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Once Upon a Number
  
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Once Upon a Number (Paperback)

by John A. Paulos (Author) "STORIES AND STATISTICS? ..." (more)
5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)

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Product details

  • Paperback
  • Publisher: Nelson Thornes Ltd (31 Dec 1998)
  • ISBN-10: 0173993141
  • ISBN-13: 978-0173993149
  • Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 3,614,556 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Product Description

Amazon.co.uk Review

Mathematician John Allen Paulos bravely bridges the scientific and literary cultures with this amusing, enlightening look at numbers and stories. If you think those two things go together like a "horse and a paperclip," as Allen wryly observes, you only have to look at phenomena like the Bible codes, the stock market's ups and downs, and the Clinton sex scandal to begin to understand the hidden bonds between them. Put simply, mathematics can describe everything that happens, and everything that happens contextualises mathematics. In demonstrating this, Paulos continues the noble numeracy crusade he began with A Mathematician Reads the Newspaper and Beyond Numeracy. Perhaps the most compelling thought experiments in the book are those of the statistics of stereotyping and race relations. Paulos shows, mathematically, that minority status makes achieving equality extraordinarily difficult.

If you want to keep hold of your comfortable worldview, don't read Once Upon a Number. But you'll be missing out on an unforgettable reminder of what chance, coincidence and odds really mean, along with several valuable life lessons that may help you understand lost socks, racism and mistaken identity. --Therese Littleton, Amazon.com --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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3 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Bridging the quantitative and qualitative with a smile, 25 Sep 2002
This review is from: Once Upon a Number: The Hidden Mathematical Logic of Stories (Allen Lane Science) (Paperback)
This book presents in a delightfully entertaining way the missed opportunities that result in the separation of quantitative and qualitative worlds. It uses a series of anecdotes and stories to show that keeping these two worlds apart makes it all too easy to lie with statistics and influence with idle speculation about coincidence and chance. The author suggests there are exciting new vistas to explore once we accept there is an intriguing 'third way' that straddles this great divide between quant. and qual. Opportunities emerge for everyone from the consumer, to the mathematician and the philosopher.

Reading this books one begins to understand a little more why questionnaires are becoming increasingly unwelcome and why trust in expert evidence is dwindling.

The author pricks the ego of many entrenched interests but never with malice and always with a wry smile.

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2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Paulos continues with his amazing mathematical insights, 23 Nov 1998
By A Customer
This review is from: Once Upon a Number: Mathematician Bridges Stories and Statistics (Hardcover)
I saw the Salon review of this and promptly ordered it. A little trepidatious at first, I thought the book might be a rehash of Innumeracy and A Mathematician reads the Newspaper, which I loved. I was wrong. The book has Paulos's wry, witty tone and the many examples and insights are characteristically quirky, but the topic is very different - the similarities and differences between stories and mathematics, between their associated logics and world views, and the different mindsets they bring about. Somehow he relates Murphy's Law, the limited complexity of the human brain, topical news stories, bible codes, race issues, and many other amusing tidbits into a coherent argument about our place in the world. And there isn't an equation in sight.
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1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Properly warned, 23 Aug 2005
By William S. Dockens (Denmark) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   
This review is from: Once Upon a Number: Mathematician Bridges Stories and Statistics (Hardcover)
I am a mathematical psychologist, a term viewed by some as a contradiction in terms. It is not certain that John Allen Paulo's book Once Upon A Number could have spared me some of the most embarrassing moments of my life but it sure would have helped.

Being acutely aware of the irrational but real boundaries between people who think in terms of formula and numbers and those who think with metaphors and analogies might have prevented some rejected papers, confused audiences and irrational abstracts. I am not sure about how well I have learned the lesson, but at least I have been properly warned. Valuable book!
William S. Dockens III PhD.

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