HUMBLE PI : A COMEDY OF MATHS ERRORS

What makes a bridge wobble when it''s not meant to? How do billions of dollars mysteriously vanish into thin air? How does a building rock when its resonant frequency matches a gym Class leaping to snap''s 1990 hit I''ve got the power? The answer is Maths. Or to be precise what happens when Maths goes wrong in the real world. As Matt Parker shows us our modern lives are built on Maths: computer programmes finance engineering. And most of the time this Maths works quietly behind the scenes until... It doesn''t. Exploring and explaining a litany of glitches near-misses and mishaps involving the Internet big data elections street signs lotteries the Roman Empire and a hapless Olympic shooting team Matt Parker shows us the bizarre ways Maths trips us up and what this reveals about its essential place in our world. This book shows how by making Maths our friend we can learn from its pitfalls. It also contains puzzles challenges geometric Socks jokes about binary code and three deliberate mistakes. Getting it wrong has never been more fun.