“Our lives are governed by a world of numbers, despite the fact that we rarely consider this. Baseball tossing, skipping rope, flower growth, football, gauging savings accounts, and many more everyday activities are intrinsically mathematical. The same goes for other hypothetical issues that are amusing to think about on their own, like how to score Olympic events.
Here, Robert Banks offers a variety of thoughts that have interested him and others and are both useful and entertaining: How tall can a person get? Why are we back up in traffic? Which football player—a big, plodding defender or a little, quick wide receiver—would have a better chance of getting away? Can icebergs tow from Antarctica help Californians who are experiencing a water shortage? What is the all-time record for the 100-meter dash?
The book’s twenty-four succinct chapters, each focused on a genuine phenomenon, are delivered in a friendly and interesting style. Banks demonstrates how the combination of arithmetic and straightforward reasoning may result in sophisticated models that can explain anything from the federal debt to the best way to ski jump.
This book is for anyone who is intrigued by how mathematics operates in our daily lives as well as its applications to what may be imagined. It just demands that readers have a basic understanding of high school or college math. Everyone will be rewarded with a wealth of intriguing puzzles and the skills necessary to solve them.”
