Coincidences, Chaos, and All That Math Jazz: Making Light of Weighty Ideas

by Edward B. Burger and Michael Starbird

Book Overview

A book for the eternally curious, Coincidences fuses a professor's understanding of the hidden mathematical skeleton of the universe with the sensibility of a stand-up comedian, making life's big questions accessible and compelling. Each chapter opens with a surprising insight--not a mathematic formula, but a common observation. From there, the authors leapfrog over math and anecdote toward profound ideas about nature, art, and music. Coincidences...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0393329313
• ISBN13: 9780393329315
• Release Date: October 2006
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
• Length: 288 Pages
• Weight: 1.60 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.2" x 5.5" x 8.2"

Customer Reviews

This book = Great Fun + Great Insight!

Who says math is boring or irrelevant? Certainly not someone who's read this book and seen the many ways math serves as the skeleton key to life and the mysteries of the universe itself! At the beginning of each chapter the authors skillfully say what they're going to prove in simple English and then by the end of the chapter end up proving it not only in English but math as well. Starting simply with the subject of coincidences, the authors show how and why even in very small groups you may share a birthday with someone else. From coincidences the authors discuss choas, the reverse of coincidence where small differences ultimately make for...well...even bigger differences. Why is this so? They tell you. Later they tackle cryptography and show how the patterns of running a lottery are in the end very similar to the patterns that govern the forms life takes. Amazingly, in twenty pages they manage to cover the same ground covered in the book "The Golden Ratio" (which by the way, is also very, good book but just a longer discussion). Moving from the mysteries of life to the mysteries of the universe, the authors ACTUALLY MAKE YOU UNDERSTAND what the 4th dimension would be like. In this way, they manage through a brief treatment what the longer work "Flatterland" by Ian Stewart (also, by the way, a very good book, just longer) manages to do. Finally, they plum that ultimate mystery of mathematics and creation -- infinity. Here again, they also manage in a brief treatment that which is also dealt with in a longer book, "Zero" by Charles Seife (again, also a very, good book but again just longer). As both an introductory work to all the other books cited in this review or merely as a book read on its own, this book delivers both great fun and great insight. Buy it now!

Gee Whiz...!

This is a terrific "Gee whiz...!" book - full of fun items that stimulate your thinking while illustrating and explaining challenging concepts. So, how many times CAN you fold a standard sheet of binder paper in half? Try inflicting this on your friends and colleagues, and enjoy the results! [If you have not read the book, try this: guess an answer to the question, then grab a sheet of 8.5 x 11 paper and try it out. You may be surprised...] Great book - highly recommended for those who enjoy learning.

Amazing read... finally, math is shown to be entertaining!

I just finished reading this book. I have to admit I was a math-fan before the read, but this book brought out all that is good in math and much more. It is the first book that explains really big ideas in mathematics without any fancy math symbols (in fact, I don't think I saw one equation in the entire book!). It really is written for the general public and I feel that anyone who picks it up will love it and will not put it down. Now I do know some math, so I have to say that the comments of Kyle Williams that I read today are a bit strange. The sections he refers to explain well-understood and well-established mathematical ideas that have been written in very original ways. It really is correct. Honestly, I know I'll reread the book--it's really funny... I can't believe I laughed out loud a few times while reading it! You'll love it!

Interesting, funny, accessible approach to some of math's weightier concepts

Math can be beautiful; math can be fun. While I caught glimpses of these truths occasionally in the course of my formal education, I never really saw the light. With Burger and Starbird's delightful book, it feels like I'm staring at the sun. In their closing thoughts, they write, "Mathematics is a liberating entertainment"; and at that point, they've proven it. The authors show us the beauty of math in quotidian objects: the number of spirals on a pineapple or in the center of a sunflower, for example, are almost always the same and always follow a particular mathematical sequence known as a Fibonacci sequence. That sequence leads us to a geometric concept known as the Golden Rectangle, which they show has been embraced by various artists and architects in paintings and buildings. There is math in beauty and there is beauty in math. They take us on a tour of topology (an advanced region of mathematics) with friendly, informal examples such as how to remove your undies without removing your trousers. And they teach us how a simple math concept can underlie extraordinarily difficult to crack codes. They lead us into the fourth dimension and on to infinity (and then on to another infinity that's even bigger than infinity)! The most impressive aspect of this book is that, despite the heady nature of the material, the authors relentlessly make it fun. The book is filled with both humor and clever, helpful drawings. This accessible book can remind us all that math leads into exciting territory.

Playing and Experimenting with Math

Remember how dull math was back then? We all took the required course in Algebra. We struggled through it, we got out, and most of us never thought about the subject again. If this had been the math book we used, math might have been considered fun. It might even have taught us that we wanted to study more math. In this book the authors take some real problems, problems that might even interest one of today's teenagers and use that to discuss mathematics. Any kid would have some interest in learning about secret messages. Probably both the boys and the girls. The boys by their very nature, the girls so that the boys couldn't read their diary. Secred messages lead to cryptography and an opportunity to study prime numbers, factoring, all kinds of things. And topology, mobius strips which only have one side. You could make mobius strips in class and do some experiments that would be a lot more fun than going to the board to do long division. In part it's the subject matter that makes this book so interesting. Infinity and choas theory are just plain interesting. But it's also the writing style, for instance: 'If we were to randomly kidnap 35 people off the street, two events are remarkably likely to happen. The first is we'd probably get arrested, the second ....' Delightful book.