Customer Reviews

Geekspeak: How Life + Mathematics = Happiness

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(21)
3 star:		(14)
2 star:		(7)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

This is a wonderful book. In 29 fascinating chapters, the author, an engineer, discusses issues as diverse as how to estimate the number of words one's vocabulary, to calculating how many flies it takes to pull a car, to how you can tell the weight of a bus just by looking at it, etc., etc. In each case, the author uses a very common-sense, step-by-step approach in which numbers are rounded and approximate answers are eventually obtained. He points out that many of the calculations are of a type that one can do in ones head while sitting on a deck chair with one's eyes closed - although, in many cases, some basic data or numbers or factors are needed to actually make the estimate. In my case, if I were doing such calculations from scratch, I would prefer having a basic calculator on hand - at least for some of them. The writing style is clear, accessible, friendly, authoritative and very engaging; but most of all, it is quite witty and occasionally very humorous. Because of the pleasant way in which this book is written, in combination with the information that it conveys, it can be enjoyed by absolutely anyone - math phobic or not.

Usually we do not associate the word, "fun" with "math." But in this book, "Geekspeak" by Dr. Graham Tattersall is just that. It is informative and fun. For example, he claims that using a mathematical formula, "there are 4.1 billion people accessible through a chain of just six links. The world's population is about 6.6 billion, so it seems that a pal of a pal of a pal of a pal of a pal will connect you to three-quarters of humanity" (pp. 39-40). This is mind boggling concept!

1. The book overall, I find it entertaining and at times, fascinating. He shows the world of numbers in all areas of our life (the author covers from a probability of an accidental death to computer chips).
2. Sometimes, at least for me, while entertaining, it is filled with dizzy array of numerical calculations. But it makes you think.
3. The chapters are short and therefore, you do not feel overwhelmed by the topic.
4. For parents: Chapter 1 includes the "f-" word. The author is only stating the research result of man's three finger print words: "f-," "er," and "the." So he is not being offensive.

Overall, I like the book. It is interesting. It makes math fun and informative. It also makes me think...

When I have trouble getting to sleep, I concentrate on a puzzle or a math problem. (Will Shortz's Sunday puzzles on NPR are good for this.) This keeps my mind focused on a task and keeps me from letting my mind wander into troubling areas that keep me awake (why did I say that to my boss? I really have to balance my checkbook. What's that sound?) It seems like a geeky thing to do, but if I am geeky, then Graham Tattersall is a hundred times more geeky.

He isn't troubled by his geekiness, though. He positively wallows in it. If there's a question that can be solved with numbers, Tattersall is there to tackle it. How much does your house weigh? How much does this bus weigh? How much does your head weigh? When Tattersall isn't figuring out how heavy things are, he's figuring out whether humans or PCs are more powerful (computers), if there are more dead people than people alive right now (yes), and how fast farts are (20 mph).

Geekspeak has lots of short chapters on a variety of subjects that make it perfect for reading in short spurts. There are lots of formulas and diagrams, so be warned. The only quibble I have with the book is that there is a hodgepodge of typefaces on each chapter heading, which is not attractive. You don't need to be a geek to enjoy Geekspeak, just very curious.

Geekspeak is not a bad book, and the short chapters make a good bathroom read.

However, for a science themed book, using the metric system would be both expected and appreciated. In fact, the armchair calculations the author does throughout the book using the imperial, miles & gallons system are a great manifesto for the universal use of the metric system.

In Geekspeak, Graham Tattersall shows how simple math can be used to answer questions such as "How fast is a fart traveling?" and "How much does your head weigh?" Tattersall relies on estimates and back of the envelope-type calculations to keep things simple, so anyone who can add, subtract, multiply and divide should be able to follow his reasoning. (Integration is mentioned once, but only in parenthesis). He keeps his chapters short so as not to lose the reader, and the corny jokes are kept to a minimum. Highly recommended for those who appreciate math, or those who want to appreciate it but are intimidated.

Mathematics pervades the fabric of our life in ways we don't realize, and we have mathematical tools which can help us solve seemingly intractable problems. This thesis is amply illustrated in Geekspeak, and the author is an expert guide to how math can be applied to make our lives more interesting and fulfilling. It's not long and the explanations of solutions, while rigorous, are easy to follow. I recommend this book to anyone who wants to learn more about the way the world works, who enjoys numerical puzzles, or would just like to expand his mental horizons. Highly recommended.

I'm very much a geek, and love mathematics and looking through the world with the mathematician's/scientist's geeky lens. I had high hopes for this book, and it didn't really deliver.

I was hoping for higher level of geekdom - this is a sort of tenth-grade level of geekdom. However, that still puts it at a higher level than most people, and so I suppose that's where the book had to settle, otherwise it would have a much more limited audience. However, "Brief History of Time" didn't shy away from being more advanced, and I think this book could have handled it.

Basically, this books take everyday normal sorts of occurrences/things and attempts to go into some mathematical detail about it, and show how even some potentially very difficult mathematics can be done in the head through approximation, some informed guesswork, and rounding off along the way. Not to get specific answers accurate to four or five significant digits, but to get approximate answers that are maybe within the engineer's allowable 10% plus or minus.

He uses a bunch of interesting examples (How many dumpsters could you fill with a year's worth of American trash? How much land is needed to bury the dead each year? How many piano tuners are there in Boston?) and along the way enlightens on such things as how a company might decide how many of a certain profession a certain city might really need (and thus, if Boston already has a enough piano tuners, they'll send their piano tuner elsewhere), some lessons in probability and emotions (such as that people will play the lottery thinking they'll win, but won't fly, thinking there will be a disaster, even though the chances of winning the lottery are far less than dying in an airplane accident), and also hits some basic physics, from mechanical Newtonian motion to fluid dynamics, and statistics.

It's good at what it does, but seriously, any high schooler who's taken physics and mathematics will already be able to do the stuff in here, and the examples given are interesting, but not particularly geeky.

I also think the writing is not quite up to par - it's not bad writing, but it's in a folksy conversational style that sometimes comes across as condescending and arrogant.

Given the name - GEEKSPEAK - I expected a lot more GEEK from it.

Maybe it's just me, though.

I think John Allen Paulos does a much better job of explaining these kinds of things in his books Innumeracy, Beyond Numeracy, and so on. I recommend the reader to those books instead.

Microsoft is famous for interview questions such as, "How many gas stations are there in the U.S?," and "How would you move Mt. Fuji?" Although Geekspeak doesn't tackle those exact questions, it does walk through calculations of how many piano tuners there are in Boston, and how much the moon weighs.

You can also learn how to estimate the size of your vocabulary, and which of those words are best to use in a personal ad.

The book is interesting and fun to read. Each section of the book is short and self-contained, so it is the perfect book to pick up and read when you have a few minutes and want to jumpstart your brain.

My one disappointment with the book is that I expected more concepts that could be put to practical application. Estimating is an important skill. If nothing else, it helps us to identify when someone is trying to feed us a line of bull. Geekspeak assumes a level of knowledge of science and statistics beyond that possessed by the average person, so many of the examples and concepts presented could not be applied in daily life.

Even with that flaw, the book is engaging and entertaining and, hey!, you just might learn something.

I was initially attracted to this book because of the various types of questions or problems it purported to be able to answer using simple math. Things such as, how big is my vocabulary, how many flies would it take to pull a car, how much does my house weigh, what has more processing power: the mind or a computer cpu, etc.

There were two factors that determined (for me) how interesting each topic was: One, my degree of interest in the topic in the first place. For example, I was curious to see how the author determined if the brain or a computer chip was more powerful, whereas asking how much tax must be collected to fund a war doesn't interest me. Second, chapter length influenced my interest. I found that there were some topics I initially thought interesting but the more I read, the more technical it got and my interest faded.

I also found that the author does a lot of estimating (which is inevitable since trying to figure out how much your house weighs is going to involve using estimates) but I had my doubts as to how much error those estimates introduced into the final results. Depending on how far off you were with estimating one piece of the puzzle, that could seriously throw off the results when the final answer used thousands of such pieces.

I feel that almost everyone will find at least a few items of interest in this book that they would want to pursue, and the chapters are short enough to allow for informal, pleasure reading. I thought about 1/2 the book was interesting - does the author have a formula that will tell him what % of the book most readers will find interesting? That could have been in the appendix.. anyway, that's the reason for the three stars, because I thought 1/2 the book was good. Someone else might think the other half is good and between the two of us, raise the rating to five stars.

Personally I have never needed to calculate the weight of a bus, but I could now, with the help of this book. Author Graham Tattersall presents a number of different ways to calculate things you've never even thought about. This, to him, is GeekSpeak.

I think this would be a nice gift for the Geekishly inclined, think a brainier version of the worst case survival books. Each ultra-short chapter contains an explanation and the mathematical formula for calculating something interesting or obscure.

For "green" folks there are a number of chapters dealing with global warming, alternate energy, and the like.