Numberland: The World in Numbers

by Mitchell Symons

Pick at these engrossing facts one at a time, or binge on them by section to get a larger picture of the numbers that make up the world The world is full of fascinating facts and statistics, but presented without context and in no particular order they can be overwhelming. By interpreting the world around us through numbers, you can break the most amazing and revealing of facts down to their bare bones. For example, did you know that the average eyelash lasts five months? That 400 quarter-pound hamburgers can be made out of one cow? Or that the average human will grow 590 miles of hair in their lifetime? Ordered in easily digestible sections such as "Around the World," "the USA," "Money," "Religion," and "History," navigate an ordered path through a noisy world of information overload.

Genres: Nonfiction, Science, Mathematics

256 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2013

Reviews

[Charbel · Rating 2 out of 5]

I like numbers; I find them comforting. I like facts. So this book should have been a definite win, but it wasn't.
Though it's certainly interesting, the book felt lazy. Every chapter is basically a list of facts, where each fact can be discovered by a simple google search. There is no substance, no depth; just a bunch of figures on random topics from geography to animals.
It's a good book for a quick "did you know that..." reference, but not much else.

[Deutscher · Rating 3 out of 5]

Yaşamın çok değişik alanlarından ilginç sayısal bilgilerin verildiği "Sayılarla Dünya", uzun zamandır en keyif alarak okuduğum kitaplardan. İnsan vücüdu, ülkeler, müzik, sinema, astronomi, tarih ve daha pek çok konuda kısa ve ilginç bilgiler edinmek istiyorsanız bu kitabı öneririm.

[Joan · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's a quick, fun read. I've always enjoyed trivia. I can imagine that anyone can easily Google the facts in the book but not everyone will know what to look for. What Mitchell Symons was able to do is wonder about clever things to come up with this well-curated book of interesting, some amazing, some disturbing, most useless, even more fun-to-read facts.

[Erikka · Rating 3 out of 5]

Meh. Some interesting info, but a lot is outdated. I skipped sports and celebrities (don't care) and a good deal was British, which is totally fine but didn't really make much sense to me as an American. I found myself constantly converting metric to imperial. I wish international authors who plan to sell their books abroad would include both, say, kgs and lbs to help all readers equally. Not a bad book, though.

[Eva Hough · Rating 4 out of 5]

this book has some interesting facts and is really easy to read! I obviously know that not all of them can be prooved because, newflash people!, science ACTUALLY has no way of prooving how many species became extinct before humans existed, if they weren't even alive! But the facts that are believable were really interesting.

[Serpil Çelebi · Rating 4 out of 5]

Çok cici bir kitap olduğunu söylemem gerek. Ben çok eğlendim. Böyle bilgiler edinmek hoşuma gidiyor. İlginç şeyler var :)

[D.A. Fellows · Rating 4 out of 5]

4/5 stars. Enjoyable trivia by numbers book. Some genuinely interesting facts, if a little padding here and there.