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A Mathematician Reads the Newspaper Paperback – September 26, 1997
Purchase options and add-ons
- Print length224 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherAnchor
- Publication dateSeptember 26, 1997
- Dimensions5.25 x 0.5 x 8 inches
- ISBN-10038548254X
- ISBN-13978-0385482547
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Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Review
A Mathematician Reads the Newspaper is irresistible. -- Rudy Rucker, Scientific American, 1995
Although the combination of math and newspapers sounds uniquely unappetizing, John Allen Paulos creates a truly thought- provoking book from that mixture. -- USA Today, Best Bet, 1995
But the dirty secret about the media's contribution to American "Innumeracy," first examined in a delightful book by that title by John Allen Paulos, is about to be revealed in his sequel, "A Mathematician Reads the Newspaper. -- Max Frankel, New York Times, 1995
Even better, Paulos' wit and humor - admirably displayed in Innumeracy - are in top form. His irreverent and pointed comments entertain as well as educate. Though Paulos writes about a bewildering number of topics, he has something fresh and interesting to say about each. -- Charles Seife, Philadelphia Inquirer, 1995
In his new book, the mathematician John Allen Paulos continues his witty crusade against mathematical illiteracy ...... Mr. Paulos's little essay explaining the Banzhaf power index and how it relates to Lani Guinier's ideas about empowering minorities is itself worth the price of the book. -- Richard Bernstein, New York Times, 1995
It would be great to have John Allen Paulos living next door. Every morning when you read the paper and came across some story that didn't seem quite right - that had the faint odor of illogic hovering about it - you could just lean out the window and shout, "Jack! Get the hell over here!"..... Paulos, who wrote the bestseller Innumeracy (the mathematical equivalent of illiteracy), has now written a fun, spunky, wise little book that would be helpful to both the consumers of the news and its purveyors. -- Joel Achenbach, Washington Post, 1995
Paulos uses his considerable talents and a breezy style to discuss many ways to apply simple, or at least simply explained, mathematics and logic to analyze the contents of the newspaper. ... the book is a compendium of unusually sound advice, which, if widely read and understood, could improve a lot more for us than the way we read the newspaper. -- Journal of the American Medical Association, 1995
This is press criticism, but not of the usual kind .... This is press criticism of the sort that George Orwell had in mind when he observed that what's important isn't news, and what's news isn't important. ..... This is a subversive book. Paulos argues that the world is so complex that it cannot be accurately described, much less manipulated. ...... a wise and thoughtful book, which skewers much of what everyone knows to be true. -- Lee Dembart, Los Angeles Times, 1995
From the Publisher
"It would be great to have John Allen Paulos living next door. Every morning when you read the paper and come across some story that didn't seem quite right--that had the faint odor of illogic hovering about it-- you could just lean out the window and shout, 'John! Get the hell over here!'. A fun, spunky, wise little book that would be helpful to both the consumers of the news and its purveyors." --Washington Post Book World
From the Inside Flap
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
1. Ten is a common and familiar number, the base of our number system. Numbers are rounded to 10 or to multiples of ten or tenths. The resulting distortion, of course, need not have much to do with reality. We're told, for example, that we use 10 percent of our brain power, that 10 percent of us consume 90 percent of the world's resources, and that decades define us. (Is there anything more vapid than explanation by decade? In the free love, antiwar sixties, hippies felt so and so; the greed of the eighties led yuppies to do such and such; sullen and unread Generation Xers never do anything.)
2. People like information to be encapsulated; they're impatient with long, discursive explanations. They want the bare facts, and they want them now.
3. The list is consistent with a linear approach to problems. Nothing is complex or convoluted; every factor can be ranked. If we do a, b, or c, then x, y, or z will happen. Proportionality reigns.
4. It's a kind of ritual. Numbers are often associated with rites, and this is a perfect example.
5. It has biblical resonance, the Ten Commandments being one of its first instances. Others are the ten plagues on the Egyptians, the ten days between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, the requirement that at least ten men be present for public prayer, and Joseph's ten brothers.
6. The list can be a complete story. It has a beginning: 1, 2, 3; a middle: 4, 5, 6, 7; and an end, 8, 9, 10. Many stories in the news are disconnected; the list is unitary.
7. It's easy to write; there is no need to come up with transitions. Or even complete sentences. The same holds for the 10, 50, and 100 years ago today fillers.
8. It's flexible and capable of handling any subject. Since there are never any clear criteria for what constitutes an entry on such a list, items on short lists can easily be split, and those on long lists can just as easily be combined.
9. Lists are widely read (or heard) and talked about, but don't require much room in the paper or much airtime.
10. People realize it's an artificial form and like to see if it's going to run out of good points before it gets to 10.
Product details
- Publisher : Anchor (September 26, 1997)
- Language : English
- Paperback : 224 pages
- ISBN-10 : 038548254X
- ISBN-13 : 978-0385482547
- Item Weight : 6.4 ounces
- Dimensions : 5.25 x 0.5 x 8 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #4,539,463 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #5,855 in American Fiction Anthologies
- #51,211 in Mathematics (Books)
- Customer Reviews:
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About the author

(My web page is johnallenpaulos.com and my twitter feed is @johnallenpaulos.)
John Allen Paulos is an extensively kudized author, popular public speaker, and former monthly columnist for ABCNews.com, the Scientific American, and the Guardian. Professor of math at Temple University in Philadelphia, he earned his Ph.D. in the subject from the University of Wisconsin.
His new book (November, 2015) is A Numerate Life - A Mathematician Explores the Vagaries of Life, His Own and Probably Yours. Other writings of his include Innumeracy (NY Times bestseller for 18 weeks), A Mathematician Reads the Newspaper (on the Random House Modern Library's compilation of the 100 best nonfiction books of the century), Once Upon a Number (chosen as one of the best books of 1998), and A Mathematician Plays the Stock Market (a brief tenant on the BusinessWeek bestsellers list). He's also written scholarly papers on probability, logic, and the philosophy of science as well as scores of OpEds, book reviews, and articles in publications such as the NY Times, the Wall Street Journal, Forbes, the Nation, Discover, the American Scholar, and the London Review of Books and has an extensive web and media presence.
In 2003 he received the American Association for the Advancement of Science award for promoting public understanding of science, and in 2013 the Mathematics Communication Award from the Joint Policy Board for Mathematics.
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I love Innumeracy, and I love this one too....
This book consists of loosely connected materials that you often see in the newspaper and John take a fresh mathematician look into it, sneering and smiling and teaching us what to watch over next time we read it.
The logic will make you smile a lot, and the awakening will make you look at your newspaper with a different point of view, some sort of small revelation.
I believe that John Allen Paulo has awaken up the mathematic curiocities in a lot of his readers, including me. He would argue that the percentage is too small to make a dent to this world of innumeracy people, (which is mathematically correct, and he has mathematically proven that into this world).
But to those who have been changed, it did matter for their lives. Go get it and have funs reading, if you found it too daunting, take a rest, and re read the book next week, you will be glad you did.
Thank You John.
This should be mandatory reading along with “How to Lie With Statistics”.
The book is somehow timeless, it is as useful and observant now as it was when written.
An easy recommendation to make.
Top reviews from other countries
Of the three main books written by John Allen Paulos - this is the best. He popularized the term Innumeracy - defined as incompetence with numbers rather than words. His main theses presented throughout his books are the average citizen does not understand the mathematical concepts of statistics, probability (risk), order of magnitudes etc. properly and result in making many incorrect assumptions and decisions in their everyday life.
In this book, Paulos presents his views on how mathematics is used and misused in the popular media. He discusses how reports of numbers are misleading or inaccurate. Many misperceptions are sometimes presented by authors through their own innumeracy, however many writers with "hidden agendas" sometimes choose to present numbers to their advantage to prove or convince you of their point of view.
Paulos discusses mathematics in relation to a person who is reading the "stories" in their daily newspaper and divides his essays into sections as you would read in a daily newspaper.
This book is still relevant today and well worth reading. It is intended for the general public to make them more aware and critical of the numerical fallacies that you "see" in the everyday media.









