Weird Math: A Teenage Genius and His Teacher Reveal the Strange Connections Between Math and Everyday Life

Darling (Equations of Eternity), an astronomer and science writer, teams up with a student of his, teenage math prodigy Banerjee, in this enjoyable, wide-ranging volume of essays on such diverse mathematical topics as computing, music theory, prime numbers, and paradoxes. Even math-averse readers should find something to pique their interest here. The authors begin by covering how math is used to visualize multiple dimensions in such fields as popular fiction, modern art, and physics. They move on with a brief discussion of the statistics of random chance that shows how to figure out the odds of winning a lottery as well as understand quantum mechanics. In the most fascinating chapters, student and teacher explore Turing machines and computing, how to build a great chess-playing computer, and the math of really large numbers. They keep their discussion equation-free while delivering thoughtful and accessible explanations with a fair bit of history and many stimulating real world examples. “Mathematics,” Darling and Banerjee write, “is an endless adventure into the weirdest and wildest places ever countenanced by the human intellect”—and there is plenty here to convince even the most skeptical reader that they have a good point. (Apr.)