Editorial Review

CK-12 Foundation’s Probability and Statistics (Advanced Placement) FlexBook introduces students to basic topics in statistics and probability but finishes with the rigorous topics an advanced placement course requires. ... Read more

Reviews

A Pretty Good Probability and Statistics Textbook, November 1, 2010
This is a very approachable and well presented text on Probability and Statistics. It is written with a beginning college student in mind, but could be used by advanced high school students or anyone else who needs to learn about statistics. It covers all the traditional topics in a probability and statistics curriculum - acquiring and analyzing data, visualization of data, introduction to probability, probability distributions, hypothesis testing, regression and correlation, chi-square test, analysis of variance, etc. The material is presented in a very straightforward manner and it is very easy to follow. There are multiple worked-out examples throughout the text, and each section ends with a several problems and their solutions. The problems vary in difficulty, and many are designed with practical applications in mind. The book also emphasizes the use of scientific calculator in working out of many problems, which is pedagogically a good approach.

This book is available under the Creative Commons License through the CK-12 foundation, which means it can be reprinted, modified and resold if necessary. It is also a fairly large file, pdf version being over 800 pages long, so be prepared for a longish download.

The Kindle formatting of this textbook leaves something to be desired. The book was originally typeset in LaTeX, and this did not translate all that smoothly into the Kindle format. I've found that getting this textbook on other e-readers or computers in the epub format rendered it much more satisfactorily.

This is not the flashiest textbook that you will come across, but in my opinion it gets the job done.
... Read more

Editorial Review

CK-12 Foundation’s Single Variable Calculus FlexBook introduces high school students to the topics covered in the Calculus AB course. Topics include: Limits, Derivatives, and Integration. ... Read more

Reviews

A Decent Introductory Calculus Textbook, October 8, 2010
This is a very approachable and well presented introductory text on Calculus. It is written with an advanced high school student or beginning college student in mind. It covers all the traditional topics in a calculus curriculum - functions, graphs, limits, derivatives, integration, etc. The material is presented in a very straightforward manner and it is very easy to follow. There are multiple worked-out examples throughout the text, and each section ends with a several problems and their solutions. The problems vary in difficulty, and many are designed with practical applications in mind. The book also emphasizes the use of scientific calculator in working out of many problems, which is pedagogically a good approach. This book is available under the Creative Commons License through the CK-12 foundation, which means it can be reprinted, modified and resold if necessary.

The Kindle formatting of this textbook leaves something to be desired. The book was originally typeset in LaTeX, and this did not translate all that smoothly into the Kindle format. I've found that getting this textbook on other e-readers or computers in the epub format rendered it much more satisfactorily.

This is not the flashiest textbook that you will come across, but in my opinion it gets the job done.

Solid with one major flaw for kindle, November 18, 2010
It's nice to have a free calculus text on kindle. In that sense, this book is nice to have. It covers the standard calculus topics and is nice to look at for a quick review. But key equations throughout are highlighted in what appears on the kindle to be illegible black text boxes. This is very frustrating. You can follow a problem along and then come to the black text box with the tiny symbols and it's completely incomprehensible. Nevertheless, you can still pick up on quite a bit without those key parts. I also would not recommend this book for a solitary text because the sections seem rather sparse. It would be hard to fully digest in a first reading of calculus. But for a free review, it's not bad. (I'd give it 2 stars if it wasn't free.)

too complicated -- but Calculus is complicated, December 17, 2010
Got this for my 17 year old daughter who is in AP Calculus. She was not able to get any help from the book. I know Calculus is very difficult, but I had hoped she would get SOME help from the book. ... Read more

Editorial Review

CK-12 Foundation's Geometry FlexBook is a clear presentation of the essentials of geometry for the high school student. Topics include: Proof, Congruent Triangles, Quadrilaterals, Similarity, Perimeter & Area, Volume, and Transformations. ... Read more

Reviews

A great free geometry book, October 4, 2010
The ck12.org foundation has made more than a dozen free math and science textbooks available, and this geometry textbook is one of them.

There are full images in this. This book is much larger than what is typically available for free. The images look good, but they are typically roughly two times too large at the moment. Also, all places where TeX is used, a too-large blocky image is used instead. For example, "(3,3)" is presented three times larger than the surrounding text. There are many of these on every page, but at least it's consistent.

I noticed several spelling mistakes. Since this is a digital textbook, I'm sure those will be fixed. The errors above will also probably be addressed quickly.

This is worthwhile download. The PDF version is 918 pages, so this is a big book.

A Decent Free Geometry Textbook, October 9, 2010
This is a very approachable and well presented introductory text on Geometry. It is written at a very elementary level, but it can be used by anyone who is unfamiliar with this subject. The book is filled with multiple illustrations and images, which makes it a very It covers all the traditional topics in a Geometry course - points, lines, planes, plane figures, angles, etc. The material is presented in a very straightforward manner and it is very easy to follow. The book places special attention to reasoning and proofs, which are invaluable skills to have for any branch of mathematics. There are multiple worked-out examples throughout the text, and each section ends with a several problems and their solutions. The problems vary in difficulty, and many are designed with practical applications in mind. This book is available under the Creative Commons License through the CK-12 foundation, which means it can be reprinted, modified and resold if necessary.

The Kindle formatting of this textbook leaves something to be desired. The book was originally typeset in LaTeX, and this did not translate all that smoothly into the Kindle format. I've found that getting this textbook on other e-readers or computers in the epub format rendered it much more satisfactorily.

This is not the flashiest textbook that you will come across, but in my opinion it gets the job done.


... Read more

Editorial Review

CK-12 Foundation’s Trigonometry FlexBook is an introduction to trigonometry for the high school student. Topics include: Trigonometric Identities & Equations, Circular Functions, and Polar Equations & Complex Numbers. ... Read more

Reviews

A Decent Free Trigonometry Textbook, October 9, 2010
This is a very approachable and well presented introductory text on Trigonometry. It is written with a high school student in mind, but it can be used by anyone who is unfamiliar with this subject. It covers all the traditional topics in a trigonometry course - functions, triangles, angles, etc. The material is presented in a very straightforward manner and it is very easy to follow. There are multiple worked-out examples throughout the text, and each section ends with a several problems and their solutions. The problems vary in difficulty, and many are designed with practical applications in mind. The book also emphasizes the use of scientific calculator in working out of many problems, which is pedagogically a good approach. This book is available under the Creative Commons License through the CK-12 foundation, which means it can be reprinted, modified and resold if necessary.

The Kindle formatting of this textbook leaves something to be desired. The book was originally typeset in LaTeX, and this did not translate all that smoothly into the Kindle format. I've found that getting this textbook on other e-readers or computers in the epub format rendered it much more satisfactorily.

This is not the flashiest textbook that you will come across, but in my opinion it gets the job done.

An excellent free Trigonometry textbook, October 4, 2010
The ck12.org foundation has made more than a dozen free math and science textbooks available, and this geometry textbook is one of them.

There are full images in this. This book is much larger than what is typically available for free. The images look good, but they are typically roughly two times too large at the moment. Also, all places where TeX is used, a too-large blocky image is used instead. For example, "(3,3)" is presented three times larger than the surrounding text. There are many of these on every page. In this particular ebook, it's inconsistently sized. For example, see location 4561-71.

Not all images seem to have made it. For example, on location 4513-28, three images are listed as "not available". Since this is a digital textbook, I'm sure those will be fixed. The errors above will also probably be addressed quickly.

Despite the above mentioned (and perhaps soon-fixed) flaws, this is worthwhile download.

Not the greatest Trigonometry book, but it's free., November 28, 2010
It's been over 20 years since I've had a trigonometry class and I've forgotten a great deal of math over the years, so when I found a free trigonometry book available on the Kindle, I grabbed it and wanted to check it out. Granted, it will probably never have a practical use in my day job, but it never hurts to read and glance over it.

The book layout isn't that great. The Kindle formatting isn't that great either. For example, the Table of Contents is located at the end of the book, so if you start at the beginning of the book, you're a little confused as to the aims for the first chapter.

So why 5 stars? If you're a student, this book is worth downloading. If I was retaking a University math course, I'd download it to have as a second reference source. And it's free. ... Read more

Editorial Review

About the original 1000 PlayThinks,Will Shortz of The New York Times said it best: “The most wide-ranging, visually appealing, entertaining, gigantic collection of brainteasers since Sam Loyd’s Cyclopedia of Puzzles almost a century ago.”Inside The Big Book of Brain Games, you will find an obsessive collection of 1,000 challenges, puzzles, riddles, illusions—originals as well as must-do classics—it’s like salted peanuts for the brain. With jampacked pages and a full-color illustration for each entry, the book, opened anywhere, is a call to action. (And it’s guaranteed to make you smarter.) Twelve basic categories include Geometry, Patterns, Numbers, Logic and Probability, and Perception. An easy-to-read key at the top of each game ranks its difficulty on a scale of 1 to 10, while indices in the back cross-reference the puzzles. (You’ll find the answers back there, too.) ... Read more

Reviews

Highly recommended book of puzzles, August 10, 2007
A superbly designed book of puzzles. You will find all types of "brain games" with different degrees of difficulty clearly marked. An index at the end of the book allows you to choose a "brain game" according to its type and degree of difficulty. Solutions to all brain games are at the end of the book.
Very colourful and inviting for all ages. Just leave it on your coffee table and all the family will stop to browse it and try their hands (or brains rather) at any of these attractively presented puzzles.

Keep 'em busy....., June 7, 2007
This was purchased for two kids, 9 and 13, to take on a trip for use in the car or the expected rainy afternoons. Fun to do and a challenge for their grandparents, too.

Lots of family fun, March 21, 2007
I have two curious boys and they have lots of energy everyday. It is really hard to get them both sit down together for a period of time. But this book did it. Lots of interesting puzzles and it fits everyone's specialty. We had and still having lots of fun to work on the book together.

Love it!, September 6, 2007
This book is great! Very fun...the only parts we don't enjoy are the parts you are supposed to cut. We don't want to cut up our book so we most likely won't do those activities. Our favorites are the activities that don't require anything but our mind or that we can read to each other. Very fun to do with another person to pass the time.

GREAT BOOK!, January 24, 2008
I bought this as a Christmas present for my 3 kids, who I homeschool. They have all been enjoying the puzzles, which are very challenging for both kids and adults! The graphics are very colorful and appealing to kids. This is a great book to leave out on the coffee table - I highly recommend it!

Exellent graphics, large fun assortment, some mistakes, June 4, 2009
co 2006, First Printing
Saw the graphics and layout of this book and had to get it. I use it for idle moments as a healthy way to exercise my mind. I don't regret buying the book, but have done about 40 or so puzzles and have found what I believe to be a few errors. Even with the errors it is still a good source for amusement.

I will list the errors I found and update if I find more (maybe). You can double check me (I would - if I wasn't already me):

Playthink 648: The key for the cipher is incomplete. At least in my edition, you cannot solve the simple substitution.

Playthink 649: Solution states probability of at least one man getting hat back is .632. I calculated 1-(#ways none take right hat/#ways hats can be taken) = 1-(5!/6!) = 1-(120/720) = 1-.1667 = .8333
UPDATE: The Hatcheck Problem is a classic combinatorial question dealing with 'derangement'. I now know my answer using factorials is wrong, and the book does not show how it derived it's answer. This has definitely stirred my interest in learning about this problem. I believe it involves a limit, and maybe the number 'e'? When I get a grasp on it I will post it here.

Playthink 656: No mention is made of Ivan until solution

Once again I still think it is a great book to keep lying on the coffee table. Mistakes just show you shouldn't blindly believe any book (unless you know the writer, editor, and printer to be perfect beings).

Fun games for chill-time, March 12, 2009
This book is fun and colorful, full of brain-boggling games that are fit for all ages (there are games with difference levels of difficulty). These games deal with math, science, physics, and other random games that are just recreational and thought provoking.

Fun...Challenging!, March 25, 2009
We bought this book for my father-in-law who loves puzzles and brain teasers. He has found this book to be challenging and fun.

Excellente resource to my students, November 1, 2009
Is an excellent resourse to challenge our students to think more analytical but without the pressure of the math test.

Didn't like the illustrations or the quantity over quality format, June 9, 2009
Yes, it's illustrated, colorful and printed on large glossy sheets of paper, but the illustrations are just awful. Anyone would feel out of place among its assortment of toys, clowns and cowboys. (just look at the cover.)

This book seems to be targeted to families, also judging from the reviews here. It opens flat and the problems come with large images and print, so that it can be read together with other people. The puzzles are rated from 1 to 10 in difficulty, so there's something for every skill level.

I would've probably found this optimally challenging when I was about 10-15 or so.

One of my major complaints is that puzzles aren't sorted by difficulty: there should be separate sections for easy, medium and hard puzzles for example.

1000 puzzles is probably also too much. If the problems would take 3 minutes on average, that's 3000 minutes, which is 50 hours. While it's not much more than an average console or PC RPG, I doubt most have even gotten close to finishing the book. ... Read more

Editorial Review

Which is more dangerous, a gun or a swimming pool? What do schoolteachers and sumo wrestlers have in common? Why do drug dealers still live with their moms? How much do parents really matter? How did the legalization of abortion affect the rate of violent crime?

These may not sound like typical questions for an econo-mist to ask. But Steven D. Levitt is not a typical economist. He is a much-heralded scholar who studies the riddles of everyday life—from cheating and crime to sports and child-rearing—and whose conclusions turn conventional wisdom on its head.

Freakonomics is a groundbreaking collaboration between Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner, an award-winning author and journalist. They usually begin with a mountain of data and a simple question. Some of these questions concern life-and-death issues; others have an admittedly freakish quality. Thus the new field of study contained in this book: freakonomics.

Through forceful storytelling and wry insight, Levitt and Dubner show that economics is, at root, the study of incentives—how people get what they want, or need, especially when other people want or need the same thing. In Freakonomics, they explore the hidden side of . . . well, everything. The inner workings of a crack gang. The truth about real-estate agents. The myths of campaign finance. The telltale marks of a cheating schoolteacher. The secrets of the Klu Klux Klan.

What unites all these stories is a belief that the modern world, despite a great deal of complexity and downright deceit, is not impenetrable, is not unknowable, and—if the right questions are asked—is even more intriguing than we think. All it takes is a new way of looking.

Freakonomics establishes this unconventional premise: If morality represents how we would like the world to work, then economics represents how it actually does work. It is true that readers of this book will be armed with enough riddles and stories to last a thousand cocktail parties. But Freakonomics can provide more than that. It will literally redefine the way we view the modern world.

Reviews

A less dismal side of economics, April 30, 2005
Steven Levitt, an economist at U Chicago, is less interested in numbers and more interested in why people turn out the way they do. He examines the influence of incentive, heredity, the neighborhood you grew up in, etc.

Some of his conclusions are less than earth-shattering. For example, African-American names (DeShawn, Latanya) don't influence African-American test performance. As a second example, Levitt compiled data regarding online dating websites and concluded that bald men and overweight women fared badly. Not rocket science.

However, Levitt livens up the book with some controversial discussions. He believes that the dramatic drop in crime in the 1990s can be traced to Roe v. Wade. He thinks that the children who would have committed crimes (due to being brought up by impoverished, teenage, single mothers) are simply not being born as often.

He also writes about the man who more or less singlehandedly contributed to the KKK's demise by infiltrating their group and leaking their secret passwords and rituals to the people behind the Superman comic book (Superman needed a new enemy).

Interestingly, he also discusses how overbearing parents don't contribute to a child's success. For example, having a lot of books in the house has a positive influence on children's test scores, but reading to a child a lot has no effect. Highly educated parents are also a plus, while limiting children's television time is irrelevant. Similarly, political candidates who have a lot of money to finance their campaigns are still out of luck if no one likes them.

In the chapter entitled "Why Drug Dealers Live With Their Mothers," Levitt explores the economics of drug dealing. An Indian, Harvard-affiliated scholar decided to get up close and personal with crack gangs and got some notebooks documenting their finances. Levitt concludes that drug dealers' empires are a lot like McDonald's or the publishing industry in Manhattan - only the people on the very top of the pyramid do well financially, while the burger flippers, editorial assistants, and low-level drug runners don't (indeed, some of them work for free, or in return for protection!)

Overall, this is a lively read, with some obvious conclusions and some not so obvious.

An Entertaining Lesson on Breaking Out of the Mold, May 6, 2005
This book succeeds at analyzing sociological developments in a way that is entertaining because Steven Levitt, an economist who strays from convention, has a knack for unpeeling layers and layers of assumptions and myth and showing the real causes behind trends. He shows, to name some examples, how our names affect our career paths; how abortion and the crime rate are related; how a man used his cunning to humiliate the Klu Klux Klan rather than rely on conventional methods; how easy it is to identify the role of public school teachers when they help their students cheat on standardized tests; why drug dealing is only lucrative for the dealers at the top of the pyramid; the myth that real estate agents are looking for our best interests.

The book, co-authored by Stephen J. Dubner, is breezy and anecdotal, which is an effective format for presenting a lot of sociological trends without being dry or losing the scintillating reportage in dense prose.

The lesson of this book is that we should be leery of trusting society's common assumptions or common wisdom. In other words, the book encourages us to keep our mind alert and break out of the mold in the way we see things. By looking at social trends with a fresh eye, the book succeeds at making economic trends a fun, adventurous endeavor.

If I were to criticize the book, it would be that it is too short. It's barely 200 pages and if you take out the blank chapter pages, the charts, the lists, and so on, it's really closer to 150 pages. Because the material is so current and topical, the method of "freakonomics" presented here would make a good format for a monthly magazine. My guess is that there will be many sequels.

The Power of Data in a Master Economist's Hands, April 15, 2005
Having myself survived the economics program at the University of Chicago as a young graduate student twenty years ago, I know how decidedly eccentric their laurelled scholars can be. One of the most prestigious of the current crop there, Steven D. Levitt, along with journalist Stephen J. Dubner, has written a most intriguing and mind-bending book that uses Chicago-style econometric approaches and applies those to social and political issues that otherwise seem mundane and have no apparent basis in coherent theory which would support the behavior under study. In fact, this book of compelling case studies bears similarities to the approach taken by author Malcolm Gladwell in his recent best-selling book, "The Tipping Point", where he takes primarily historical events and analyzes them almost anecdotally as exercises in human behavior, in his case, making connections and how ideas become trends not by gradual insinuation but by a singular dramatic moment.

But Levitt's canvas is broader, his theories and findings are far more diverse, and his approach is far more quantitative in nature. For example, he challenges the perception that campaign spending determines elections. Levitt's analysis takes a fresh look by contrasting races in which the same two congressional candidates run repeatedly against each other. What he concludes is that a winning candidate can spend half as much as before and lose only one percent of the vote, while a losing candidate who doubles campaign spending picks up only one percent more. Basically they prove that no matter how much candidates spend on their campaigns, the results would not be marginally affected. In another example, the authors describe a seller's real estate agent, who lives on commission and has an incentive to sell a listed home for maximum dollar. Again, this is a misconception since the authors contend the small financial reward to an agent who sells a home for a few thousand more dollars is dwarfed by the greater money to be made by selling properties for less but quicker. Levitt's research into the sale of one hundred thousand Chicago homes found that agents keep their own homes on the market an average of ten days longer and sell them for more than three percent more than the homes they list and sell for clients.

The penetrating analyses provided by Levitt appear to have no bounds as he identifies Chicago teachers, who were proven to be changing their students' test answers and ultimately fired for their actions; sumo wrestlers who were found to be cheating as well; and even the alternative and more lucrative career options that crack dealers may have at McDonald's versus making sales. He even questions the impact of a good first name in a person's later life and if children become more literate if their parents read to them. The conclusions surprised me as they will you. But the most compelling study he presents is related to the impact of Roe vs. Wade. In a study he conducted with Stanford law Professor John Donohue, Levitt makes a seemingly broad-stroked conclusion in attributing much of the drop in the U.S. crime rate to legalized abortion. Their argument was based on the theory that abortion prevented the births of unwanted children who otherwise would have been statistically more likely to mature into criminals. The crime rate drop coincided with the time those aborted pregnancies would otherwise have hit their teen years, and the trend showed up earlier in states such as California that were the first to enact more liberal access to abortions. Through the data they gather, the correlation is startling, and the conclusion is hard to refute despite the naysayers who felt the stuffy to be politically motivated. But to Levitt's academically inclined credit, he never seems like he has an ideological agenda as he lets the numbers do the talking for him. His genius is to take those seemingly meaningless sets of numbers, ferret out the telltale pattern and recognize what it all means. A brilliant mind is at work, as he takes the most mundane open-ended questions and actually answers them. Strongly recommended.

An uncritical book, January 10, 2006
The scientific fidelity of social science is a topic of heated contention in academics. Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner have successfully brought this debate to the mainstream in the form of their joint book, Freakonomics. But do they make a strong case for validating statistical analyses of an infinitely complex human society?

As any statistician will tell you, one of the major pitfalls of their field is the confusion of correlation and causation. Just because X and Y have similar trends does not necessarily mean that X caused Y or that Y caused X. Numerous times throughout the book, Levitt and Dubner chastise various experts, pundits, and conventional wisdoms for failing to observe this basic tenet. Yet so tempting is this trap that the authors fall right in along with their targets.

Take, for example, the chapter on parenting. A full six paragraphs are devoted to warning about correlation versus causation, the caution of which is thrown immediately to the wind with a set of highly dubious stabs at the causes of various correlations regarding parenting. The data in question comes from Levitt's regression analysis of numerous factors which conventional wisdom believes may play some role in the academic outcome of children. So, for example, correlations were found between a child's test scores and the number of books the parents have in their house, but not how often the parents read to the child. So far, so good. The authors then conclude from similar datapoints that it is the nature of the parents' lives that influence a child's scores, not what the parents do. Granted, it has a certain logical appeal, but it amounts to no more than an educated guess. What's wrong with that? you may ask.

The problems with this example illustrate some of the major difficulties associated with social science. What you may notice about the correlations is that - by necessity - they lack a certain level of detail. What *kind* of books to the parents have? What kind do they read to their child? How often does a child actually pick up one of numerous books? These are questions for which there are few or no practical solutions. The reasons are manifold, including: the number of data points may never be enough (consider how many categories you may have to break predominating book types into: comic books, encyclopedias, TV trivia, etc.); you never know which test subject is lying, exaggerating, or remembering incorrectly; and you can never be sure that test scores are the right thing to measure.

This last difficulty is made more extreme when you consider the following quote from Freakonomics: "Sorry. Culture cramming may be a foundational belief of obsessive parenting, but the ECLS data show no correlation between museum visits and test scores." There should be little surprise at the lack of correlation: there are very few things that a museum offers that would help on the SATs or state exams. But that doesn't mean that museum visits have no positive impact on the intelligence of a child. The authors make the mistake of equating test scores to intelligence. It may very well be true that a child that goes to museums will score no better on entrance exams than a child that doesn't, but it may affect which hobbies they take up, their job performance, and various other important aspects of life that have little or nothing to do with measurable intelligence.

Similar errors in thinking occur throughout the book. In the bagel-seller example, statistics are carelessly and bizarrely used to justify a stance on morality. Because only 13% of people failed to pay for bagels when left out with a payment box, the authors conclude that the majority - in fact, 87% - of people have an innate honesty. I was floored by this kind of uncritical thinking. People may have paid out of fear of getting caught or out of guilt, but not necessarily out of honesty. But more so than that, honesty in one small area of life does not an honest man make. If Dubner and Levitt wanted to conclude simply that statistics is useful for understanding human motivation, that would be fine. But to make sweeping generalizations about whether humans are born innately good or innately bad on a single study is simply irresponsible.

The only positive thing to say about Freakonomics is that it makes you think. But any controversial book can do that. Though there are some fairly solid examples in the book such as regards the real estate agents, the sumo wrestlers, and the cheating teachers, overall the book is uncritical of its own thinking. It would be fine if Levitt and Dubner acknowledged that there may be other interpretations at least as good as their own, but they choose instead to pontificate their own views, in flagrant violation of their professed objectivism. And oddly enough, I happen to agree with most of their views, just not with how they reached them. Levitt is clearly a brilliant man, and I hope he continues to churn out interesting statistical correlations on unusual subjects... but he and Dubner ought to leave the interpretations to others.

Highly Overrated, December 11, 2005
I expected much more from this book, including some actual economic theory and discussion of what separates insightful research from background noise. The only thought-provoking piece in this motley collection of entertaining (to some) factoids is the one about abortion being the cause of declining crime. Beyond that, everything the book touches is either mundane or rehashed from somewhere else, primarily the New York Times article by co-author Dubner.

A main premise in the book is that asking the right questions in life is important. It then proceeds to ask almost none of them. For instance, what do sumo wrestlers and teachers have in common? I guess the headline itself is good for a snicker, but then we assume that it will move on to discover some heretofore hidden connection of value to us. Don't get your hopes up. Instead, after pages of unnecessary background on educational competence testing, it is revealed that - no! - teachers have cheated to boost their students' scores. What's more, shhh, occasionally sumo wrestlers have cheated to improve a friend's ranking by letting him win. Again, shocking? Not at all. Both of these revelations have been explored before and cheating doesn't expose any commonality between teachers and sumo wrestlers that doesn't stem from both groups being merely human. People cheat. Teachers and sumo wresters are people. Therefore, they both cheat and that's what they have in common. Some groundbreaking research, eh? The authors could just as easily have chosen any arbitrary group of people, found a human trait, and then shown how both groups exhibit it. For instance, what do umbrella sellers and plumbers have in common? Both take advantage of urgent situations to charge higher prices. What do Balinese dancers and corporate lawyers have in common? Both eat smaller lunches during busy seasons.

This book's subtitle is, "A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything". A more appropriate one would have been, "An Ordinary Economist Ponders Too Long About the Widely Known Side of a Few Unimportant Subjects". Randomly put together, I might add, and that's another annoying point. The book has almost no organization whatsoever. Rather than taking the time to organize the book into a logical manner, the authors joke about it being a disorganized collection of points and claim that as proof of their rogue status. If that's rogue, I'll take conventional any day.

It's clear that these authors are intelligent men who probably have something worthwhile to write. Unfortunately, they didn't write it in this book. The "Freak" in Freakonomics is supposed to refer to offbeat analysis or an original perspective. Instead it refers to the strange fact that, so often in publishing, what's of lasting value goes out of print and what's fleetingly entertaining climbs the charts.

You would do well to skip this one.

Over-rated, simplistic, August 11, 2006
Between the generous margins, double spacing, gratuitous data tables and lists, quotes by various media sources attesting to the author's intellectual greatness, and the fact that they draw out their points and explanations so much, one wonders whether they are striving for clarity or just filling up space. There are some interesting issues discussed, but in such an unsophisticated manner why even bother with a book? I can get the same level of quality and depth of gee-whiz information from Headline News, and much quicker at that. And the, as the authors put it, "penultimate" chapter on how parents are unable to make any difference in their children's future is just downright confusing. Not because the point is difficult to grasp, just that it's so poorly explained. The point is that parents' actions do affect how their children turn out but there is really nothing that they can do through conscious effort to improve their parenting skills. Now this is nowhere stated explicitly in the book. And in fact the chapter seems to say that on the one hand parents do have an effect on their children based on such and such data, but on the other hand they do have NO effect. What?

Further, the book is sensational. Not that that should come as a surprise considering its title. Moreover, the authors have supposedly brought us all this profound and "unexpected" wisdom from a few studies and anecdotes and present it as if the questions it addresses are settled. But even the author admit that "... an expert whose argument reeks of restraint or nuance often doesn't get much attention (148)." Is this ironic or sort of a knowing wink at readers?

This book is an extremely easy read and I would seriously hope that anyone with a half-way decent college education would find very little value in this other than mindless entertainment.

A Dangerous Abuse of Statistics, July 17, 2006
In the beginning of the book, I found the author's use of simple statistics to find new ways of looking at social phenomenon interesting and refreshing. By the end of the book I was outraged when he started "proving" his theories by statistics. Linear regression is powerful tool in understanding simple systems with one or two variables. Applying it to the complex realm of the social sciences to draw the far reaching conclusions Leavitt draws is irresponsible. If you are going to use science, use it appropriately. If you read this book, PLEASE read a good book on the PROPER use of statistics and know that THIS is not it!

Provocative, eye opening, August 6, 2005
There are some very thought provoking ideas presented here and you don't have to agree with them to find "Freakonomics" valuable. Steven Levitt presents some interesting facts that will make you want to research further. Reading his take on the public school system was validating as it has been my opinion all along. Seeing first hand how standardized testing preparation has been substituted for a real education and then reading how all it really does is encourage cheating was powerfully illuminating. The abortion statistics and the ridiculous baby naming trends offered valuable insight.
I see this as a primer on sociology more than economics but it does show how it is all related. I will pass this one around because I think it is an important read. Maybe not for all the information included but for how it opens your mind and makes you want to look further. I enjoyed "Freakonomics" and recommend it.

Interesting read, with a few surprises and a few flaws, May 18, 2005
Depending on one's attachment to a mindset put forward by political correctness, this book is going to seem either full of stunning observations or light reading, with a few worthy surprises. There's some negative feedback on this site about the book being more a collection of articles, which is a legitimate complaint. At least they would be well-written articles.

Besides the easy and clear writing style, the main strengths of "Freakonomics" appears to be that much (if not all) of Levitt's observations come from research that is in peer-reviewed publications, and that the featured academic personalities (Levitt, Fryer and Venkatesh) are contemporary and working today. Thus, the primary sources of most of the material, as well as contemporary critics are around to defend or refute the discussion in this book.

The nice thing about many economists today is that they utilize the internet to spout off on many topics that would at first glance seem outside their field. The authors of this book, Cowen, Kling, Tabarrok and others have regularly-updated blogs. Levitt is therefore certainly not unique in applying economic "tools" to a variety of contexts, but he takes advantage of the internet himself to defend this book.

An obvious flaw of "Freakonomics" is how it heaps praise on one of the authors between the chapters. This ridiculous pap should have been left behind in the NY Times Magazine. Ignoring that, there's two other things that are seriously bothersome:

1.) The accusation of regular discrimination on "The Weakest Link," a game show. Yes, there is a paper referenced, but some presentation of data would have been useful in the book. I wonder why the details were omitted in this case and presented in all the other subsections of this chapter. My primary reaction to this statement was strong skepticism. Apparently, one needs a subscription to "The Journal of Law & Economics" to know the sample sizes involved. More details would have been nice to see, because Levitt/Dubner go on to point the discrimination finger at other groups, using collected data to show people's actions betraying their declared intentions. What patterns do the data need to show in order to signal discrimination? In the case of "The Weakest Link," most readers will never get to find out.

2.) Exclusion of Thomas Sowell. I recognize that this is a popular science book, and not a scientific book that's popular, but the elephant in the room is clearly the complete absence of the work of Thomas Sowell. Not only is Sowell a contemporary economist who has researched and published extensively on race, culture and incentives, but for many people he has already accomplished what "Freakonomics" attempts to do: introduce people to economics by viewing current social problems in the context of incentives. Sowell's "Basic Economics" and "Advanced Economics" are both clear and non-quanitative books that exploit economic thinking in a way superior to "Freakonomics." I also recommend his "Affirmative Action Around the World" and "Cultures" series.

"Freakonomics" is a nice little read, and most people who pick it up and read it will likely enjoy it. Be sure to check out the website.

Thoroughly engrossing!, August 23, 2006
Disclaimer: given the number of reviews already available, this one is not going to describe the contents of the book, cite specific examples, or go into any great level of detail. My objective here is just to share my point that irrespective of the quality or accuracy of the content of the book (although personally I have no complaints on that front), this is a book definitely worth spending time on. A good testimony to that is the high frequency of reviews of this book, even though all of them are not favourable.

So on to the quick summary: Freakonomics is less of a novel and more of a collection of quasi-scientific articles linked by the unconventional methods, or rather explorations, of a brilliant thinker - Levitt. Levitt's ideas, experiments and conclusions have been deservedly converted into a lucid and gripping narrative by Dubner. Levitt's answers to unconventional questions are genuinely eye-opening; forcing one to think long after the book has been put down.

In short, a very good read. ... Read more

Editorial Review

This groundbreaking Pulitzer Prize-winning book sets the standard for interdisciplinary writing, exploring the patterns and symbols in the thinking of mathematician Kurt Godel, artist M.C. Escher, and composer Johann Sebastian Bach. ... Read more

Reviews

Way out of my comfort zone, but still great., June 2, 2000
I'm here to witness that even people as seriously math-challenged as I am can participate in this wonderful book. It took me a *long* time to read-- I flipped back and forth, beat the pages up, asked my more math-oriented friends for help. I spent forever trying to solve the MU exercise. It was worth it. I still feel like I understood parts of it only in intuitive flashes, but those flashes showed me a room more interesting than most of the well-lit chambers ordinary books provide.

Reading Godel, Escher, Bach is like joining a club. People who see you reading it will open spontaneous conversations and often gift you with unexpected insights. (I had a fascinating conversation with a total stranger about Godel's theorem.)

Wish I could give more than five stars.

A Profound Meditation On Human Creativity, October 1, 2000
G�del, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid debates, beautifully, the question of consciousness and the possibility of artificial intelligence. It is a book that attempts to discover the true meaning of "self."

As the book introduces the reader to cognitive science, the author draws heavily from the world of art to illustrate the finer points of mathematics. The works of M.C. Escher and J.S. Bach are discussed as well as other works in the world of art and music. Topics presented range from mathematics and meta-mathematics to programming, recursion, formal systems, multilevel systems, self-reference, self-representation and others.

Lest you think G�del, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid, to be a dry and boring book on a dry and boring topic, think again. Before each of the book's twenty chapters, Hofstadter has included a witty dialogue, in which Achilles, the Tortoise, and friends discuss various aspects that will later be examined by Hofstadter in the chapter to follow.

In writing these wonderful dialogues, Hofstadter created and entirely new form of art in which concepts are presented on two different levels simultaneously: form and content. The more obvious level of content presents each idea directly through the views of Achilles, Tortoise and company. Their views are sometimes right, often wrong, but always hilariously funny. The true beauty of this book, however, lies in the way Hofstadter interweaves these very ideas into the physical form of the dialogue. The form deals with the same mathematical concepts discussed by the characters, and is more than vaguely reminiscent of the musical pieces of Bach and printed works of Escher that the characters mention directly in their always-witty and sometimes hilarious, discussions.

One example is the "Crab Canon," that precedes Chapter Eight. This is a short but highly amusing piece that can be read, like the musical notes in Bach's Crab Canon, in either direction--from start to finish or from finish to start, resulting in the very same text. Although fiendishly difficult to write, the artistic beauty of that dialogue equals Bach's music or Escher's drawing of the same name.

As good as all this is (and it really is wonderful), it is only the beginning. Other topics include self-reference and self-representation (really quite different). The examples given can, and often do, lead to hilarious and paradoxical results.

In playfully presenting these concepts in a highly amusing manner, Hofstadter slowly and gently introduces the reader to more advanced mathematical ideas, like formal systems, the Church-Turing Thesis, Turing's Halting Problem and G�del's Incompleteness Theorem.

G�del, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid, does discuss some very serious topics and it can, at times, be a daunting book to handle and absorb. But it is always immensely enjoyable to read. The sheer joy of discovering the puns and playful gems hidden in the text are a part of what makes this book so very special. Anecdotes, word plays and Zen koans are additional aspects that help make this book an experience that many readers will come to feel to be a turning point in their lives.

Like every other book written by Hofstadter, G�del, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid, has an index and a bibliography that must be noted as exceptionally well done.

Although filled with English wordplay, this book is in no way tied to the American origin of its author. For years, it was thought that G�del, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid, would be impossible to translate, but so far, it has successfully been translated into French, German, Spanish, Chinese, Swedish, Dutch and Russian.

A profound and beautiful meditation on human thought and creativity, this book is indescribably gorgeous and definitely one of a kind.

Escape from predestination, December 14, 1999
It seems highly appropriate that Douglas Hofstatder should re-release his epic work now. His central theme plays so eloquently in this place and time: Every system folds in on itself, be it physics, mathematics, or any form of language. All these systems are inherently self-referential, and as such, take on a life of their own. A life their creators could never imagine. Many reviewers have focused on the explicit messages of the book, their likes or dislikes, but the great beauty of this work lies within the realm of what it does not say. It is, no doubt, the most difficult book I have ever read, and I have to admit it took me several false starts to finally get through the thing. It is so incredibly deep - one cannot simply wade through it like a sci-fi novel. But if you take your time, spend, say about a year on it - work through the TNT exercises, discover the hidden messages the author has left, read the bibliography - and at some point it will strike you; the incredible richness of the message. The book, you, the world, all of it IS open. The pages of this universe are blank, unwritten. Dr. Hofstadter has woven a message of eternal optimism, one that transcends even the infinite depth to the tapestry of topics spread before us: The great freedom that we, nature's most remarkable matrix, are part of a future without destiny. Even if we were created, any purpose impressed upon us is lost in a cacophany of unexpected relationships. Deterministic, yet infinitely complex and unpredictable. We can never understand anything completely, and thus every life can experience the magic of observing that which cannot be explained. This is a book of wonders, and you will never regret the time you spent on it.

A worthwhile effort to read, January 9, 2001
I first read GEB some 20 years ago as a high school senior/college freshman. Even though I was a mathematically inclined physics major, an amateur classical musician, and a lightning-fast reader, the book still took me a year to finish. This is the sort of weighty tome where one reads a chapter, and then sets the book aside for awhile to let things settle in. It's no wonder that a poll by New Scientist magazine of highly-regarded scientists had to be rephrased as "EXCEPT for Godel Escher Bach, what scientific or technical book would you take to an uninhabited island?"

I will cheerfully confess that I cannot remember all of the details of the book, and that there were times when I simply couldn't get at what Hofstadter was trying to explain. Still, some of Hofstadter's writing has stayed with me the past two decades--his classic analogy of Godel's theorem with a stereo system, his discussion of the difficulties of creating an "accurate" translation (using the beginning of "Crime and Punishment"), his wondrous tying-together of math, music, and art. The totally math-phobic will find these, and many other concepts, readily accessible and even symbol-free. Wish I could say as much for some "general audience" philosophy books!

hasn't aged well..., October 6, 2002
When this book first came out, I, along with probably most mathematically and scientifically minded people of my generation, would certainly have considered it one of the best books ever written. Hofstadter has refined the task of writing a book into almost an art form. Drawing on the central theme of "strange loops" (ideas that loop back on themselves in a paradoxical manner, as might be seen in the art of M.C. Escher), Hofstadter successfully draws together ideas from a large variety of different human pursuits. An important idea--shown to be connected to other ideas in artificial intelligence, music, and art--is Godel's incompleteness theorem, which shows that there are limits on our ability to prove concepts that may, nevertheless, be true. This, too, is based on a "strange loop"--these loops seem to crop up everywhere and Hofstadter spends a lot of the book showing how they are pretty much fundamental to human knowledge.

However, after reading the new preface in this 20th anniversary edition, I'm left with the sense that this once great book is now merely good. For one thing, Hofstadter seems to have evolved from a brilliant young man with a lot of great ideas into a somewhat cantakerous middle-aged man. He seems angry at the New York Times, and his readers, for not fully understanding the central message of the book. Yet he also excuses himself from making any attempt to update the book or bring the ideas in line with many of the enormous changes that have happened over the last 20+ years. It seems surprising to me that Hofstadter would constrain his own book to having only one central message--surely he should understand that a book of this complexity will mean many things to many different people, and that indeed is the reason for its popularity.

So, I still highly recommend this book, but I'm left just a little disappointed that Hofstadter seems somewhat at war with his readers and as a result, won't attempt to update the book or try to help us reconcile the many events of the last 20 years with the themes of his book.

Brilliant and *still* misunderstood!, June 30, 2003
I've been reading reviews of GEB for years, and the most fascinating thing about them, aprt from the near-uniform enthusiasm of the readers, is that almost none of the enthusiatic readers have any idea of what the book is actually about! The typical reader seesm to think of GEB as a jouyous romp through any number of fascinating bits of logic, math and science without any idea as to what Hofstader's actually doing.

Yes, it's about Goedel, and recursion, and "strange loops", and linguistics Bach and ants and all that- but only trivially. The bulk of the book is taken up with what amounts to a very entertaining tutorial that sets the reader up for the real thesis of the book. What Hofstadter has attempted in GEB is nothing less than a concise, bottom-up theory of mind. You can read it as a theory of AI, or a theory of human intelligence, but either way he's telling you how to construct an intelligent entity.

True, he doesn't really have a theory of *how* a self-aware being should arise from his metaphorical anthill, but then, neither does anyone else. But he does have a very good story as to how intelligence does arise in such conditions.

If you've read this book before without understanding what his aim was, read it again, with that notion in mind. And if you haven't read it, and you're the sort of person who enjoys mathematic and scientific amusements of any sort, well, read it and discover how much fun a speculative theory can be.

A Golden Braid with Very Many Strands, June 5, 2006
GEB: an Eternal Golden Braid is a difficult book to explain. It's a book about strange loops, recursivity, paradox, number theory, formal systems, molecular biology, Zen Buddhism, impressionism, and fugues. These concepts are introduced through the works of mathematician Kurt G�del, artist M.C. Escher, and composer J.S. Bach, as well as some other supporting characters, like Charles Babbage (the first one to think of an Analytical Engine, a mechanical device for churning out algebraic theorems) and Alan Turing (of Turing Test fame). And then, of course, there are the dialogues, populated by the Greek warrior Achilles, a tortoise, a crab, and an anteater. Out of this confusing mess of concepts Hofstadter attempts to grapple with a truth he feels lies at the heart of Artificial Intelligence and Human Consciousness--that it forms from the same tangled hierarchies as G�del's Incompleteness proof or Escher's "Print Gallery" or Bach's "Canon per Tonos" (a theme that changes notes according to a fixed system that somehow always returns to its starting note, one octave higher in pitch).

Much of the book deals with formal systems--meaningless symbol-shunting procedures for producing theorems from axioms--and the way they are mapped on to "truths" about the world (what Hofstadter calls "isomorphisms"). One of the most extensively used formal system in the book is called TNT, for `typographical number theory' (also one in a series of Hofstadter puns, as TNT, when joined with a process called G�del Numbering, tends to self-destruct), which is just a new way of expressing simple number-theoretical truths (such as the commutativity and associativity of addition; i.e., b+c=c+b and b+(c+d)=c+(b+d)). On the surface, formal systems seem utterly trivial. Hofstadter introduces them as a theatre on which strange loops emerge. Strange loopiness enters formal systems when they can express Epimenide's paradox, a single sentence that reads "This sentence is untrue." Hofstadter explains how this realization came to pass when a German mathematician named Kurt G�del discovered inconsistencies in Bertrand Russell and Alfred North Whitehead's "Principia Mathematica", a treatise meant to banish self-reference in set and number theories. Any formal system capable of expressing all number-theoretical truths can also be used to represent itself through a system of G�del Numbering, which is just a way of interpreting symbols in the formal system as large numbers. Any formal system powerful enough to represent itself through G�del Numbering can make the statement "There is no theorem with G�del Number G'", where G' is the G�del number for that statement. In other words, a powerful formal system will inevitably make claims that are paradoxical, inconsistent whether you call them true or false.

Hofstadter combines the strange loopiness of formal systems with the concept of isomorphisms to come to some conclusions about human consciousness. First, he claims that the brain has a formal system for representing concepts in the world that exhibits self-reference and self-modification in a tangled hierarchy, just like the simplified formal systems he introduces in the book, Escher illustrates, and Bach incorporates into his music. He takes his time making his case, ending each chapter with a dialogue between Achilles and a Tortoise, a convention Zeno used to prove the impossibility of motion, and Lewis Carroll burrowed in his Two-Part Invention. These dialogue's are usually esoteric and highly amusing, including a series on Achilles' record player and one of the Tortoise's records designed explicitly to create vibrations that destroy the record player. This is a parallel to the explosive self-repudiation of TNT--any record player that can produce a high fidelity representation of the magnetic strips on the record will destroy itself, and any record player that can't is useless as a record player. Another dialogue introduces an anteater who converses with an ant colony that is collectively cognizant, even if each individual ant isn't (a parallel to meaning arising from meaningless formal systems of neuron representations in the human mind). In the main text, Hofstadter introduces the reader to the computer languages of Bloop, Floop, and Gloop (Gloop is just theoretical, a self-altering program reminiscent of the tangled hierarchy of the human mind), simple programs designed to reproduce themselves (an analogue to strings of DNA that encode for DNA synthesizing enzymes), and the Zen concept of MU (where neither `yes` or `no` suffice, say MU, or `unask the question`).

Fans of M.C. Escher will want to take another look at his "Print Gallery", a picture of a man looking at a picture of a town that contains the gallery the man is in, and the picture he's looking at. This is a tangled bit of self-reference has a blemish at the lower right-hand corner of the picture frame (the picture frame in the print, which is in the center of the print). In this blemish M.C. Escher writes his signature, but Hofstadter points out that the "blemish" is an inescapable side-effect of the self reference. No consistent image could appear in that blemish, just as no consistent interpretation of Epimenide's paradox is correct. Human's don't have privileges access to the formal system of their representations of the world--the inviolate level of human consciousness is off-limits to our perception. "From this balance between self-knowledge and self-ignorance comes the feeling of free will (p. 713)," says Hofstadter. This is the central idea of his book. Formal systems are ubiquitous, and powerful formal systems exhibit tangled hierarchies. The human mind is no exception, and the "blemish" of human consciousness is that inevitable bit of self-ignorance that gives us free-will. By breaking it down to the saliencies of a formal system, Hofstadter has high regard for the prospects of Artificial Intelligence, which ought to be able to build upon a similar edifice.

This is a difficult book to read and understand. It's deeply compelling and reads differently each time. I recommend it to those who have a lot of time on their hands.

Many dialogues make light reading, December 1, 2005
You might have been recommended this by a friend, or come across web recommendations. Almost everyone gives it more than 5 stars! But...
you can think of many reasons why you do NOT want to read this. There is lots of maths (it is a book about maths!?), it is loved by geeks, and it seems to cover too many things (consciousness, intelligence, reductionism, holism, recursion, self and soul!)...

You don't know if you want to start on an epic 700 page book about abstruse stuff right now. Perhaps later.

Hold it! You can enjoy this book just because of the brilliant writing, the puzzles and wordplay that make it a dream of Renaissance-style writing. The Rule of Four, Hypnerotomachia, Name of the Rose etc can't match this brilliance.

I suggest a really easy way to start this book: Read a dialogue. Each chapter has an opening dialogue: Tortoise and Achilles and a few others spar; their verbal wizardry opens up new worlds; each is set to music, imitating the style of a Bach piece so closely you can almsot hear the music while you read. The main chapters discuss the serious stuff seriously. A typical dialogue is less than 5 pages; so give it a quick try NOW.... see if you enjoy the heady mix of literature, puzzles and deep stuff!

My favourite is Crab Canon.. this was the first bit written, the whole book was written around it. Crabs (supposedly) walk backwards; see the illustrations (Escher's art, Bach's score, both called Carb Canon) upside down, and then .. read the dialogue backwards.
Here it is: http://www.barryland.com/canon.html

Or try "Sonata by Unaccompanied Achilles": this has a couple of lovely little puzzles.
http://www.rdegraaf.nl/index.asp?sND_ID=141084

Or, ... oh! there's so many little gems to recommend.

And if you like the first dialogue you read, get the book. Then read the preface, and then read the dialogues - in order - and skip the chapters .. till later.
That makes it a great fun read.. and a short book in itself!

Then having enjoyed yourself, read from the beginning and enjoy the whole thing afresh... at yor own pace. I read the dialogues quickly, and absorbed the book over a year, solving word and logic puzzles, tripping over imagery and more ...

So, have fun with this great book. It might change your life, as it did mine.

Down the Rabbit Hole..., May 17, 2007
This is a difficult book.

Difficult to read. Difficult to understand. And, I'm finding, difficult to review. What's it about? Good question. The author, himself, isn't very clear on this point, describing it as "a metaphorical fugue on minds and machines in the spirit of Lewis Carroll." I'm not sure I can do better than that. I will tell you this, however: if the book has a "point," it does seem to be that man's consciousness is ultimately mechanical and, therefore, that there is no reason that machines cannot finally be intelligent in the same sense that man is. (And, in fact, be as man in just about every internal way.)

While I take issue with this conclusion, and some of Hofstadter's reasoning along the way, I don't think that my debating his points is the basis on which a prospective reader should decide whether or not to pick up this book. Instead, the prospective reader should know: that this is a lengthy and deep work. It will take a *long* time to read properly, and most readers should not read more than a chapter a day. Many of the sections, and especially the various dialogues that preface the chapters, are quite clever. (These dialogues are usually between Achilles and the Tortoise, of Zeno's paradoxes, and their friends.) Some of the chapters grow incredibly technical. The subject matters vary, wildly and rapidly, and there will be points in reading where you will question your investment.

In the end, you will feel good for having pushed through the hard bits. It will coalesce, more or less, into a whole. Whether you finally agree with Hofstadter's conclusions or not, you'll have learned much and thought about important topics you might otherwise not have.

A good book, certainly not for everyone... but, if you're the "right" audience--someone deeply interested in questions of intelligence, mathematics, computer science and free will, and possessed of a bit of an ironic sense of humor--then this book cannot be recommended highly enough.

Five stars, for the work it represents, and the doors it opens to the reader.

Remember: We're in Planesville, January 22, 2004
I give this book high marks. The read is difficult, I concede. However, remember that in order to make progress, oftentimes we must take a leap of faith. The book even argues that proving something to be true requires you to "just believe" because logic eventually runs out upon deconstruction. See chapter VII.

I have had similar trouble that others report. I have had to re-read parts to make sure I get his points, whether I agree or not. And yes, he conveys his ideas in what some may consider an offhand way. There is much value in the saying, "To be great is to be misunderstood."

You dont have to like this book. Just make sure you're certain why you do or don't like it. Is it because the Hof doesn't know what he is talking about, or because he "wastes" your time with his lingo and fictional prancing about? Or is it because there's a chance that you don't understand? I am not condescending readers who don't like GEB, but we too often rate someone's ideas based on our inability to understand and yes, sometimes be entertained immediately. Don't expect him to do all the work. What are you bringin' to the party?

This book is challenging. Once you have spent enough time with it, you might see that it requires you to challenge your understanding of things, take that leap of faith (it's not all about logic), suspend judgment, then see what you think when you get to the other side. Consider the section devoted to the topic of Euclidean vs. non-Euclidean geometry:

Euclid of Alexandria perfected the art of rigor in his Elements, becoming arguably the most influential mathematician in times of antiquity. He made a most convincing case for the accuracy and truthfulness of much of the fundamental geometry we know today. He did so by using five principals upon which to base the remainder of his volumes of assertion. Four of the five principles were based on truths quite simple and so understandable, for the most part we hold them to be self-evident. One of those (the first) was the notion of a straight line, as simple and direct as connecting point A to point B.

His work seemed universal, truthful, and beyond reproach, especially considering the painstaking efforts he went to prove the seemingly most basic of concepts. This all seemed well and good, until others, implicitly or otherwise, began to question the notion or suggest what a different version of what a straight line is. In other words: What if there was more than one type of straight line? How could this be?

To make a long story only slightly longer, we find that there in fact IS more than one type of straight line (what's the difference between a straight line drawn on a piece of paper and a straight line drawn on a basketball? hmmmm....), which spawned elliptical and spherical geometries. Turns out that Euclidean geometry is actually a subset of geometry, not the entire geometry. All these years we thought that a piece of the pie was the whole pie.

The point here is that you must endeavor to see outside what you know to be true. It's not always comfortable or seemingly conceivable, but we must accept a degree of uncertainty before we can realize a new level of certainty.

Give the book a shot. Maybe two. Suspend your judgment and take the hit. You'll see. Regards. ... Read more

Editorial Review

These simple math secrets and tricks will forever change how you look at the world of numbers.

Secrets of Mental Math will have you thinking like a math genius in no time. Get ready to amaze your friends—and yourself—with incredible calculations you never thought you could master, as renowned “mathemagician” Arthur Benjamin shares his techniques for lightning-quick calculations and amazing number tricks. This book will teach you to do math in your head faster than you ever thought possible, dramatically improve your memory for numbers, and—maybe for the first time—make mathematics fun.

Yes, even you can learn to do seemingly complex equations in your head; all you need to learn are a few tricks. You’ll be able to quickly multiply and divide triple digits, compute with fractions, and determine squares, cubes, and roots without blinking an eye. No matter what your age or current math ability, Secrets of Mental Math will allow you to perform fantastic feats of the mind effortlessly. This is the math they never taught you in school.



Also available as an eBook ... Read more

Editorial Review

Too often math gets a bad rap, characterized as dry and difficult. But, Alex Bellos says, "math can be inspiring and brilliantly creative. Mathematical thought is one of the great achievements of the human race, and arguably the foundation of all human progress. The world of mathematics is a remarkable place."Bellos has traveled all around the globe and has plunged into history to uncover fascinating stories of mathematical achievement, from the breakthroughs of Euclid, the greatest mathematician of all time, to the creations of the Zen master of origami, one of the hottest areas of mathematical work today. Taking us into the wilds of the Amazon, he tells the story of a tribe there who can count only to five and reports on the latest findings about the math instinct—including the revelation that ants can actually count how many steps they’ve taken. Journeying to the Bay of Bengal, he interviews a Hindu sage about the brilliant mathematical insights of the Buddha, while in Japan he visits the godfather of Sudoku and introduces the brainteasing delights of mathematical games.Exploring the mysteries of randomness, he explains why it is impossible for our iPods to truly randomly select songs. In probing the many intrigues of that most beloved of numbers, pi, he visits with two brothers so obsessed with the elusive number that they built a supercomputer in their Manhattan apartment to study it. Throughout, the journey is enhanced with a wealth of intriguing illustrations, such as of the clever puzzles known as tangrams and the crochet creation of an American math professor who suddenly realized one day that she could knit a representation of higher dimensional space that no one had been able to visualize.

Whether writing about how algebra solved Swedish traffic problems, visiting the Mental Calculation World Cup to disclose the secrets of lightning calculation, or exploring the links between pineapples and beautiful teeth, Bellos is a wonderfully engaging guide who never fails to delight even as he edifies. Here’s Looking at Euclid is a rare gem that brings the beauty of math to life. ... Read more

Reviews

1st edition compared to 2nd
Years ago, I purchased the first edition of VISUAL DISPLAY OF QUANTITATIVE INFORMATION. The second edition provides high-resolution color reproductions of the several graphics found in the first edition. In addition, corrections were made. However, to most readers/users, I doubt that the changes would be worthy of purchasing the second edition if one already owns the first edition.

Edward R. Tufte is a noteworthy scholar and the presentation of the material presented in this book is awe-inspiring. Tufte has also compiled two other books that can be best described as quite remarkable. These additional books are entitled, ENVISIONING INFORMATION and VISUAL EXPLANATIONS. All three of these volumes are not merely supplemental textbooks; they are works of art.

My intent was to use VISUAL DISPLAY OF QUANTITATIVE INFORMATION as part of teaching my statistics course. Students, but mostly faculty, are overly impressed with inferential statistics. Graphics play an important role in the understanding and interpretation of statistical findings. Tufte makes this point unambiguously clear in his books.

Two features of VISUAL DISPLAY OF QUANTITATIVE INFORMATION are particularly salient in teaching a statistics course. First, the concept of normal distribution is wonderfully illustrated on page 140. Here the reader is reinforced with the notion that in the normal course of human events, cultural/social/behavioral/ psychological phenomena usually fall into the shape of a normal distribution. The constant appearance of this distribution borders on miraculous. Just as importantly, it is the basis for accurate predications in all areas of science. Tufte's illustration (page 140) speaks to this issue much more clearly than a one-hour lecture on the importance of the normal distribution. Which goes to show -- once again -- "a picture is worth a thousand words." Sadly, the illustration on page 140 is small and in black and white. I wish the second edition included a larger reproduction of this photo. A color presentation would have been helpful.

Second, Tufte continues his unrelenting pattern to reinforce the importance and impact of illustrations in understanding complex concepts. In particular, page 176 demonstrates the impact of Napoleon's march to Moscow. The illustration is both profound and eerie. The reader is left with a feeling of death and pain for the foot soldiers...

Superbly thought provoking
I divide my graphics work into two categories: BT (Before Tufte) and AT (After Tufte). I rarely acknowledge any involvement of a publication from those dark BT days.

Tufte's masterful and dead-on takes about how to communicate statistical and quantitative data challenges standard assumptions about developing graphical information and reveals, though it is not his stated intention, the weakness of so many graphics software packages. Just look at his collection of chartjunk and "ducks" (his term for hideous graphics) to see how all the whistles and bells available to us via computer graphics programs actually obfuscate the interpretation of visual information. By the time you read how much ink and paper are wasted by created bad graphics, you should be a convert.

And if you are ever lucky enough to have the chance to attend one of Tufte's seminars, pawn your PC if that's what it takes.

It Will Change Your Thinking
Are you put to sleep by briefings on a regular basis? Do they become more colorful and simplified as the intended audience rises in your company hirearchy? Do you feel that you are being talked down to by a lot of fluff that could be condensed by a factor of say, a million? If your answers are "yes," but you cannot provide a good alternative, then this is the book for you. It changes the way you look at data. Through numerous examples, Tufte demonstrates how to rearrange and simplify tabulated lists, schedules, graphs, diagrams and maps in a way that elegantly reveals otherwise hidden relationships and patterns. I have applied his techniques to my own briefings as well as to vacation itineraries, meeting notes, and to do lists. But be forewarned. I have touted this book to my peers and managers and of the four people who have read the book none have had the epiphany I experienced. This book may be only for those who are fed up enough to change.

Changed my style
I was one of those chart-makers who used color just because I could, even when it was unnecessary or even inappropriate. This book changed the way I looked at graph-making. His concepts of data per unit of ink (which should be maximized), and trying to make each droplet of ink convey something useful were extremely helpful, as were his suggestions to minimize distractions and phony 3-d effects.

This, and his second book, "Envisioning Information" are must-reads for anyone designing computer statistical tools (like I was) or simply trying to convert raw data into meaningful graphs, maps, etc.

Excellence in graphical work
If you buy just one of Edward Tufte's three wonderful books on good graphical practice (soon to be four, incidentally: watch out for Beautiful Evidence, expected later this year), then it has to be this one, because it is here that he sets out the principles that underlie all of his later work. It is a book that everyone who uses graphs for displaying information needs to read and read again. Every page contains something of interest and importance, and sometimes something entertaining as well.

So, what are these principles that define a good graphic? First of all, the presentation must be honest. So far as deliberate dishonesty is concerned this is obvious, but often graphical dishonesty results from incompetence rather than bad intentions. A frequent error of this kind is to vary the linear dimensions of little drawings intended to represent the relative magnitudes of different things. It is common, for example, when one quantity has double the magnitude of another to represent this with a drawing that not only has double the length but also double the width of the other, forgetting that this means that it has four times the area. In more elaborate illustrations where the drawings imply three dimensions, i.e. depth as well as length and width, doubling the linear size implies multiplying the volume by eight.

To this point Tufte's arguments are surely uncontroversial, but he goes on to discuss other principles that excellent graphics display and bad ones do not, and here he may part company with some of his readers. He dislikes meaningless decoration -- flourishes intended to make "dry statistics" more interesting. However, as he rightly says, if the statistics are not interesting in the first place one should not be presenting them, and if they are interesting they don't need decoration to make them more so. Another point -- related to this one, but more extended -- is that good graphics maximize what he calls data ink: as far as possible all of the ink used in printing the graphic should be conveying information about the data. Grids, scale measures, frames and so on should be kept to a minimum and should never be allowed to overwhelm the data they are supporting. A good graphic should be clear, but at the same time contain many details that constantly call the attention back.

The book is fairly repetitive, as certain examples recur during the course of reading it. However, this is deliberate, and probably essential. When we see a truly excellent graphic for the first time, such as the summary of New York City's weather in 1980, which appears in Chapter 1, we can see immediately that it is excellent, but it is less evident what makes it excellent. To understand this we need to have the various features explained and contrasted with some of the truly horrible examples that Tufte also provides: the very large quantity of real information contained in a small space, the simultaneous comparison of numerous different variables, the intelligent (and not garish) use of shading, the explanatory labels within the graphic, and so on. Convincing the reader that all this is desirable, and that gratuitous shading, meaningless bright colours, and so on, are not, requires a leisurely pace and some repetition. Many readers simply don't get it even after it has been explained, and the continued frequency of really bad graphics underlines the necessity of Tufte's books.

An absolutely superb book.
Tufte presents an examination of a frankly under-esteemed method of data analysis that can be accurately described as passionate. As a Behavioural Scientist trained in sophisticated methods of statistical analysis, I previously was arrogantly inclined to regard charts and graphs as simplistic and naive approaches to data interpretation. However, I now apprehend the undeniable utility of graphical representation, and have acquired a fascination with the field through Tufte's contagious enthusiasm.

If you work with data of any form, it is IMPERATIVE that you read this book.

If a picture is worth a thousand words, better draw it carefully
The Visual Diplay of Quantitative Information is not exactly a how-to book, in that it won't give you step by step instructions on how to create charts. Rather Tufte shows us principles of good design, principles of bad design (i.e. how people lie with graphics) all accompanied by many inspirational examples.

His examples strike us with their beauty and economy and show us how picturing data makes a huge difference in how effectively and quickly we understand it. Looking at Mivart's chart of Napoleon's march on Moscow, or the Salyut 6 hand drawn mission schedule, or a Japanese train schedule can only make a geek like me gush out "Way cool!".

I find it gratifying that Tufte takes so many examples from Japan, where I live. The Japanese are often accused of simply working with other people's ideas. This is naive and the Visual Diplay of Quantitative Information provides an excellent counterexample of the Japanese being sophisticated leaders in a creative endeavor.

Vincent Poirier, Tokyo ... Read more

Editorial Review

Noted expert selects 70 "short" puzzles. The Returning Explorer, The Mutilated Chessboard, Scrambled Box Tops, and 67 more. Solutions included.
... Read more

Reviews

Puzzles requiring intermediate mathematical skills, March 25, 2001
Marvelous book. I found it better than many books but my friends, who were not that conversant with intermediate mathematics did not like it much. Though this book doesn't require a knowledge of calculus, people who have this level might appreciate the book more. But it has more to do with mathematical 'thinking' rather than mathematics itself.

So get this one if you are good at mathematical thinking and want to challenge yourself. If you are weak in math and would rather read puzzles that require only logic, cleverness, and lateral thinking only, this may not be the one for you.

The best of one of the best, April 26, 2004
Martin Gardner is the grand old man of puzzles and recreational mathematics. I recommend this book for intermediary and advanced puzzle enthusiasts - beginners might find some of these too challenging.

Intermediary puzzlists will find the pleasures of often working at the upper edge of their skills. The solutions at the end of the book are complete enough so that even those who didn't get it right the first time will get aha insights.

The book is well worth its price even for puzzle enthusiasts. Even I knew many of the puzzles beforehand - classics indeed - but the notes in the solutions often add a twist, a clever solution or a human interest point of view.

The age recommendation of amazon.com - 4-8 years - is probably either an insider joke or a typo. I'd recommend this book to people between 14-80 years of age, and even over.

A great collection of diverse puzzles, May 22, 2000
I have accumulated quite a few puzzle books and was never fully satisfied with any of them until I heard about Martin Gardner and decided to pick up one his books. The puzzles are diverse, ranging from word problems to geometry problems.

The solutions given are very complete and actually take up the majority of the pages in the book.

On a somewhat related note, if you happen to be interviewing in the technical fields you may run across interviewers that ask brain teasers. You'll find many of those problems (or ones that are very similar) in this book. For technical interviewing this makes a good study guide.

The best compilation from Martin Gardner's Scientific American mathematical games column, July 19, 2006
"My best mathematical and logic puzzles" presents 70 of the best of the brain teaser that Martin Gardner published over a period of 25 years in his Mathematical games column at Scientific American. It some cases references to new developments related with specific puzzles have been added.

Martin Gardner was always especially careful to present in his American Scientific column only new and unfamiliar puzzles that have not been included in classic collections before. Now you can challenge your solving skills and rattle your ego with a compilation of his best mind-benders.

Here is an example of what you can find inside this book (31. The absent-minded teller}:

"An absent-minded bank teller switched the dollars and cents when he cashed a check for Mr. Brown, giving him dollars instead of cents, and cents instead of dollars. After buying a five-cent newspaper, Mr. Brown discovered that he had left exactly twice as much as his original check. What was the amount of the check?"

One of the best things about Martin Gardner books is that a carefully explained solution follows each problem, this way you learn and add new abilities to your problem solving skills, that will sure be helpful in solving real life problems, while entertaining yourself with a good and challenging reading.

Great collection of what it says it is: prepublished puzzles, June 4, 2000
This is a great collection of puzzles from the Master Of It All. However, the book is exactly what is says it is: It is a collection of Martin Gardner's puzzles previously published in Scientific America. That means if you have followed Gardner's column over the years, you will have seen many of these puzzles already. And precisely because they're the "best," chances are you still remember them. Of course my favorite (a monk leaves his monastery and goes up the mountain...) is in there, as are a number of other favorites.

A Splendid Collection From The Master, April 3, 1999
This is a fascinating collection of puzzles from the master of mathemagics. It's clear and undeniable: if you want the best in fun, challenging puzzles, buy anything written by Gardner or his heir apparent, Terry Stickels. You can't go wrong!!!

Truly the best math puzzles, September 21, 1998
Martin Gardner made this book excellent by putting in rare mathematical and logical puzzles. I found that throughout the entire book, I only knew one puzzle previously. He includes descriptive answers and puts in feedback from those who found different or better solutions. He also talks about any thoughts you might have that aren't in the solution, but closely related. I recommend this book, as it's one of the few that isn't filled with word puzzles. If you are looking for a book that makes you think, this is it.

Good for warming up your brain., October 18, 2007
Nice collection of puzzles with varying difficulties, which do not require any special knowledge of mathematics.

Great bathroom reading!, May 9, 2008
Very nice. I like the old-fashioned approach (I think the author has been writing books like this since the 1960s) and the problems are interesting and varied; most of them you can do in your head (hence an ideal "bathroom book") but some do make you break out the pencil and paper just to double-check. Highly recommended for interested people who studied Maths to around age 18 or beyond. ... Read more

Editorial Review

This book was converted from its physical edition to the digital format by a community of volunteers. You may find it for free on the web. Purchase of the Kindle edition includes wireless delivery. ... Read more

Editorial Review

Now in a striking new hardcover edition, Fooled by Randomness is the word-of-mouth sensation that will change the way you think about business and the world. Nassim Nicholas Taleb–veteran trader, renowned risk expert, polymathic scholar, erudite raconteur, and New York Times bestselling author of The Black Swan–has written a modern classic that turns on its head what we believe about luck and skill.

This book is about luck–or more precisely, about how we perceive and deal with luck in life and business. Set against the backdrop of the most conspicuous forum in which luck is mistaken for skill–the world of trading–Fooled by Randomness provides captivating insight into one of the least understood factors in all our lives. Writing in an entertaining narrative style, the author tackles major intellectual issues related to the underestimation of the influence of happenstance on our lives.

The book is populated with an array of characters, some of whom have grasped, in their own way, the significance of chance: the baseball legend Yogi Berra; the philosopher of knowledge Karl Popper; the ancient world’s wisest man, Solon; the modern financier George Soros; and the Greek voyager Odysseus. We also meet the fictional Nero, who seems to understand the role of randomness in his professional life but falls victim to his own superstitious foolishness.

However, the most recognizable character of all remains unnamed–the lucky fool who happens to be in the right place at the right time–he embodies the “survival of the least fit.” Such individuals attract devoted followers who believe in their guru’s insights and methods. But no one can replicate what is obtained by chance.

Are we capable of distinguishing the fortunate charlatan from the genuine visionary? Must we always try to uncover nonexistent messages in random events? It may be impossible to guard ourselves against the vagaries of the goddess Fortuna, but after reading Fooled by Randomness we can be a little better prepared.

PRAISE FOR FOOLED BY RANDOMNESS:

Named by Fortune One of the Smartest Books of All Time

A Financial Times Best Business Book of the Year

“[Fooled by Randomness] is to conventional Wall Street wisdom approximately what Martin Luther’s ninety-five theses were to the Catholic Church.”
–Malcolm Gladwell, author of Blink

“The book that rolled down Wall Street like a hand grenade.”
–Maggie Mahar, author of Bull! A History of the Boom, 1982—1999

“Fascinating . . . Taleb will grab you.”
–Peter L. Bernstein, author of Capital Ideas Evolving

“Recalls the best of scientist/essayists like Richard Dawkins . . . and Stephen Jay Gould.”
–Michael Schrage, author of Serious Play: How the World’s Best Companies Simulate to Innovate

“We need a book like this. . . . Fun to read, refreshingly independent-minded.”
–Robert J. Shiller, author of Irrational Exuberance

“Powerful . . . loaded with crackling little insights [and] extreme brilliance.”
–National Review

“If asked to name the five best books written about markets, Fooled by Randomness would be on my list.”
–Jack D. Schwager, author of Market Wizards: Interviews with Top Traders

“Excellent and thought-provoking . . . an entertaining book.”
–Financial Times ... Read more

Reviews

Critical review from a trader, October 26, 2001
I picked up this book because I read Mr. Taleb's quantitative derivatives book, Dynamic Hedging. Dynamic Hedging was an extremely insightful and intuitive foray into vanilla and exotic options. It was enhanced by Mr. Taleb's occasional commentary on life in the markets. I imagined that an entire book containing Mr. Taleb's viewpoints on probability would be compelling.

It was indeed compelling. But I did not wholly agree with him. I suppose that is my right.

At risk of great oversimplification, Taleb argues quite articulately that extreme occurrences in a distribution happen a lot more frequently than humans are prone to believe. Ergo, in derivatives trading, it makes no sense for one to be "frontspread" (short gamma/vega). Ever.

My experience is in equity derivatives. Mr. Taleb's is presumably in fixed income and FX. Without knowing much about the world of FX options, I can assert that in the equity listed options markets, downdrafts in volatility can be almost as deadly as explosions in volatility. The vol crush of the summer of 2000 wiped out as many traders as the Russian debt default of 1998. Out of the money options are never cheap; lots of people buy them for the protection that Taleb seeks. Sometimes even they are too expensive to own.

Going further, I found Mr. Taleb's insights on the role of luck in human performance to be EXTREMELY unsettling. He talks at length about the rich idiot trader and the vastly more competent but underpaid trader (presumably himself). He goes on to ascribe most of those who are wildly successful in life to LUCK, and that individuals ascribe way too much of their own success to their own ability and hard work (which he scorns).

I find this to be frightening. I'm sure Mr. Taleb would find this reaction entirely predictable. The implications are most frightening, from a political standpoint: if most wealth is undeserved, then therefore it can be rightfully taxed (expropriated) and redistributed to those are not so lucky. Furthermore, most individuals who despise hard work do so not because they are brilliant, but because they are lazy. Evaluation of a particular person's work ethic is an imperfect but reasonably good indicator of performance.

Many of the MBAs he derides as being shallow thinkers and pluggers, while may not be (ahem) the intellectual giant that Taleb is, are no slouches themselves. They do not represent the legions of clueless option sellers that Mr. Taleb has somehow encountered throughout his career. Most young associates do have the luxury of telling their boss they did not read the Wall Street Journal in the morning because it represents nothing but random noise.

As you can tell from this review, I enjoyed the book. Otherwise I wouldn't be so critical of it. I couldn't put it down. You probably won't agree with all of it, but it will cause you to think about things in a very different way for a long time.

Intiguing but ultimately unsatisfying, April 30, 2002
I bought FOOLED BY RANDOMNESS after reading the Malcolm Gladwell profile on Nassim Nicholas Taleb in the April issue of the New Yorker. Like others who have reviewed this book, I found that Gladwell captured the most important details of Taleb's thoughts in a shorter, more entertaining way. However, I thought that this book can be a worthwhile read for those with a passion for this type of book.

FOOLED BY RANDOMNESS is an introduction to the difficulties human beings have at reasoning around probability. Taleb argues that human beings are genetically hardwired to misattribute the results of human endeavors to skill and knowledge that are, in fact, just coincidental, random events. Taleb discusses the results of this embedded flaw in human reasoning in three areas.

In part 1, Taleb discusses impacts of `rare events' on both financial markets and on human history. Taleb argues we should beware seemingly successful strategies if they are not proven by the test of history. In particular, we should examine human history in the long term for general trends and treat skeptically claims that humanity has reached `the end of history' or `a new economic model' where the old, proven rules do not apply.

In part 2, Taleb discusses the `survivor effect', or mistaking success based on luck for success based on skill. In particular, Taleb warns against judging a strategy by its actual results. Instead, we should judge strategies based upon a sum of all possible outcomes.

In part 3, Taleb briefly discusses `tricks' he has developed to try and derail his flawed, ingrained, statistical reasoning and live a rational and, to a great degree, classical life based upon a good understanding of the effect of randomness on our lives.

The book is peppered with classical references to ancient philosophers and literature, as well as humorous anecdotes to Taleb's own experience in the world of Wall Street. Unfortunately, interesting nuggets and provocative thoughts throughout the book are rarely fully explored. While I was entertained and intrigued, when I got to an end of a chapter or section, I often felt dissatisfied, as if I was trying to wrap my arms around some meaty ideas and came away with empty air.

Unlike other reviewers, however, I did not find Taleb particularly pretentious. In fact, I often felt that Taleb was more than open with his own particular foibles and failings. His only source of pride seemed to be in realizing that he had these failings. Ironically, Taleb attributes this understanding to the experiences suffered in his own personal, contingent history.

Overall, I found the book to be like a good Chinese dinner: entertaining at the time of reading, but left hungry an hour later.

Dav's Rating System:
5 stars - Loved it, and kept it on my bookshelf.
4 stars - Liked it, and gave it to a friend.
3 stars - OK, finished it and gave it to the library.
2 stars - Not good, finished it, but felt guilty and/or cheated by it.
1 star - I want my hour back! Didn't finish the book

Essential for understanding the workings of the world, March 11, 2002
Anyone who holds any doubts in regards to the validity of this book must read Edward Chancellor's 'Devil Take the Hindmost,' which provides a history of financial markets from the dawn of the Roman Empire up to now. After reading such a sweeping historical account, one sees the financial markets for exactly what they have always been: one vast bubble machine where people have even invested in, according to Chancellor, a company that refused to explain anything about what it did but simply assured the investors that it had a great idea for making money. Sounds rather similar to some of the dot coms in recent years. Through a compliation of both antecdotes and thoughts, Taleb provides an explanation as to why the markets work in this way, why so many fail to realize this, and how these issues are mirrored in our everyday lives. He addresses many issues that everyone should understand in order to view the world in a realistic manner. Evolution is not a one way road to nirvana but rather the process through which those adapted to the current situation fare better, and they may not be best adopted when things change. When judging the validity of any strategy in business or in life one must consider that the winners write the history books; you can only talk to survivors of war but that certainly doesn't mean that everyone survives it. When deducing anything from viewing a sample you must consider the forces that created that sample: should you consider yourself unintelligent because you're behind your classmates at a top law school? Are a good outcome and a good decision the same thing, and likewise for a bad outcome and a bad decision? And the list goes on.

While Taleb does not fully dive into this issue until later in the book, the primary conjecture of the piece is that human beings are psychologically prone to misinterpret random events. We need to explain things, whether it be in the social sciences, art and literature, or the natural sciences, so we find ways to explain them. Considering the infinite quantities of data at our disposal, no statistician denies that extremely powerful correlations will occur simply out of chance. Certain aspects of an author's life will be almost identical to passages in his or her novels, certains stocks will share perfect correlations, and we are creatures in need of explanation, and whole industries have been created to mine the data and tell us why things occur.

Prior to this book, Taleb had already written 'Dynamic Hedging,' considered by many, including myself, to be one of the best books ever written on exotic and vanilla options. That book is not for anyone who has not spent years studying (or preferably practicing) options, but in 'Fooled by Randomness' he illustrates his ideas in terms that anyone could understand. In 'Dynamic Hedging' he provides more insights into his trading strategies than he would have done had he been solely profit motivated, and likewise, as the boss of a fund that profits from other people's misconceptions of probability, he cannot have any reason to try to increase people's awareness of how the world really works other than a genuine desire to play the role of the teacher. Many have attacked the book as arrogant, but it must be remembered that anyone who goes against the common ways of thinking is essentially suggesting that he or she understands things better than do most people and therefore cannot help but come off as arrogant. Several times in the book Taleb specifically states that he falls victim to the tendencies that he condemns, and that the main difference that he sees between himself and others is that he is at least aware of it.

Considering the fact that Taleb blatantly argues that many who consider themselves the rulers of the universe were in fact a group of lucky fools, it is inevitable that many will come away from it with a sense of anger and a refusal to believe it. I am therefore almost surprised that the book has not drawn harsher reviews than it has, for Taleb was certainly not seeking to make friends through the publication of it. I suspect that those who rate the book as poor fall into two general categories: those who were troubled by the thought that a considerable portion of their success may have resulted from luck, and those who are attached to their current views on the workings of the markets and are hostile to any new views on them. These two categories naturally overlap quite often. An important thing to remember is that even if you work very hard, not only are the outcomes of your projects the result, to varying extents, of chance, but chance also played a role in getting you to the position where you can work hard and actaully see it pay off. Considering the complexity of the world we live in, and the infinite forces that push and pull on our lives, this book is critical to anyone who desires an objective veiw of how things come to be...

Solid assessment - poor presentation, September 18, 2002
This is an tough book to review. I give it 3 stars because the points he makes are valid and should be more widely understood. Unfortunately you must wade through much rambling to find them. He seems more interested in proving that he's as arrogant as people expect him to be than in discussing the key points at any length. With a fairly strong background in probablility assessment and risk evaluation I was able to follow his arguments reasonably well but I suspect anyone who does not already understand probabilities and Monte Carlo modeling will not understand the points he is trying to make. This is because the explanatory points are almost always one sentence buried in a rambling paragraph. Our society would be better off if every citizen understood his points but I don't think this book will enlighten many people. On a side note - I don't know what book several of the other reviewers read but it wasn't this one. Nowhere does this book discuss specific trading strategies or approaches or taxes. Several reviewers also clearly didn't follow the discussion. The point of survivorship bias is not that it proves LUCK is responsible for a given individuals success in any of the many areas where it holds. The point is that you don't KNOW the source (luck or skill) and you can't PREDICT future results.

Some interesting discussion, but plenty of Taleb's large ego, May 31, 2003
As a professional options trader and familiar with Taleb's "Dynamic Options Hedging", I expected a very professional book with interesting insights into the human and mathematical aspects of probability and randomness.

And while the book does provide some of that, the valuable information is embedded in writing that is overly self-centered if not egomaniacal.

I'd like to point out that I REALLY wanted to love this book. But I didn't.

Taleb writes about interesting ways in which people do not understand randomness but he does it in a way which is unnecessarily insulting and condescending.

Even worse, I find him hypocritical. He spends a lot of energy talking about the value of being able to change one's mind, as well as the value of large sample sizes in probability-based decision making. But then he describes how far out of his way he goes to avoid information (which might cause him to change his mind or which would increase his sample size.) Further he implies that anyone who takes in certain information, like almost any form of news broadcast, must be an idiot and lives in a world of self-delusion.

Taleb writes like a smart but anti-social and holier-than-thou trader. He writes some very useful stuff about randomness and its misapplication in modern thinking. But then he goes on psychological tangents which are nothing more than trying (and failing) to find a mathematical basis on which to defend his personality foibles (flaws?).

He over-generalizes about trading in a style which he does not employ, i.e. selling premium or making bets based on past occurrences. He writes as if his way is the only way that makes sense, and implies that in the long run it is only because of randomness that anyone who does not trade the same way he does could be successful. ("Ergoditic" is definitely the best word in the book....)

Taleb gets very close to interesting discussions of a non-mathematical nature as well, such as the level of emotion involved with success or failure, as well as some interesting historical information. But he lessens the effect of the good writing by then telling us how all this fits into how he lives his life, using as many obscure references as possible, in an ongoing attempt to justify (to the reader or to himself?) the lifestyle he has created for himself. For example, he uses the above discussion to explain why he does not like to look at his own trading profit or loss statements. And he writes it in a way that shows he expects us to think he's brilliant or heroic for having such discipline. Very silly stuff....

Taleb describes his hero worship (of a philosopher named Popper) and it becomes clear that at least a partial goal of this book is to get the reader to revere (or emulate) Taleb the way he reveres (and tries to emulate) Popper. Unfortunately, it doesn't work that way.

Overall I found the probability discussion interesting, but not worth the tedium of having to listen as if the reader is Taleb's (badly needed) therapist.

Luckily for Taleb, he says directly in the book that he will ignore all reviews. I think you should be able to find a less tedious source for the bits of valuable information "Fooled By Randomness" provides without having to suffer the insufferable smugness of the author.

Managing Unpredictable Variations in Order to Prosper!, September 19, 2001
Every person who is interested in investing should read this book!

In investing, few can tell the difference between being lucky and smart. Being successful in the short term can come from either source. If it is coming from unrecognized sources of luck, however, the behavior that the investor associates with success can sink the ship. The cautionary tale of Long Term Capital Management is cited in the book as an example of this point. If youre so rich, why arent you smart? is the wonderful reversal here on the old saw.

I see this effect all the time in my consulting practice with helping companies understand how their decisions affect their stock price. A large percentage of people feel that they know all the answers when their stock price is rising. They keep doing the same things when the stocks are falling. Few survive to still have top jobs when the cycle shifts again. Then a new group of self-confident people take over who often dont know any more than those who preceded them. Its just that their track records look better.

Fooled by Randomness will help make you more knowledgeably humble about what you can expect to accomplish with investments. Not only do fewer than one percent outperform the market averages over long time periods, the ones who do are probably often being aided by luck as well. Get thee to the index funds as soon as possible is the message that most should take away from this book. Better yet, buy them when multiples are low!

The books fundamental point is that there is tremendous volatility in any investment. Ignore that volatility to your peril.

At the same time, you should be cautious about how well you understand the volatility. Stocks at their lows can still go to zero. There are all kinds of events that can happen, that have not done so yet. When they do, throw out all the old rules of investing. The terrorist attacks on the United States last week are probably an example of this. So each investment must be made as though you could be totally wrong. This means that you have to manage your risk exposure to events you dont even know how to expect.

I loved his example of the joint probabilities of having a rare disease if you get a positive result on a test for that disease. Even most doctors apparently dont know how to evaluate that one. If even well educated people cannot quantify two known risks occurring simultaneously in their own field, how can investors be expected to make good decisions?

Dr. Taleb has some very good advice for how to handle the psychology of being able to do this. He upholds the Stoic ideal -- the attempt by man to get even with probability which encourages wisdom, upright dealing, and courage. This means not chasing the latest investment fad or fashion, not looking at your investments very often, and being open to both sides of any idea (it could go wrong as well as right --what are the consequences of both?). I especially liked his idea of watching CNBC with the sound off so that the experts seem humorous and you are less likely to hear and follow their advice. Even more poignant was his advice not to live on Park Avenue where living with all of the arrogant, temporarily lucky can make you feel small. Instead, live somewhere that the results of your cautious approach will cause you to be the envy of all.

Dr. Taleb impressed me with his willingness to tell stories on himself about how quickly he can become superstitious when things are going well, take on excess risks, and start looking too short term. After all, we are only human!

The importance of this book can only be appreciated if you go back and think about your biggest investing successes. How much was luck versus skill? A good way to test is to see if the same approach has continued to work for you whenever you use it. Another good test is to see how often it would have backfired in the past.

In my research on good decision making, I find that those who guard the downside first make the most money in the long run. They are able to find ways to get the best of both worlds!

Remember that the two-edged sword can cut in either direction!

Fun read + thoughtful ideas, March 11, 2002
I am a trader myself, and ran into this book as, ironically, a lucky coincidence: I happened to read the emerging markets chapter as a draft that was getting emailed around the office, and enjoyed it so much i purchased the rest of the book...

I found the book to be well written, opinionated and with some great ideas that frankly are hard to argue against. His book, at the core, is about the problem of induction. Statistics, for how useful they may be day to day, certainly do not solve this problem, and indeed, luck and skill are hard to differentiate in the markets.

He exposes a problem of a philosophical nature, and he is certainly not suggesting to drop all induced laws and redefine a day to day life full of uncertainty and incapable of establishing practical rules.

This book is not meant to be a textbook so i am not sure why Taleb's flair as a writer is getting attacked so repeatedly here. I think his writing style is elegant, amusing and smooth. This book is about opinion, so accusing him of having an opinion seems a misplaced objection. Also, i believe his writing is being somewhat misinterpreted. While there is an undertone of arrogance, it is self mocking. He does not claim to know better. His only, somewhat socratic claim is that he at least knows he does not know...I am surrounded by arrogance at work, and i can tell you, Taleb's ain't so!

Ironically, Opportunity Lost, December 31, 2002
I'm very much of two minds about this book. There's little need to offer further comment on:

1. The author's ego (in one paragraph on page 59, he uses the perpendicular pronoun 7 times; the possessive first person another 5); or his hyperbolistic writing style: this might be too easily dismissed as an ad hominem attack.

2. The many glaring contradictions in this book: they appear so often (sometimes in the next sentence), they can hardly be viewed as a random event: this would take too long, and any intelligent reader can spot them.

3. The superfluous material: with so much impertinent opinion found between the covers, this would take too much effort.

4. The missed opportunities: another author can capitalize on this.

5. The delicious irony between the thesis and the content: this is for the discerning reader to perceive and enjoy.

If people wanted to be as nasty as Taleb is in dismissing those he disagrees with, they could use a subject line like "Clearly, not a Swan Song," or "A Highly Masturbatory Essay" or "This book is as fat as the argument is thin".

While there is much to complain about in this nauseatingly self-centered book, so filled with noise and so little signal (seriously estimated at 85:15), such comments would miss the point: this is actually a highly original work and is certainly thought-provoking. Although I give it only 2 stars, it's still worth reading, if only to argue against. A three-paragraph summary of his 200 pages follows:

1. Thesis: Today's virtual world measures success without sufficiently discerning luck from skill. Intelligence alone is deemed the necessary condition for wealth.

2. Antithesis: Too much of what is widely held to be worldly success should actually be attributed to luck; i.e., results hidden inside the vicissitudes of random variation. This "common sense" approach is na�ve because it fails to establish the link between cause and effect and ignores the effect of variation, which, in one of its tails, can produce extraordinary results. Taleb explores the problem of induction and confronts the non-linearity of regret.

3. Synthesis: The trick is, of course, to determine post facto, what was random and what was skill, and more critically, to assess the nature of risk going into a decision. Mistakes in these areas can be extremely costly. Beware of the tails, especially if they are fat. If you want to be probabilistic, don't bet more than you can happily afford to lose. Question everything. Be humble. Accept adversity with good grace.

This is an interesting thesis; too bad Taleb doesn't focus on examining the evidence instead of talking about himself and offering unsupported opinions. He dabbles with epistemology, but equivocates on whether knowledge is arrived at by rational or empirical means. Despite frequent and inappropriate abuse of the word "clearly," he doesn't clarify the ontological considerations that lie at the heart of this book: sufficient cause and non-contradiction. Though he's personally fond of the Monte Carlo technique, many of us could be spared much of that bother by answering a few simple questions:

1. What is the worst-case scenario?
2. What is the best-case scenario?
3. What is the most likely scenario?
4. How confident am I in the assessments?
5. What can I afford to lose?

The author raises the work of Kahneman and Tversky, but hardly surveys it; the work of other key economic thinkers is ignored: Thaler and Arrow come to mind immediately; many others should appear but do not. No wonder Japanese librarians classify this work as literature: it's little more than an essay, largely devoid of footnotes or a meaningful bibliography.

Being unlettered in mathematical sciences, I ought to be cautious about questioning his math, as simple as it is, but must nonetheless question both Taleb's assumptions and his logic in the few examples he provides. He rails against "pseudo-science" but dabbles happily in many disciplines in which he lacks formal qualifications, jumping from lily-pad to lily-pad, seemingly unaware that his dilettantism is evident to even the fellow layperson. Despite his professed aversion for "borrowed wisdom," it abounds in this tome. Taleb's editor took a vacation, especially towards the end of the book, where there are many errors of punctuation.

Incidentally, in one of many delicious ironies of this book, Taleb uses the very Hegelian logic he rails against to make his point. It would be interesting to see John Horgan (he of The End of Science fame) interview Taleb. The ultimate irony is that Taleb has actually co-written a concise account of his thesis in 26 pages at his own web page.

Intriguingly, in some of the interviews also linked to his web page, he comes across as being lucid and pithy, and also a polished and gracious reviewer. Some of his other writings show a keen insight into human and abstract sensibilities. Sadly, the same cannot be said of this book, which appears to be more a transcript of a session with his psychoanalyst. This is an opportunity lost. A severe edit of this book could likely bring it up to the level (5 stars) for which it has the potential. But it's nowhere near there, yet.

Rare, useful advice, November 8, 2003
This is a book about probability and the way we misunderstand it. Author Taleb introduces the concept of the `lucky fool', and reflects on how we (wrongly) ascribe positive characteristics to the schmuck who succeeds purely as the result of luck.

Taleb's domain (and that of the book) is the world of finance. He is quite rightfully scornful of financial journalism, which attempts to fit rationales to the most insignificant movements in asset prices. According to Taleb, most of this price activity is purely random, pointless to predict and futile to explain. The flip side is the tendency of markets (and natural phenomena) to exhibit extreme, unusual behaviour that confounds conventional theory. The occurrence of this skewed behaviour (referred to as the `Black Swan' problem) has plenty of precedents in financial markets and has bankrupted numerous traders and former experts.

As a general rule, practical advice on financial speculation is almost always useless. If Taleb has a core belief, it is that `I may be a fool, but my edge is that I know I am'. This recognition is not an exercise in humility; it is a prerequisite for success in a world where we are continually fooled by uncertainty and causation.

Taleb's book is a convincing, entertaining lecture on probability and human nature. His written style is little difficult to digest, possibly because of his classical influences. His insights are fantastic, though. Anyone who trades or invests should read this book, and reread it until the message sinks in.

...like giving or getting Galileo's book on the solar system as a Christmas gift in 1632, September 27, 2006
My professional work involves evaluating money managers and trying to "understand" a manager's skill vs luck and where the manager might fit in an overall portfolio. So I have spent 30+ years slashing my way through the jungle made by academics who think they can put markets and reality into nice, predictable models; and worse, listening to the sales pitches of money managers and other financial salesmen who want you to believe they are predictably worth paying very high fees and subjecting your money to untold risks.

It is fabulously refreshing that Taleb has razed a small piece of that jungle and raised those important questions that few in the academic, financial, or political establishment dare. If he comes across as insufferably arrogant, so what! Some of the negative reviews herein are a bit feeble - if you want to learn something about this very rich topic, do you really want your freshman economics professor spoon-feeding you strained pablum to make you feel comfortable your first time away from home? Buck up!

This books gives the reader plenty of amunition to take on the many people who are maliciously or inadvertently fooling you - stock brokers making more commissions than your investment returns; politicians pounding the table that their Social Security plan will have in 30 years, $1.00 more than their opponent's; or whatever your position on the war in Iraq, you have to admit that there was no planning for random outcomes. The public is just too uncomfortable with the truth about how random the world can be.

And if you don't want to read this book like a textbook on randomness or to make your own polemical points in the world, read it for the philosophical, hysterical and entertaining romp through reality that it is. Taleb has obviously traveled and lived around the world; the fact that he has personally and professionally experienced a lot of complexity and randomness and is sharing it in this book, is quite fun.

Finally, I know some very smart and rather daring financial advisors who have given this book to their clients as mandatory reading - kind of like giving or getting Galileo's book on the solar system as a Christmas gift in 1632. ... Read more

Editorial Review

Editorial Review

                The Bestselling Text is Completely Updated and Better than Ever!

Praise for the Third Edition:

“I have used the older edition with great success. The new one is even better.”
-Kathleen Duncan, University of La Verne

The Third Edition of the bestselling text Research Design by John W. Creswell enables readers to compare three approaches to research-qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods-in a single research methods text. The book presents these three approaches side by side within the context of the process of research from the beginning steps of philosophical assumptions to the writing and presenting of research. Written in a user-friendly manner, Creswell's text does not rely on technical jargon. He cuts to the core of what a reader needs to know to read and design research in part by showcasing ideas in a scaffold approach so that the reader understands ideas from the simple to the complex.

Key updates to the Third Edition

• Presents the preliminary steps of using philosophical assumptions in the beginning of the book
• Provides an expanded discussion on ethical issues
• Emphasizes new Web-based technologies for literature searches
• Offers updated information about mixed methods research procedures
• Contains a glossary of terms
• Highlights “research tips” throughout the chapters incorporating the author’s experiences over the last 35 years

The Instructor’s Resource site at http://www.sagepub.com/creswell3einstr/ contains: 

• Sample Syllabi
• PowerPoint Slide Sets
• Sample Student Proposals
• Suggested Studies Published in Journal Articles
• Application Activities and Tutorial
• Peer-Feedback Group Activities
• Study Design Group Activities
• End-of-Chapter Checklists

The Student Study Site at www.sagepub.com/creswellstudy offers:

• Sample Student Proposals
• Application Activities and Tutorials
• Peer-Feedback Group Activities
• Study Design Group Activities
• End-of-Chapter Checklists

Research Design, Third Edition appeals to students taking research design and research methods classes throughout the social and behavioral sciences-from undergraduates to the most advanced doctoral programs.

Editorial Review

This book was converted from its physical edition to the digital format by a community of volunteers. You may find it for free on the web. Purchase of the Kindle edition includes wireless delivery. ... Read more

Editorial Review

The runaway national bestseller, now in paperback ... Read more

Reviews

Imagine "Teen Cosmo" publishing INTRO TO JUNIOR-HIGH MATH, August 4, 2007
When I was seven, my mother got a Mathematics degree. At 29, I got my own Mathematics degree -- and of 60 people that day who got Math bachelor degrees then and there with me, only three were women. My mother proved, and those three co-graduating women proved, and Danica proves now, that women can learn math. But that's not what junior-high and high school girls think, is it? Most teen girls think they're math-morons.

Danica has written this book for such math-panicked teen girls -- Danica has written this book not only to TEACH them, but to ENCOURAGE them: "You can learn this!"

The math covered in Danica's book is junior-high level -- Danica presumes that the reader already knows how to add, subtract, multiply, and divide; then Danica takes the reader up through Algebra I. Danica's math is solid; and Danica's explanations, easy to understand.

But this is not your brother's math book. If you flipped through the book quickly, not reading the text, the illustrations and all the girly-handwriting would make you think that it was a book about teen fashion. The book also has chapter headings like no other math book I've seen -- Chapter 7, for instance, is entitled, "Is Your Sister Trying to Cheat You Out of Your Fair Share? (Comparing Fractions)." Chapter 9, on complex fractions, starts out, "Say you're trying on an outfit for a party. You've got the dress, the shoes, and the earrings -- and now you're choosing the right necklace...."

Danica also includes three "testimonials" (profiles) of young women who are successful in their careers because they've mastered math. Rather than show three "Ugly Betties" or nerdettes, the three women profiled are BABES.

To me, the most amazing thing about her book is that she tells the "blank quiz" story about herself: In a seventh-grade math class, "[w]hen the bell rang and my quiz was still blank, I wanted to disappear into my chair. I just didn't want to EXIST."

When I read this book, I learned something. Not about math, but about people. Junior-high girls, in particular. I give this book a 4.99999999999999999...-star rating.

Makeup and math? Hallelujah!, August 2, 2007
What will this book teach your daughter? That she can work out math problems by herself. That she can learn to love math, and even excel at it. And that she can do these things while still being every bit as girlie as she wants to be. Makeup and math? Yes, this book says, you can love them both.

Will girls read it? I think so, because, unlike so many academic texts, "Math Doesn't Suck" is so much more than a study guide. Author McKellar -- yes, Winnie Cooper from "The Wonder Years" but also a summa cum laude math grad from UCLA -- combines a step-by-step approach to middle-school math concepts with lots of personal anecdotes (such as how she once struggled with particular math problems) as well as stories of how other feminine women have excelled in the subject. Also adding some insight is McKellar's 12-year-old goddaughter, Tori.

Best of all, McKellar makes her points well. Each chapter is devoted to just one topic (i.e., decimals, or factoring) and uses real-life situations (baby-sitting, shopping) that really make things easy to understand.

Overall the book's chapter titles are a little too pink-and-purple for my tastes, but then again I'm not the target audience. I'm not 13, striving to define myself while getting Paris Hilton, the Pussycat Dolls and Hooters commercials driven into my brain. Girls can be smart AND feminine? Math is for them? Say amen, somebody!

math for the masses in junior and high school classes, May 5, 2008
This Danica is as good looking as the racing Danica and a great actress. She's a math whiz too. Well as a trained mathematician I can assure you that she proves in this book that she knows math, is proud of it and want other high school and junior high school girls to appreciate it too. The book is filled with interesting ways of teach junior and senior high school math that makes it fun and exciting. She would be a great teacher too. I think her goal is to be a role model for other girls who have an aptitude for mathematics. Girls have always been discouraged and discriminated against in this field. I remember at my high school I was the best math student but Linda Cirillo was a close second. Yet I was the one who got the encouragement and her talents were ignored. Years later I came back to my home town and found that while I was now a professional mathematician she was a house wife raising children. I hope things have improved over the last forty years.

This is a great book to give a child in high school who needs a little help and boost of confidence in math. When an author ahs the art of making things exciting rather than boring the student may develop an interest and capability that he or she never dreamed of!

A must read for any middle school girl!, August 10, 2007
I came across this book based on a news article about Danica McKellar. As the proud father of two middle school aged children (one boy and one girl) I am already seeing how differently boys are treated than girls when it comes to Math and Science. The schools seem to teach math from the male point of view. I can easily explain a math concept to my son and he can understand it, but I have not been able to explain the same concept to my daughter.
The book arrived last week, and my daughter seems to always have her nose in it. The book isn't designed to be read cover to cover, but to jump around as topics interest you. We had terrible problems last year with fractions, but after reading the section of fractions, my daughter claims that "she gets it". I have never seen my daughter excited about Math like this. If you have a middle school daughter who is struggling with the concepts, this is a must read for her.

My only complaint is that Danica hasn't written a survival guide for science yet! I am ordering a second book as a gift for the 6th grade math teacher to help with other girls who are struggling.

This book isn't just for young girls, August 20, 2007
Having good math skills makes a person a better shopper and a better chef. Having good math skills simply makes an individual more confident in all areas of life. This is the message of this well written book. McKellar takes a step by step approach to math. I liked looking at the examples she provides, as I tried to solve the problems she includes in each chapter. Math Doesn't Suck is a good refresher for me, because I forgot a lot of things from my school days. I also learned new concepts like how to figure out rates and ratios. I enjoyed doing the fraction problems and algebra problems. They were challenging and fun for me to solve. I also enjoyed reading the testimonals from women who use math in their daily lives. There were interesting contributions from students and teachers and other professionals. I loved the contribution from Stephanie Peterson. She uses math on the job as a petroleum analyst, and she is also a professional actress. McKellar also shares personal experiences from her life. McKellar is an intelligent successful and humble young woman. Math Doesn't Suck is an educational and inspirational book. I loved it.

A Realistic Approach to Middle School Math, August 13, 2007
Few adults really like what's happening to girls these days - an obsessive focus on makeovers, cosmo, gossip, clothes, popularity, and boys. It has a lot of people wondering what will ever become of kids raised on this type of diet. But rather than fight the unfightable, Danica McKellar decided to leverage "girl culture" and offer a book that speaks to them in their own language.

"Math Doesn't Suck" does provide high-quality and carefully prepared material on middle-school math topics. All the stuffyness and "who cares?" writing found in textbooks is replaced with "let's get real" phrasing with a little attitude thrown in. Perfect for that sassy pre-teen in your family. But more importantly, it gets girls to think about why they need to develop their intellect, and how that plays a role in their lives. My daughter likes it and she's using it to polish up her skills before going back to school in September.

Even if this book were terrible, McKellar should get a medal for being brave enough (and for caring enough) to attempt it. But it's actually very well written and you can see how much effort went into it. So I hope one day this book wins an award. It deserves it.

Fantastic!, September 24, 2007
This book has honestly changed my life. I have always struggled in Math and Danica presented the material in such a logical way that I now "get it". I highly recommend this book to anyone, at any age that has ever had a difficult time with Mathematics.

Math DEFINITELY Does Not Suck!, September 16, 2007
Not only is this book going to appeal to teenage math phobes, but it's great for those of us adults who teach those same teenagers! Lots of cool ideas I can't wait to try on my 7th and 8th graders, that I think will actually help them and get them to understand they CAN do math. The mnemonic devices and catchy names for various strategies are the kind of approach I have found works best with this age.

The book is organized clearly by topic, and the hand-drawn pictures from Danica's middle school notebooks add to the ease of use (besides being very cute). The nicest surprise about this book was the fact that it makes for enjoyable reading, just as a book.

Kudos to Dr. McKellar for showing that beauty, intelligence, and talent make a super combination!

A novel way to prevent math phobia, August 9, 2007
It's true. Math Doesn't Suck. Too many kids - boys and girls - give up on math when they get to a rough patch. For many different reasons, they decide that they can't do math because they just don't get it or they won't do math because it's not relevant to their lives. McKellar's book dispels these myths by showing that quantitative reasoning really is relevant to the problems of everyday life, and that interesting examples can help illuminate difficult concepts for students with a wide range of interests. Readers interested in helping girls develop their math-brain even as their lives change might also be interested in Danger, Long Division, a novel for preteens about a fifth-grader who learns to solve her math problems even while struggling with tough family issues.

A Labor of Love -- for math and for Danica's students., October 3, 2007
I bought two copies, one for my student and one for myself. Danica's explanations rival any text book at the middle school level. She teaches for understanding and her reviews, restatements, and conclusions help the reader recall and use math powerfully.

After the flashy cover, I expected the color images with which most other math authors at this level sprinkle their pages, many of which distract the reader. Nope, simple, small pen and ink sketches which reinforce lessons or gently amuse the reader. Hooray for you, Danica.

As I read and read, it became clearer that Danica did not have a committee writing her book, which dilutes so many books. She weaves themes which persist throughout the book, aiding the reader to comprehend more deeply. Even so, she consulted teachers and students (of whom I would have been honored to have been one) and incorporates their suggestions throughout what is still her own unique book.

If I were a teen girl, I'd devour this book, as many reviews already attest to. If I were a teen boy, I'd read it also both for its math worthiness and also for some insights into young women. I abhor sexism in our society and feared that Danica would reinforce some of the worst stereotypes. Not so. She unambiguously supports intellectual, achieving women. Hooray for you and your students, Danica.

Buy this book, Gentle Reader.

Sincerely, A Retired (male) Middle School Math teacher ... Read more

Editorial Review

Editorial Review

With the born storyteller'scommand of narrative and imaginative approach, LeonardMlodinow vividly demonstrates how our lives are profoundly informed by chance andrandomness and how everything from wine ratings and corporate success to school gradesand political polls are less reliable than we believe.

 

By showing us the true natureof chance and revealing the psychological illusions that cause us to misjudge theworld around us, Mlodinow gives us the tools we need to make more informed decisions.From the classroom to the courtroom and from financial markets to supermarkets, Mlodinow'sintriguing and illuminating look at how randomness, chance, and probability affectour daily lives will intrigue, awe, and inspire.

  ... Read more

Reviews

Excellent Book on Randomness in Everyday Life, May 16, 2008
I just love books like this - especially when they're as well-written as this one. The author, a physicist, proceeds to show the reader how randomness plays a much greater role in everyday life than one might think. As he discusses the basics of probability and statistics, he provides wonderful illustrations from fields as wide-ranging as sports, medicine, psychology, the stock market, etc., etc. He does an excellent job in driving home the fact that the true probability of events is not intuitive. Perhaps because of this anti-intuitiveness, I had to read a few paragraphs more than once to allow the point being made to sink in. One enigma that is particularly well explained is the Monty Hall (Let's Make a Deal) problem. The writing style is clear, accessible, very friendly, quite authoritative, engaging and often very witty. This book can be enjoyed by absolutely everyone, but I suspect that math and science buffs will savor it the most. By the way, the math-phobic need not fear: the book does not contain a single mathematical formula.

Chances are good you'll like this one, May 18, 2008
This smart book will make you think. Academic yet easy to read, it explores how random events shape the world and how human intuition fights that fact. I found this point fascinating. It never occurred to me that our brains naturally want to see patterns and order, and life doesn't necessarily work like that.

It's comforting to think of an orderly world, with everything in its place, running according to plan. It dovetails into our yearning for meaning and control, and the need to feel that we are important. The idea of randomness is frightening. If the world is shaped without conscious decision, it's a pretty chilly prospect.

Author Leonard Mlodinow examines the importance of randomness in diverse situations, including Las Vegas roulette tables, "Let's Make a Deal," the career of Bruce Willis, and the Warsaw ghetto after Hitler invaded Poland. The author does a good job explaining how chance and luck are vital factors in how things turn out.

The cover has a nice touch. On the dust jacket, several die-cut holes reveal letters on the hardback underneath. The letters are the R and D in "Drunkard's," the A in "Walk," the N in "Randomness," the O in "Our" and the M in Mlodinow. These letters are connected by a thin red line. They spell out "RANDOM."

Here's the chapter list:

1. Peering through the Eyepiece of Randomness
2. The Laws of Truths and Half-Truths
3. Finding Your Way Through a Space of Possibilities
4. Tracking the Pathways to Success
5. The Dueling Laws of Large and Small Numbers
6. False Positives and Positive Fallacies
7. Measurement and the Law of Errors
8. The Order in Chaos
9. Illusions of Patterns and Patterns of Illusion
10. The Drunkard's Walk

Competent but unoriginal, May 17, 2008
Promising prologue "... when chance is involved, people's thought processes are often seriously flawed .... [this book] is about the principles that govern chance, the development of those ideas, and the way they play out in business, medicine, economics, sports, ..." but a disappointing book. The book consists of a range of topics already well covered in a dozen previous popular science style books: history of probability (Cardano, Pascal, Bernoulli, Laplace, de Moivre) and of demographic and economic data; statistical logic (Bayes rule and false positives/negatives; Galton and the regression fallacy, normal curve and measurement error, mistaking random variation as being caused); overstating predictability in business affairs (past success doesn't ensure future success) and perennials such as Monty Hall, the gambler's fallacy, and hot hands.

These topics are presented in a way that's easy to read -- historical stories, anecdotes and experiments, with almost no mathematics. So it's a perfectly acceptable read if you haven't seen any of this material before before, but it doesn't bring any novel content or viewpoint to the table. Other books are equally informative and well written but have more interesting individual focus and panache:
Dicing with Death: Chance, Risk and Health shows hows to add analysis to anecdote,
Against the Gods: The Remarkable Story of Risk has more intellectual discipline (staying focused on the current topic),
Struck by Lightning: The Curious World of Probabilities gives a thorough treatment of implications of textbook theory,
The Jungles of Randomness: A Mathematical Safari gives snippets of contemporary research,
Chances Are: Adventures in Probability has less hackneyed history,
and Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and in the Markets is an engagingly opinionated view of chance in the stock market and life.

BEST NON-FICTION BOOK THIS YEAR, May 26, 2008
I do not know how to explain this book because it is so good. Its lessons are useful in business strategy, in evaluating the Iraq war, in deciding whether the Feds should lower interest rates and in planning one's own career. It is simply put the Best Book of the Year.

The author covers the growth and evolution of theories of probability, what he calls theories of randomness, and ties it together with anecdotes one cannot find in any other book on the subject. Yes, it is just as readable as Peter Bernstein's classic Against the Gods and far more thoughtful (and less arogant) than Fooled by Randomness by Nasim Taleb. The author is the co-author with Stephen Hawking of the Briefer History of Time and unless he has a ghost writer, is easily the best writer of non-fiction of the serious kind. His prose is perfect, his choice of anecdotes appropriate, his domain expertise unmatched.

The book ends unexpectedly but poignantly, about his aunt's awful fate at a Nazi death camp. Honestly, I respect the author's prerogative but I wish it was in an epilogue. It is too serious a subject and takes the mind to another dimension, to be read at the last minute, that too in a book with so much to think about anyway.

THIS SHOULD BE AN ADDITIONAL READING IN EVERY COURSE IN BUSINESS SCHOOL, SCHOOL OF GOVERNMENT, SCHOOL OF PUBLIC AFFAIRS, MILITARY INSTITUTION, BESIDES IN EVERY COLLEGE AND COLLEGE CAREER'S COUNSELING. AND IN EVERY HOSPITAL WAITING ROOM. AND IN PLACES OF WORSHIP TOO. NO PERSON CAN BE IN THE MODERN WORLD WITHOUT CONSIDERING THE ARGUMENTS IN THIS BOOK

Thought-Provoking Examples of Randomness in Our Lives, July 11, 2008
Instead of repeating other reviewers, let's focus on other content.

Arguments about the astronomical improbably of a DNA chance match are disingenuous. A false match can also occur because of lab error, and this is far, far more likely than a genuine DNA chance match.

Mlodinow illustrates the Bayesian principle: "...the probability that A will occur if B occurs will generally differ from the probability that B will occur if A occurs." (p. 117) About 1 in 10,000 heterosexual non-IV-drug-abusing white males are infected with HIV. As for tests of HIV infection, the rate of false negatives is about zero, and that of false positives is 1 in 1,000. So, out of 10,000 tested subjects, there will be 9, 989 negatives. Of the 11 positives, 10 will be false and 1 will be true. So only 1 in 11 individuals who test positive for HIV actually are infected with HIV. (pp. 115-116)

During WWII, German V-2 rockets often hit near each other, prompting fears that the Germans had perfected pinpoint accuracy in their targeting. It turned out that the clusters of hits were random. Most geographical clusters of cancer occurrence also are random clusters.

We learn about such things as regression toward the mean, Pascal's wager, the gambler's fallacy, and the scratched (and therefore biased) roulette wheels at Monte Carlo. Also, election recounts in very close elections are bound to differ with each recount owing solely to small random errors operating on millions and millions of votes. So no recount is necessarily more accurate than the original count.

Life expectancy applies to groups, not individuals. For instance, if the life expectancy of a 90 year-old is 6 years, it only tells us that half of 90-year olds will still be alive at 96. It does not tell us which particular 90 year-old individual will still be alive at 96.

When there are hundreds of coin tosses, it is common for strings of consecutive "heads" and "tails" to arise solely by chance. Likewise, a string of good luck or bad luck in our lives can be completely random, yet easily misinterpreted as something meaningful.

When experimental subjects are told that, by pressing a button, they are controlling actually randomly-flashing lights, they readily believe it. We want to believe that we are in control because a lack of control, or perceived lack of control, leads to stress. This is especially true in extreme situations. For instance, concentration-camp victims who survived tended to be those who established some measure of control over their horrible experiences.

Marvelous! Marvelous! Marvelous!, October 1, 2008
As a teacher of high school mathematics and statistics, I have read many such books on the subject at hand. Few of them are as readable and enjoyable as The Drunkard's Walk.

What Mlodinow's brings to the table is a great sense of humor and a writing style that is entertaining and engaging, with great stories to go along with the mathematical ideas he shares. He brings in historical anecdotes and psychological research to highlight how mathematical truth and human perception clash. I found myself very impressed by his ability to bring in the perfect study or story to illustrate a point.

Essentially, the book is a course in Statistics 101, but reading it, you'd never know. It is geared to the average intelligent reader, but there are few mathematical formulas or abstractions. Enjoy!

Other related books and how they compare:
Against the Gods- The Remarkable Story of Risk: Much drier. More detail, less fun.

Fooled By Randomness: Arrogant writing style, too philosophical for my taste. Focus on the markets.

Damn Lies and Statistics: Narrow focus on how Statistics can mislead. Good examples, though not as entertaining.

Chances Are: A good read, similar content, though this is more engaging.

Innumeracy: A must read classic by Paulos.

Predictably Irrational: Fun book, similar style but more about behavioral economics (overlaps last chapter of this book)

Sway: Pretty good, but not as overarching as Predictably Irrational

SuperCrunchers: Unimpressive book that I thought didn't prove thesis well.

Best for Probability/Statistics Novices, June 22, 2008
If you're not versed in probability this is an excellent book to introduce you to the history and importance of probability in daily life. Its an easy and interesting read. Much of the book however is dedicated to explaining mathematical basics & history. If you already know what a normal distribution is, this book falls a little short in really linking randomness and how we perceive success. Only one or two chapters at the end are devoted to this.

Fascinating, humbling (even potentially disturbing), June 1, 2008
The author says nothing new on the topic, nor does he say it in a way that is apt to make a dent in the "willful consciousness" of many who insist on a world of clear-cut cause and effect or on a Divine Will that keeps its eye not merely on a sparrow but on a nation's military actions or on human behaviors provoking retributions (hurricanes, etc.) upon its godless practitioners. In all such instances, the distinction between cause-effect thinking and predestined events that happen by necessity is lost. Instead, it all comes down to the pragmatic need of an inherently egocentric human nature to impose order where circumstances may not justify it.

The author writes to the layman, making the language of statistics, probability, randomness a fascinating read. It's clear that he's well aware of the fallacies and delusions (and consequent harm) to which most of us are easy prey. But he leaves it to the reader to draw any philosophical-theological inferences about the need for greater humility. His immediate goal is to help the reader understand the distinction between 1. the "common-sense" logic employed by self-serving finite beings coping with problems in the material world and 2. a "scientific method" that takes nothing for granted in a universe of perpetual flux. More miraculous than either the accomplishments of the romantic hero or the intercessions of a supreme being (everyday stuff for most of us) is the rare discovery that two things (or "events" in the spatial-temporal order) suspected of being connected (a hypothesis) in fact cannot be shown "not" to have such a relationship (the proof).

Such a small yield is unlikely to satisfy most of us, let alone a creationist or a supporter of intelligent design--in other words, it's not more propagandist "proof-texting" and weird science; it's "real" science. And those who take it upon themselves to help us understand the universe as it is, merit a reader's undivided attention. Highly recommended for the genuinely curious.

Enjoyable read, not exceptionally profound, August 2, 2008
Some unorganized reactions.

The Drunkard's Walk owes much to a classic in this field, Innumeracy by John Paulos. This book borrows much from that work in its discussion of misleading use of probabilities, with at least one story lifted directly from it, and most others coming more indirectly from Innumeracy. To those who have read that book it still offers some in terms of unintuitive probabilities, including a discussion of the infamous Monty Hall problem.

It touches areas that Innumeracy didn't though discussing psychology, statistics, and offering a history of probability/statistics. The historical ranting are rather tedious and most likely already known to the readers of this type of material or unwelcome. The dabbles into psychological aspect of why we have trouble perceiving randomness, among other such issues discussed, provide the most interesting and original aspects of the book.

The book falls very short of its stated goal of revealing how randomness runs our lives. In fact, only his discussions of statistics and anecdotes seem to bring us closer to his goal. The other points are enjoyable to read, but deal little with the supposed purpose of the book.

A good read, mostly for those unfamiliar with the Mathematics, but I find the psychological aspect of the book will make an acceptable read for those who have prior understanding of probability and statistics.

Drunkard's Walk, June 3, 2008
An amazing traverse across the landscape of randomness that makes sense to scientist and layperson alike. I thought Euclid's Window was readable and clear, but Drunkard's Walk makes sense of an incredibly random world in a concise, clear, and thoughtful way. A "should read" for everyone in a management job who is looking for those insights that could propel your operations beyond the ordinary by understanding the universe as it is. The examples are concrete and compelling. ... Read more

Editorial Review

New York Times bestselling author Danica McKellar tackles the toughest math class yet: Algebra!

In her two bestselling books, Math Doesn't Suck and Kiss My Math, actress and math genius Danica McKellar shattered the "math nerd" stereotype by showing girls how to ace middle school math-and actually feel cool while doing it!

Sizzling with Danica's trademark sass and style, Hot X: Algebra Exposed tackles algebra: the most feared of all math classes and the most common roadblock to high school graduation. McKellar instantly puts her readers at ease, showing teenage girls-and anyone taking algebra-how to feel confident, get in the driver's seat, and master topics like square roots, polynomials, quadratic equations, word problems and more . . . without breaking a sweat (or a nail).

Danica provides illuminating, step-by-step math lessons combined with reader favorites like personality quizzes, popular doodles, real-life testimonials, and stories from her own life, so girls feel like she's sitting right next to them. As hundreds of thousands of girls already know, Danica's irreverent, light-hearted approach opens the door to higher grades and higher test scores. Now, with Hot X: Algebra Exposed, the scary veil of algebra is finally lifted, making it understandable, relevant and maybe even a little (gasp!) fun for girls. ... Read more