Customer Reviews

Once Upon a Number

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I saw the Salon review of this and promptly ordered it. A little trepidatious at first, I thought the book might be a rehash of Innumeracy and A Mathematician reads the Newspaper, which I loved. I was wrong. The book has Paulos's wry, witty tone and the many examples and insights are characteristically quirky, but the topic is very different - the similarities and differences between stories and mathematics, between their associated logics and world views, and the different mindsets they bring about. Somehow he relates Murphy's Law, the limited complexity of the human brain, topical news stories, bible codes, race issues, and many other amusing tidbits into a coherent argument about our place in the world. And there isn't an equation in sight.

Of all the science books that I have read, there are only a few that I would classify as a must-read. I definitely put this book in that category. I have never read a Paulos before, and was amazed at how facinating the world of probability and statistics is when it is described this well! Authors of books about the wonders of the universe would be lucky if they could make their subjects as interesting as Paulos makes his.

There are four major concepts described in this book: the origins of probability and statistics (in particular how these subjects grew out of our natural observations of the world), the effect of subjective perspectives on our interpretation of both story and statistics, intensional logic (the still little-understood logical structure of this subjective interpretation), and information theory. The book takes a fast-paced, entertaining tour through these topics, and Paulos adds interesting personal anecdotes and bad (intentioanlly) jokes. The book concludes with a discussion of the chasm between the arts and sciences (and those who like to keep it that way).

If your looking for a detailed study of any of these topics, however, then this book may not be for you. But this is a good introduction to subjects you may no little about, but will most likely by facinated by when you finish reading.

I read Innumeracy many years ago and have been reading Paulos' recent monthly column on abcnews.com and so I bought a copy of Once Upon a Number. I was very surprised at it. It seems to me to be a departure, a brave mathematical foray into the realms of literature and everyday life. The many insights in it are arresting not so much for their mathematical content (although I did minor in math in college) but for the strange new perspectives they provide that are "obvious" only after they've been made. Very intriguing stuff!

I've never read a book on mathematics or science with as much voice and attitude as this one. The similarities between narrative and mathematical thinking (and their differences) are startling and sometimes subtle. What keeps you going are the unusual insights, the witty and funny turns of phrase, and that voice and intelligence which seem to rise from the page. An English major and self-styled math phobe, I learned more about story-telling from this book than from some of my lit courses.

Paulos starts the book with a clearly absurd story, one that has numbers and statistics mixed in with a narrative. His question is, why is this so jarring? Why is it that people are literate and numerate, but so seldom both at once?

This book addresses that question. In part, he says that literature deals with many aspects of a few individuals, but statisticians generally study a very few aspects of very many individuals. He also notes that literature tends to treat each individual as a unique product of a unique time and place. In contrast, math and physics typically deal with cases where the specific individual is irrelevant. Any experiment on an electron gets the same result no matter which electron you use, or where, or when.

The dichotomy may not, in fact, exist. One could refer to the recent statistical studies of DNA data that have that literary much-about-few character and that often seek out the uniqueness of the study's subject. Part of Paulos's main point, however, is that reasoning in "human" prose is often just mathematical reasoning in street clothes. Other times, when day to day logic seems irrational to a simplistic "scientific" analysis, it turns out that there is a deeper kind of reasoning at work, and one that can be cast in formal terms.

Paulos delivers more than his nominal argument, though. His presentation is filled with little asides and self-referential humor. He is a logician after all, and, like the logician Lewis Carroll, uses his logic to create delightful unreason. Taken as a whole, it's a brief, enjoyable, and instructive look a the formal side of casual reasoning, and at the human side of mathematical logic.

//wiredweird

Paulos is a strange combination of a mathematician and a story-teller. He tells a story and near the end you realize you learned some math or he does some conceptual math (without equations) that suddenly turns into a story. Good exposition in this book about probability, complexity, literature, etc. Excellent.

I have read all of his books; this, unfortunately,is the worst. After finishing it, I knew nothing more, nor had anything more to think about. His other books, on the other hand, were always edifying and inspiring. His core theme is not very interesting or persuasively advanced. Of course there is a relationship between mathematical concepts and verbal expression. Mathematics inheres in the very fact of rational verbal expression. Without it, there could be no rational expression. His discussion of a more "scientific" theory of literature, is long-winded and unconvincing.The book is most interesting when he identifies and explains common errors in judgment manifest in common stories. But even here, he mostly belabors the obvious.

My final sense was that this book, unlike his previous efforts, was written primarily to make money. The intellectual love which shimmers in his other work, is completely missing.

RRL

I found this book disappointing. While some of the examples and anecdotes are interesting, and everything is very well written, I didn't really understand what the author's point actually was. I suggest that your time is better spent reading his other book, "Innumeracy", which is staggeringly good.

The author deals in an original way with the difficult nexus between statistics and stories, between alpha- and betascience, without favouring one of them, and indeed arguing that both are complementary. This striking impartiality creates the space for original ideas about everyday-situations that every reader will certainly recognize. To be original about (seeming) banality, that is the work of a true great mind. The reason why I do not rate this book with the maximum score, is that it sometimes misses an overarching line of reasoning. The discursive path may strike some readers (like me) as too associative. Needless to say that such a style has its charms, but perhaps due to my Europe-continental education, I am a bit more at ease with a clear thesis and a transparant construction. Nevertheless: it is absolutely imperative to buy this book!

I've always marveled at the imagination of authors who write fiction. Having only really been good in Science and Mathematics in school, the literary world seemed incredible. I couldn't believe that someone would pick up a book and read about fictional characters for hours on end (or, if you were dyslexic like me - weeks on end!) It simply seemed quite unfathomable. Why would anyone do that?

Then at around 15, I got hooked (like many of my age and background) on Science Fiction e.g. Dune (Dune Chronicles, Book 1) Much later on, I even got into Fantasy e.g. Lord of the Rings J.R.R. Tolkien Boxed Set (The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings) But I've never really got around to reading pulp fiction or romance novels - on any level. Spy novels or the occasional Agatha Christy murder mystery was as far as I dared travel down that road.

The problem was that I could never identify with the characters in those fictional stories. People with a scientific or mathematical bent, never seem to quite blend in to that world. In our worldview, the paradigms are much too different.

It is interesting to note that in the first few pages of the introduction, John Allen Paulos actually tries to parody characters that are found in such novels, augmenting them with some degree of Numeracy. It is easy to see, after just reading a few lines, why fiction remains a world where numbers are strictly forbidden!

This book is really a collection of essays. Each is entirely readable by itself. Unlike a novel however, it lacks the literary glue that compels us to keep reading it until the very end. And not all of the essays form a single unified focus, which is essential in presenting a profoundly new idea. It reminds me, of conversations I have with some of my students over a cup of tea in the evening: delightfully interesting but without some solid conclusion reached on any matter. Perhaps, this is the atmosphere that the author is trying to achieve as he talks about things as varied as the Bible Code to O. J. Simpson. In the last chapter he tries to bridge the gap between stories and statistics. However, by that time most readers would probably have come to the conclusion that the bigger the chasm between them - the better. I for one, would never want to read a historically correct version of Lord of the Rings, or a scientifically viable version of Dune.

Einstein was quoted as saying that. "Imagination is more important than knowledge."

Restraining our imagination to the "real" world would be just as much of a travesty as abandoning reality for myths and fantasy altogether. The important thing is in knowing how to tell the difference. And perhaps, this is what J. A. Paulos is really trying to bring across. In this day and age, you can't really take ANYTHING for granted, unless you first see the NUMBERS for yourself!

And this applies to the conclusions reached in THIS book too!