Humble Pi

What makes a bridge wobble when it's not meant to? Billions of dollars mysteriously vanish into thin air? 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.

Mathematics doesn't have good 'people skills', but we would all be better off, he argues, if we saw it as a practical ally. 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.

Review

Matt Parker has pulled off something wonderful . . . his stories are superb. -- Marcus Berkmann ― The Daily Mail

Parker is consistently very funny . . . highly entertaining. ― The Guardian

Numbers to die for. Four stars. -- Simon Griffith ― Mail on Sunday

Bought it yesterday, enjoying it enormously, well done! -- Dara Ó Briain ― Twitter

I just finished the new book by irrepressible maths enthusiast @standupmaths, and it's GREAT! -- Adam Savage, ex-host of 'Mythbusters' ― Twitter

An entertaining and often alarming journey through the numerical blunders made over the years. ― The Big Issue

Very funny. . . a compendium of stories about mathematical failures; some are amusing, others alarming, as in the case of the passenger aircraft that ran out of fuel because it had been measured in the wrong units ― Telegraph Books of the Year

The surprise bestseller that makes maths fun ― Sunday Times Magazine

Fun, informative, and relentlessly entertaining, Humble Pi is a charming and very readable guide to some of humanity's all-time greatest miscalculations - that also gives you permission to feel a little better about some of your own mistakes -- Ryan North, author of How to Invent Everything

About the Author

Originally a maths teacher from Australia, Matt Parker now lives in the overly quaint British town of Godalming. As well as talking about maths on TV and radio, Matt also performs sold-out live comedy shows and makes YouTube videos that have received tens of millions of views. The Public Engagement in Mathematics Fellow at Queen Mary University of London, Matt has a square named after him but he doesn't want to talk about it.