy sense that you just learned some math, and on quick review, you'll find that the authors have in fact snuck some in under your radar. In chapter after chapter, Eastaway and Wyndham successfully navigate statistics, codes, coincidences, and many other parts of our lives, peeling away the surface to show what's really going on to make things so weird and wonderful. Diagrams and drawings help to make their points even clearer, and there are almost never any scary formulas to frighten the timid. If you've been waiting your whole life to learn the "Ham Sandwich Theorem," or just want to put some old fears to rest, Why Do Buses Come in Threes? is the solution. --Rob Lightner --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Review

'An interesting read for even the most maths-phobic' - The Good Book Guide --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 156 pages
• Publisher: John Wiley & Sons; 1 edition (February 25, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0471379077
• ISBN-13: 978-0471379072
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.1 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #185,721 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #75 in Books > Humor & Entertainment > Puzzles & Games > Math Games

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

19 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Superb book for non mathemeticians, February 14, 2001

By 

Noah R. Freeman "noah_freeman" (Boston, MA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Why Do Buses Come in Threes? The Hidden Mathematics of Everyday Life (Paperback)

This book is a superb sampler of interesting aspects of math. I found it very similiar to "A mathemetician reads the newspaper" by Paulos (also a great book). People who like Paulos will like this book a lot.

Parts that I particularly loved were the coverage of sections not treated in other, similiar texts. How fast to run in the rain to stay the driest, how to cut oddly shaped cakes into equal parts, etc.

Parts that I found the least exciting were the re-treatments of the stuff of standard layman's math books- does the world need another description of the travelling salesman problem, or Fibonacci sequences throughout nature? (though these descriptions are better than most that Ive read)

Overall, this book was very enjoyable. If you've read no "math and the world books" you will think it is 5 stars, and if you've read many of them you will think 4 stars (or just skip those chapters)

13 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars how come buns come in dozens but weiners come in eights?, June 21, 2000

By 

"christianskeptic" - See all my reviews

This review is from: Why Do Buses Come in Threes? The Hidden Mathematics of Everyday Life (Paperback)

this is an entertaining look at math and how it permeates our lives and pervades nature. the authors cover a variety of topics ranging from explaining coincidences to why we always get stuck in traffic jams. the best chapter is ch.1, titled Why can't I find a four leaf clover? they explain how Fibonacci's series turn up so often in plants (the number of petals, for example, is always a, or a multiple of, a fibonacci number), as well as the golden ratio, pi, and why cells in beehives are shaped like hexagons. the pervasiveness of hidden mathematics in nature can make one wonder whether there's an intelligence behind it all.

the book also contains a number of mathematical formulas. i remember reading somewhere that for every equation given in a book, sales drop by 5000 (or some number like that). Hopefully that won't happen here.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Fascinating book, July 24, 2005

By 

The Last Person You'd Expect (Seattle, WA United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Why Do Buses Come in Threes: The Hidden Mathematics of Everyday Life (Hardcover)

While I was originally turned off by the title, which not only suggested an extremely narrow subject matter, but seemed pointed toward a younger audience (I have degrees in computer science and mathematics), I ended up reading it with great enthusiasm, usually unable to put it down for two or more hours at a time. The authors have searched far and wide for mathematical 'optical-illusions' that occur in a very broad range of everyday matters.

To put the sheer amount of subject matter crammed into this modestly sized book into perspective, the question posed by the title takes only a page or a page and a half of the book. The author(s) go from topic to topic quite rapidly, insuring that readers will never get bored. If you want indepth information, you're free to go elsewhere, but in few other places will you find so many amusing and surprising mathematical tidbits in one place.

This is a book that belongs on every elementary- and undergraduate-level instructor's bookshelf. What I remember most about my early education and what prompted me to go further in mathematics were the unintuitive ideas such as are presented in this book so well and so entertainingly. The 'birthday phenomenon' is a good example of a completely unintuitive phenomenon described by Eastaway; take a class of more than a mere 23 students, and there is a greater than 50% chance two of them will have the same birthday. How can this be so? There are 365 days in a year! There is a simple, easily understandable explanation to this. (And to illustrate my earlier point, this was honestly the only specific thing I remembered my professor explaining from my intro to statistics class).

There are probably a hundred or so examples of such mysteries presented in this book. I sincerely believe readers at all levels will enjoy the content as much as I did.