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The Triumph of Numbers: How Counting Shaped Modern Life (Hardcover)

by IB Cohen (Author) "We live in a world of numbers ..." (more)

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Product details

Hardcover: 209 pages
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Co. (31 May 2005)
Language English
ISBN-10: 0393057690
ISBN-13: 978-0393057690
Product Dimensions: 21.1 x 14.5 x 2.5 cm

Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (1 customer review)

Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 163,517 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)
Popular in this category:
#78 in Books > Science & Nature > Mathematics > History of Mathematics

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Product Description

Consulting and collecting numbers has been a feature of human affairs since antiquity-from the pyramids to tax collection to head counts for military service-but not until the Scientific Revolution in the seventeenth century did social numbers such as births, deaths and marriages begin to be analysed. The Triumph of Numbers explores how numbers have come to assume a leading role in science, in the operations and structure of government, in the analysis of society, in marketing and in many other aspects of daily life. The late I.B. Cohen shows how number problems of government, science and engineering led to the invention of the computer. He shines a new light on familiar figures like Thomas Jefferson, Ben Franklin and Charles Dickens, and he reveals Florence Nightingale as a passionate statistician. Cohen has left us with an engaging and accessible history of numbers, and an appreciation and understanding of the essential nature of statistics.

About the Author

I.B. COHEN (1914-2003) was the Victor S. Thomas Professor of the History of Science at Harvard University, the author of many books and the founder of Harvard's History of Science Department.

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First Sentence
We live in a world of numbers. Read the first page

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6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Sometimes Fascinating, Often Frustrating, Poorly Organized, 16 Jun 2005

By	J Scott Morrison (Middlebury VT, USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 50 REVIEWER) (REAL NAME)

This posthumously published book was finished only days before his death by I. Bernard Cohen, the founder of the Harvard Department of the History of Science. One has the sense that had he had more time to work on it it might have been better organized and more tightly focused. Although there are many fascinating facts and anecdotes in this short outline of the effects of numbers on modern life and the development of their use over the centuries, there are many divagations that don't add much to the story. When he takes time to correct the French in someone's book title, one wonders why he wastes space on that when he doesn't make it clear why he was citing the book in the first place. Still we meet such well-known characters as Kepler and Galileo, Jefferson and Franklin, and lesser known but fascinating thinkers like Andr� Michel Guerry and Adolphe Quetelet who advanced the science of statistics and applied it to such sociological concerns as crime and punishment. We meet statistical Luddites like Dickens, who thought the collection of demographic data would be used against the average man. We finish with a weak chapter about Florence Nightingale's use of statistics in the medical realm. We do not venture on into the twentieth century.

This is a variably interesting but ultimately not very useful essay, I'm afraid. It is notable for its quirkily amusing anecdotes, but rather falls down when it attempts to convey the important uses to which numbers are put in modern life.

Scott Morrison

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