Showing titles in Mathematics

John Forbes Nash, Jr., a prodigy and legend by the age of 30, dazzled the mathematical world by solving a series of deep problems deemed "impossible" by other mathematicians. But at the height of his fame, Nash suffered a catastrophic mental breakdown and began a harrowing descent into insanity, resigning his post at MIT, slipping into a series of bizarre delusions, and eventually becoming a dreamy, ghostlike figure at Princeton, scrawling numerological messages on blackboards.

Thomas Bayes was an eighteenth-century Presbyterian minister and amateur mathematician whose obscure life belied the profound impact of his work. Like most research into probability at the time, his theorem - independently discovered a few years later by Pierre-Simon Laplace, the great French mathematician - was mainly seen as relevant to games of chance, like dice and cards. But its implications soon became clear, affecting fields as diverse as medicine, law and artificial intelligence.

Many people take math in high school and promptly forget much of it. But math plays a part in all of our lives all of the time, whether we know it or not. In The Joy of x, Steven Strogatz expands on his hit New York Times series to explain the big ideas of math gently and clearly, with wit, and insight.

Mathematical Mindsets provides practical strategies and activities to help teachers and parents show all children, even those who are convinced that they are bad at math, that they can enjoy and succeed in math. Jo Boaler - Stanford researcher, professor of math education, and expert on math learning - has studied why students don't like math and often fail in math classes. She's followed thousands of students through middle and high schools to study how they learn and to find the most effective ways to unleash the math potential in all students.

You may have watched hundreds of episodes of The Simpsons (and its sister show Futurama) without ever realising that they contain enough maths to form an entire university course. In The Simpsons and Their Mathematical Secrets, Simon Singh explains how the brilliant writers, some of the mathematicians, have smuggled in mathematical jokes throughout the cartoon’s 25-year history, exploring everything from p to Mersenne primes, from Euler’s equation to the unsolved riddle of P vs. NP, from perfect numbers to narcissistic numbers and much more.

'BRILLIANTLY CLEAR AND CAPTIVATING PROSE' STEPHEN FRY A WATERSTONES BOOK OF YEAR 2023 An award-winning mathematician explores the maths behind the games we love and why we love to play them. Where should you move first in Connect 4? What is the best property in Monopoly? And how can pi help you...

Brought to you by Penguin. Is this the game you want to be playing? Scoring systems are everywhere. Underpinning our daily lives – whether it’s the fit bits on our wrists, likes on social media, and even school rankings – they have become pervasive and increasingly dangerous, warping our...

Brought to you by Penguin. The ‘Mozart of mathematics’ (New York Times) takes us on a tour of the core ideas of mathematical thinking In Six Maths Essentials, the renowned mathematician Terence Tao shows how mathematics has evolved from counting and geometry into a flexible set of tools for...

Brought to you by Penguin. Is flying dangerous? How much do the world's cows weigh? And what makes people happy? From earth's nations and inhabitants, through the fuels and foods that energize them, to the transportation and inventions of our modern world - and how all of this affects the planet...

Mathematics has long been regarded as the purest expression of truth — a language through which the universe reveals itself. Yet behind every equation stands the human mind that created it. In this book, Boris Krieger follows the path of mathematics from its simplest intuitions to its highest abstractions, asking what it truly reveals — about reality, and about ourselves. Through lucid reflection and critical insight, he shows that geometry, algebra, topology, and probability are not independent worlds but translations of human perception into structure.

To score a job in data science, machine learning, computer graphics, and cryptography, you need to bring strong math skills to the party. Math for Programmers teaches the math you need for these hot careers, concentrating on what you need to know as a developer. Filled with lots of helpful graphics and more than 200 exercises and mini-projects, this book unlocks the door to interesting - and lucrative! - careers in some of today’s hottest programming fields about the technology.

Over two millennia ago, a Greek philosopher had a number of wondrous insights that paved the way to cosmology, physics, geography, meteorology, and biology, setting in motion a new way of seeing the world. In this elegant work, acclaimed physicist Carlo Rovelli brings to light the importance of Anaximander's overlooked legacy to modern science. He examines Anaximander as a scientist interested in shedding light on the deep nature of scientific thinking, which Rovelli locates in his rebellious ability to reimagine the world again and again.

In Hidden Games, MIT economists Moshe Hoffman and Erez Yoeli find a surprising middle ground between the hyperrationality of classical economics and the hyper-irrationality of behavioural economics. They call it hidden games. Reviving game theory, Hoffman and Yoeli use it to explain our most puzzling behaviour, from the mechanics of Stockholm syndrome and internalised misogyny to why we help strangers and have a sense of fairness.

A gripping exploration of how cartography shapes our world and the impact of maps on our everyday lives. ‘If you have ever wondered why an airliner bound from London to Los Angeles flies over Greenland, how we know what lies inside the Earth, or how computers correct errors, then this book is...

Math has a reputation for being inaccessible. People think that it requires a special gift or that comprehension is a matter of genes. Yet, the greatest mathematicians throughout history, from Rene Descartes to Alexander Grothendieck, have insisted that this is not the case.

*A Financial Times and Waterstones Book of the Year 2025* Many artists are unaware of the mathematics that bubble beneath their craft, while some consciously use it for inspiration. Our instincts might tell us that these two subjects are incompatible forces with nothing in common, but what if...

Statistics has played a leading role in our scientific understanding of the world for centuries, yet we are all familiar with the way statistical claims can be sensationalised, particularly in the media. In the age of big data, as data science becomes established as a discipline, a basic grasp of statistical literacy is more important than ever. In The Art of Statistics, David Spiegelhalter guides the listener through the essential principles we need in order to derive knowledge from data. 

We are living through a revolution in artificial intelligence that is not slowing down. This major shift is based on simple mathematics, some of which goes back centuries: linear algebra and calculus, the stuff of eighteenth-century mathematics. Indeed by the mid-1850s, a lot of the groundwork was all done. In this enlightening book, Anil Ananthaswamy explains the fundamental maths behind AI, which suggests that the basics of natural and artificial intelligence might follow the same mathematical rules.

Brought to you by Penguin. An exhilarating new biography of John von Neumann: the lost genius who invented our world The smartphones in our pockets and computers like brains. The vagaries of game theory and evolutionary biology. Self-replicating moon bases and nuclear weapons. All bear the...