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I really enjoyed Jordan Ellenberg’s earlier book How Not to be Wrong, so looked forward to Shape with some anticipation. In principle what we have here is a book about geometry - but not seen from the direction of the (dare I say it) rather boring, Euclid-based geometry textbooks some of us suffered Leggi tutto

I loved Jordan Ellenberg's earlier book, How Not to Be Wrong: The Power of Mathematical Thinking , and it was a hard act to follow. But not for Ellenberg, as this book is also great. While the title, "Shape" implies that this book is about geometry--and it is--it is also about so much more. This book Leggi tutto

This is an eye-opening book about the prowess of geometry and how it impacts the real world. The author successfully explains everything from graphs to game theory, from differential equations to high-level statistic in an easy to read manner with interesting and thought-provoking examples. Even for Leggi tutto

Shape is University of Wisconsin math professor and bestselling author Ellenberg’s far-ranging exploration of the power of geometry, which turns out to help us think better about practically everything. How should a democracy choose its representatives? How can you stop a pandemic from sweeping the Leggi tutto

I am not sure you can possibly understand how high my expectations were for this book. Jordan Ellenberg's How Not To Be Wrong is my favorite book of all time about mathematics and I have been waiting for him to write another since I read it. I have read How Not To Be Wrong at least three times and I Leggi tutto

The 3 is because this is a clever and fun book for people who aren't me, probably a 5 for the number-savvy. I struggled through the first half, reading every word, getting farther and farther behind in proofs and theorems that were increasingly out of my reach. This is a book for the true math adjace Leggi tutto

This book has many excellent pieces but they are poorly linked together and surrounded by bloat. In my opinion, it could be polished into another masterpiece (like his previous book "How Not to be Wrong") if the theme was more concrete and topics were more carefully strung together. Before I go thro Leggi tutto

One of the key mathematical stories early in this book is "the random walk". And the the book walks randomly over a bunch of material, staying too long on some parts, and not long enough on others. One of the longest parts, too long for my taste, was about gerrymandering. The key question is can you Leggi tutto

"Shape" is the successor of Ellenbergs' popular work "How Not to Be Wrong". Whereas the earlier book showed how to use mathematical thinking in everyday life (and win the lottery), this book aims to show that geometry is absolutely everywhere. I am no mathematician, but I have the feeling that Ellen Leggi tutto

Cool math stuff, but not really tied together by central theme. Only read if you want more math in your life.