Customer Reviews

Coincidences, Chaos, and All That Math Jazz: Making Light of Weighty Ideas

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4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(2)
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1 star:		(1)

 

 

This book is full of very lively and engaging explanations of a wide range of mathematics. The book consists of four parts, each of which is subdivided into three chapters. The first part is on "Understanding Uncertainty" and covers topics related to chaos, coincidences, and statistics. The second part, "Embracing Figures", deals with cryptography and patterns and has an especially nice section on `sizing up numbers' which deals with orders of magnitude and topics which should be a part of anybody's quantitative literacy. "Exploring Aesthetics" is the subject of the third part, which includes discussions of fractals and chaos and a nice introduction to the coffee cups and doughnuts of topology. They also discuss Mobius Bands and Klein Bottles, which lead nicely into the final section, which is entitled "Transcending Reality", and deals with the fourth dimension and various notions of infinity.

That is a large number of topics to cover in 288 pages, and doing a little division will tell you that many topics are treated extremely briefly. And that would probably be many readers' main criticism of the book: while it certainly gives a sampling platter of a large number of ideas throughout mathematics, it does not give you an entire meal of any of them, and before you are even done chewing one bite, the authors bring you the next topic served on a platter. While I certainly understand, and to some extent agree with, this criticism, I think that many readers will prefer their mathematics served this way, and it certainly will open the door for many of them to explore these ideas further.

Burger and Starbird take the subtitle of their book - "Making Light Out Of Weighty Matters" - quite seriously, and their exposition is filled with jokes and asides ranging from the corny to the extremely corny. I found the writing style to be fun, and I think that it would help bring in many readers who would be turned off by a more serious approach to exposition.

On the whole I think the authors succeed in their goal remarkably well: readers with little or no mathematical background will walk away from the book having learned a little bit about a lot of different mathematical topics. Hopefully, they also will have their appetites whetted for further - and deeper - learning and they will find some of the other popular math books populating their bookstore's shelves to satisfy this hunger. Most importantly, any reader of Burger and Starbird's book will realize that mathematics is a far more creative and exciting field than they may have gathered from their prior courses and experiences.

Math can be beautiful; math can be fun. While I caught glimpses of these truths occasionally in the course of my formal education, I never really saw the light. With Burger and Starbird's delightful book, it feels like I'm staring at the sun. In their closing thoughts, they write, "Mathematics is a liberating entertainment"; and at that point, they've proven it.

The authors show us the beauty of math in quotidian objects: the number of spirals on a pineapple or in the center of a sunflower, for example, are almost always the same and always follow a particular mathematical sequence known as a Fibonacci sequence. That sequence leads us to a geometric concept known as the Golden Rectangle, which they show has been embraced by various artists and architects in paintings and buildings. There is math in beauty and there is beauty in math.

They take us on a tour of topology (an advanced region of mathematics) with friendly, informal examples such as how to remove your undies without removing your trousers. And they teach us how a simple math concept can underlie extraordinarily difficult to crack codes. They lead us into the fourth dimension and on to infinity (and then on to another infinity that's even bigger than infinity)!

The most impressive aspect of this book is that, despite the heady nature of the material, the authors relentlessly make it fun. The book is filled with both humor and clever, helpful drawings. This accessible book can remind us all that math leads into exciting territory.

I just finished reading this book. I have to admit I was a math-fan before the read, but this book brought out all that is good in math and much more. It is the first book that explains really big ideas in mathematics without any fancy math symbols (in fact, I don't think I saw one equation in the entire book!). It really is written for the general public and I feel that anyone who picks it up will love it and will not put it down.

Now I do know some math, so I have to say that the comments of Kyle Williams that I read today are a bit strange. The sections he refers to explain well-understood and well-established mathematical ideas that have been written in very original ways. It really is correct. Honestly, I know I'll reread the book--it's really funny... I can't believe I laughed out loud a few times while reading it! You'll love it!

Remember how dull math was back then? We all took the required course in Algebra. We struggled through it, we got out, and most of us never thought about the subject again.

If this had been the math book we used, math might have been considered fun. It might even have taught us that we wanted to study more math. In this book the authors take some real problems, problems that might even interest one of today's teenagers and use that to discuss mathematics.

Any kid would have some interest in learning about secret messages. Probably both the boys and the girls. The boys by their very nature, the girls so that the boys couldn't read their diary. Secred messages lead to cryptography and an opportunity to study prime numbers, factoring, all kinds of things.

And topology, mobius strips which only have one side. You could make mobius strips in class and do some experiments that would be a lot more fun than going to the board to do long division.

In part it's the subject matter that makes this book so interesting. Infinity and choas theory are just plain interesting. But it's also the writing style, for instance: 'If we were to randomly kidnap 35 people off the street, two events are remarkably likely to happen. The first is we'd probably get arrested, the second ....'

Delightful book.

Burger and Starbird have decided to take math and try and make it fun for their readers. They cover a vast range of topics such as why we seem to notice so many coincidences in our daily lives, why certain geometric shapes seem more aesthetically pleasing than others, and how an infinite number of housekeepers would go about cleaning an infinite number of hotel rooms.

Their tone is very smooth, often funny, and makes for a very light read. Readers who have previously been turned off by math will find the book accessible, even enjoyable. However, this accessibility comes at a price: readers looking for anything more challenging will be severely let down. I myself found that I learned virtually nothing new from the book, though I have taken mathematics and statistics courses at the university level.

Ultimately, for the general reader looking for a book that will make math pleasant, this is about as good as it gets. The authors were clearly looking to make a math book that could appeal to the greatest number of people, and I think they have succeeded. People with more in-depth knowledge of science or math should stay away.

Who says math is boring or irrelevant?

Certainly not someone who's read this book and seen the many ways math serves as the skeleton key to life and the mysteries of the universe itself!

At the beginning of each chapter the authors skillfully say what they're going to prove in simple English and then by the end of the chapter end up proving it not only in English but math as well.

Starting simply with the subject of coincidences, the authors show how and why even in very small groups you may share a birthday with someone else. From coincidences the authors discuss choas, the reverse of coincidence where small differences ultimately make for...well...even bigger differences. Why is this so? They tell you.

Later they tackle cryptography and show how the patterns of running a lottery are in the end very similar to the patterns that govern the forms life takes. Amazingly, in twenty pages they manage to cover the same ground covered in the book "The Golden Ratio" (which by the way, is also very, good book but just a longer discussion).

Moving from the mysteries of life to the mysteries of the universe, the authors ACTUALLY MAKE YOU UNDERSTAND what the 4th dimension would be like. In this way, they manage through a brief treatment what the longer work "Flatterland" by Ian Stewart (also, by the way, a very good book, just longer) manages to do.

Finally, they plum that ultimate mystery of mathematics and creation -- infinity. Here again, they also manage in a brief treatment that which is also dealt with in a longer book, "Zero" by Charles Seife (again, also a very, good book but again just longer).

As both an introductory work to all the other books cited in this review or merely as a book read on its own, this book delivers both great fun and great insight.

Buy it now!

This is a terrific "Gee whiz...!" book - full of fun items that stimulate your thinking while illustrating and explaining challenging concepts.

So, how many times CAN you fold a standard sheet of binder paper in half? Try inflicting this on your friends and colleagues, and enjoy the results! [If you have not read the book, try this: guess an answer to the question, then grab a sheet of 8.5 x 11 paper and try it out. You may be surprised...]

Great book - highly recommended for those who enjoy learning.

Edward Burger and Michael Starbird provide a breezy introduction to a range of mathematical topics. They start with coincidences and explain how apparent parallelisms like the Kennedy-Lincoln happen and why in a group of 43 at least one pair will have the same birthday. They demonstrate chaos theory with a simple Excel spreadsheet exercise. Unintended consequences are demonstrated when they show how stricter airline safety requirements could actually increase travel fatalities. Included are clear and entertaining introductions to the ideas of infinity, multi-dimensions, topology, and encryption.

My favorite is the topic on "Synergy Between Nature and Number" where Burger and Starbird use the spiral patterns of pineapples and cornflowers to introduce an enlightening elucidation of the Fibonacci series, Golden Rectangles, and Golden Triangles. I wish I had been exposed to this clear discussion of the geometry and algebra long ago.

Alan Witschonke's clear illustrations contribute greatly to understanding the subtleties of the mathematics. The book is fast reading and delightful, though the authors are shameless in their use of puns, such as taking "a dip in the gene pool" and "hoping to duck the fowl issue".

Great book on recreational mathematics that you can actually curl up in bed with! Very few books on mathematics, let alone chaos and complexity will let you read it laying down in bed at midnight. I think the fact that one of the author (Edward Burger) is a stand up comedian as well as professor of mathematics has something to do with making the book approachable and fun to read.

What a wonderful motto for learning! To understand deep things simply, investigate simple things deeply. In "Coincidences, Chaos and All That Math Jazz", Burger and Starbird take that motto to heart and bless their readers with an entertaining, irreverent, always amusing yet eminently readable and completely understandable exploration of some of the frontiers of mathematics.

In the opening chapters, real-life numbers - the roulette wheel, nature vs nurture studies of twin's characteristics, e-mail stock picking scam and spam artists, air safety standards, HIV testing and the puzzle of coincident birth dates at a party - are used to put meat onto the bones of the familiar saying "lies, damned lies and statistics" and to introduce the modern concept of mathematical chaos.

A simple straightforward chapter on the nature of numbers that almost effortlessly leads us into a basic understanding of much more complex topics such as cryptography, the Goldbach and the Twin Prime conjectures closes with the interesting comment, "... our instinctive desire to wonder about the world of numbers has paid enormous practical dividends in the past - abstract ideas about primes and factoring unexpectedly led to public key cryptography and security in Internet commerce. Somehow human curiosity about numbers from ancient times to the present seems to be in synchronicity with the universe."

Counting spirals on pineapples and sunflowers and the simple act of folding and unfolding a strip of paper is used as a springboard to take the reader, who is now thoroughly engrossed in the enjoyable style of the book, to a basic understanding of the Fibonacci sequence, the golden ratio, chaos and fractals.

But for me personally, the most interesting section was the last one. Burger and Starbird used extremely simple notions of counting, matching and a hotel with an infinite number of rooms to guide the unsuspecting reader to a brilliant "aha" moment - a concise, clear understanding of Cantor's ideas regarding the cardinality of infinity, the completely counterintuitive idea that some infinities are bigger than others.

Mathematics is fun and beautiful and this wonderful little book will show even the most math-phobic reader why! Highly recommended.

Paul Weiss