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Geekspeak: How Life + Mathematics = Happiness
How big is your vocabulary?
How heavy is your house?
Do the dead outnumber the living?
What are the best words to use in a personal ad?
We humans are a curious species, prone to think, ruminate, reflect, cogitate, mull over, and philosophize. We long to explain away the world around us, to answer all those seeming unanswerables: Why are we here? Is there a God? Is there life after death? And, above all, how many houseflies does it take to pull a car?
A confirmed and superior geek, Dr. Graham Tattersall has rescued math from the prison of the classroom and put it to use in novel and unexpected ways to explain some oft-pondered mysteries of the world. Geekspeak is an essential tool that will help you exercise your brain and solve the unsolvable, make you sound intelligent so you can impress your friends, and enable you to better understand the fascinating world in which we live in ways never possible before.
Math has a new champion, and the geeks a new king.
258 pages, Kindle Edition
First published October 15, 2007
26 people are currently reading
150 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 33 reviews
August 29, 2010
I'm a little jealous because this is exactly the book I wanted to write.
It's not exactly the most useful collections of calculations, but it's interesting as hell... if you're interested in that kind of stuff. Actually, all but one individual that I recommended the book to (you better be reading it, dude waiting for the R at Atlantic Ave!) asked me why I would want to read something like that. Answer: Because it's awesome.
I think my brain is one neuron richer now that I know (approximately) how many flies it takes to pull a car at 40 mph. And I believe that my synapses fire an attosecond faster now that I know whether a hurricane is stronger than an atomic bomb.
Best of all, this book gives you the inspiration (if you're so inclined) to just wonder about the magnitudes of the things around us. Our entire reality is experiential and Geekspeak lights the fire under your ass to appreciate it just a little more.
How hot is such an ass fire? Well, assume the affected area to be pi times the square of one ass cheek's diameter...
It's not exactly the most useful collections of calculations, but it's interesting as hell... if you're interested in that kind of stuff. Actually, all but one individual that I recommended the book to (you better be reading it, dude waiting for the R at Atlantic Ave!) asked me why I would want to read something like that. Answer: Because it's awesome.
I think my brain is one neuron richer now that I know (approximately) how many flies it takes to pull a car at 40 mph. And I believe that my synapses fire an attosecond faster now that I know whether a hurricane is stronger than an atomic bomb.
Best of all, this book gives you the inspiration (if you're so inclined) to just wonder about the magnitudes of the things around us. Our entire reality is experiential and Geekspeak lights the fire under your ass to appreciate it just a little more.
How hot is such an ass fire? Well, assume the affected area to be pi times the square of one ass cheek's diameter...
August 11, 2021
This book was pitched as fun and mathematical, and I found it to be neither. The author’s tone was irritating, the supposedly practical applications of each chapter were far fetched, and the assumptions underlying the author’s mathematical modeling were dubious. The topics were not even very creative, so the book just read like listening to someone trying to work out a bunch of classic Fermi problems, and not even that well. The fun of a Fermi problem is trying to figure it out yourself or with others, not just listening to someone else’s process.
February 20, 2014
Geekspeak is dull
Life plus mathematics is equal to confusion, not happiness; but life plus wrong logic/science is absurd. By the way "geekspeak" is not an English word! Curiosity and inquisitiveness are in human nature, therefore asking scientific and philosophical questions are understandable but that doesn't include asking questions such as; how much land is needed to bury the dead each year? Or how heavy is your house? Or how many bibles can be stored on a CD? In this book, the author purports to find answers for these questions using mathematics. A sample of my observation is as follows: Does it costs 10 cents to generate 1000 watts of electricity each by fossil fuel or nuclear power? Is it not nuclear fuel more energy efficient? The conclusion that human power is 700 times as expensive as using fossil fuel is certainly a faulty science! More than 60% of the energy from a burning gas in a car is wasted? This is significantly a large error because a typical gasoline automobile engine operates at around 25% thermal efficiency. The plane will burn the aviation fuel at about the same rate as when you drive your car: 25 - 30 miles per gallon.....and the consumption of fuel is much less per person? Chapters on Well Connected, in six links 4.1 billion people know each other? This completely eliminates redundancy and a people knowing each other! The chapter on Fatal Attraction eliminates the magnetic force that opposites attract! Regarding war chest; the analysis is humorous and least bit substantive. The list goes on, but I did not take time to itemize the scientific veracity of the arguments presented in this book, but the above examples will suffice.
This book is priced pretty heavily for its contents, but I hope that other readers won't be as disappointed as I am
Life plus mathematics is equal to confusion, not happiness; but life plus wrong logic/science is absurd. By the way "geekspeak" is not an English word! Curiosity and inquisitiveness are in human nature, therefore asking scientific and philosophical questions are understandable but that doesn't include asking questions such as; how much land is needed to bury the dead each year? Or how heavy is your house? Or how many bibles can be stored on a CD? In this book, the author purports to find answers for these questions using mathematics. A sample of my observation is as follows: Does it costs 10 cents to generate 1000 watts of electricity each by fossil fuel or nuclear power? Is it not nuclear fuel more energy efficient? The conclusion that human power is 700 times as expensive as using fossil fuel is certainly a faulty science! More than 60% of the energy from a burning gas in a car is wasted? This is significantly a large error because a typical gasoline automobile engine operates at around 25% thermal efficiency. The plane will burn the aviation fuel at about the same rate as when you drive your car: 25 - 30 miles per gallon.....and the consumption of fuel is much less per person? Chapters on Well Connected, in six links 4.1 billion people know each other? This completely eliminates redundancy and a people knowing each other! The chapter on Fatal Attraction eliminates the magnetic force that opposites attract! Regarding war chest; the analysis is humorous and least bit substantive. The list goes on, but I did not take time to itemize the scientific veracity of the arguments presented in this book, but the above examples will suffice.
This book is priced pretty heavily for its contents, but I hope that other readers won't be as disappointed as I am
May 10, 2009
I was really disappointed with this book. With a title, cover pic and well written front and back covers, I was expecting something much better than what was delivered. I was expecting this book to be about how incorporating numbers into your life can help your standard of living, whether it's through making better decisions or balancing your budget. In the end, it was a book about making up numbers based on really dumb assumptions. Like how many times around the planet will your toilet paper go, and other nonsense. If you're looking for geeky reading, I'd suggest Carl Sagan's Dragons of Eden or Innumeracy instead.
June 13, 2012
A vaguely entertaining and humorous look at the mathematics of everyday life. I would call the humor somewhat juvenile and by the end of the book it was downright tedious. This could be an eye opener though for those who don't already see the patterns, equations, and numbers that are always around us.
September 25, 2009
This is like the Math version of Freakonomics. I learned a lot of interesting facts, and admire the genius and humor of the author. Anyone that can make me think Math is cool has got to be pretty good!
November 17, 2009
It should be entitled "How to estimate and do mental math." It is interesting to follow his train of though to figure out how many piano tuners are in Boston, but the same tools of logic and estimation are used throughout the book. It gets dull after awhile.
March 19, 2013
I expected more out of this book, but it turned out to center around making estimates. I think this book is great if you're trying to teach someone about how to estimate, but it terms of other math concepts, this is lacking.
November 19, 2014
Fun to read, because there are plenty of thought experiments you can follow along in your head. If you've ever wanted to know how many flies it takes to pull a car, or how big a man-sized angel's wings would need to be, you'll be entertained.
June 30, 2009
Even more fun than Freakonomics... because you get to play along!
June 3, 2018
I picked up this book expecting it to be about lots of different geeky things and how math is incorporated into those geeky things. This assumption was correct, however the way math is incorporated is upsetting to me. Most chapters deal with coming up with estimates for calculations. While this is a good skill to have, the estimations seemed to have no backing or strong reasoning other than the author’s own experience. So it seemed sometimes that numbers were plucked out of thin air for the sake of talking about it.
The premiss of the book seems to be the geeky author having a conversation with you about lots of different topics. With that in mind it makes more sense to think that the number estimates and calculations would be performed the way they were in the book since when you’re having a conversation with someone you don’t always have the exact numbers off the top of your head for some of these things. However, to write and publish a book with these estimates, I would expect more concrete reasons and basis for the estimates. You have the luxury to look up info when you’re writing a book, so look it up and use real numbers. If you still want to talk about estimating the numbers, do that, but base it on facts.
I am disappointed that the only citations I saw in this book were for the pictures used. Nothing else was cited, nothing! So as far as I am concerned, this book is completely based on the author’s opinion. Where numbers and calculations are concerned, that doesn’t sit well with me. I stopped reading this book about half way through. If I have more time I’ll finish it for the sake of finishing.
The premiss of the book seems to be the geeky author having a conversation with you about lots of different topics. With that in mind it makes more sense to think that the number estimates and calculations would be performed the way they were in the book since when you’re having a conversation with someone you don’t always have the exact numbers off the top of your head for some of these things. However, to write and publish a book with these estimates, I would expect more concrete reasons and basis for the estimates. You have the luxury to look up info when you’re writing a book, so look it up and use real numbers. If you still want to talk about estimating the numbers, do that, but base it on facts.
I am disappointed that the only citations I saw in this book were for the pictures used. Nothing else was cited, nothing! So as far as I am concerned, this book is completely based on the author’s opinion. Where numbers and calculations are concerned, that doesn’t sit well with me. I stopped reading this book about half way through. If I have more time I’ll finish it for the sake of finishing.
April 19, 2021
Fluff, no real statistics, rough estimates of things that are of no importance and even less relevance.
December 30, 2014
It has been almost a year since I have posted anything here, or written a book review and a lot of that has to do with a lack of time and a lot of bad luck with MP3 players. I had one die right before Christmas and held off purchasing a new one until after the holidays. And when I didn't get one, I ended up waiting until the summer to replace it. I did have my wife's for a while of the summer, so I did listen to some books, but this one hear is one I actually read the old fashioned way, literally read the words on the page. This is something that usually only happens during the summer and unfortunately with a large backlog of magazines, especially Popular Science, I didn't get many other physical books read. However, I picked this one up a the library book sale in the spring and read through it pretty quickly during the summer.
I really liked this book. It reminds me of xkcd's What If, light. The biggest difference is that you knew what question was being asked and could pause in your reading to do a quick estimated guess. This book focused on different ways of measuring, estimating, guesstimating, and Fermi problem solving. The calculations were real, and somewhat practical. I don't know how often the author went back and checked his estimates against real values, but the estimates all sounded reasonable and so the ballpark answers were good enough. And even though the answers were frequently not specific, that was kind of the point of the book. It focused on ways of estimating and doing simple mental-math calculations to get to a satisfactory answer. One of the most memorable calculations was a conversion of power consumption of different items to horsepower, but since horsepower really is foreign to a lot of us now that we don't use horses as a primary means of transportation or labor, and furthermore, because we don't comprehend large numbers well and most cars have horsepowers in the tens to hundreds, he did a further conversion to human power, which he called slavepower. He further argued that maybe we'd be better at conserving energy if we understood in units of slavepower instead. Anyway, the book was a good short read with frequent chapter and section breaks which made it easy to put down and pick up again.
I really liked this book. It reminds me of xkcd's What If, light. The biggest difference is that you knew what question was being asked and could pause in your reading to do a quick estimated guess. This book focused on different ways of measuring, estimating, guesstimating, and Fermi problem solving. The calculations were real, and somewhat practical. I don't know how often the author went back and checked his estimates against real values, but the estimates all sounded reasonable and so the ballpark answers were good enough. And even though the answers were frequently not specific, that was kind of the point of the book. It focused on ways of estimating and doing simple mental-math calculations to get to a satisfactory answer. One of the most memorable calculations was a conversion of power consumption of different items to horsepower, but since horsepower really is foreign to a lot of us now that we don't use horses as a primary means of transportation or labor, and furthermore, because we don't comprehend large numbers well and most cars have horsepowers in the tens to hundreds, he did a further conversion to human power, which he called slavepower. He further argued that maybe we'd be better at conserving energy if we understood in units of slavepower instead. Anyway, the book was a good short read with frequent chapter and section breaks which made it easy to put down and pick up again.
June 8, 2015
Mildly amusing Britwit Dr. Tattersall is the gentle reader's gentle guide to using estimating techniques to understand quantities, volumes, and rates in the everyday things around us. Its all very Bill Nye Science Guy in its "Did you know . . " approach, starting with a few common facts and roll-up-your-sleeves estimating techniques to resolve uncommon sense questions like how the "six degrees of Kevin Bacon" (or the Queen, in Tattersall's version) game works, how much two bodies really are attracted to each other, and how many flies it would take to tow a car.
Yeah, like that. And each exercise is followed by a "practical application" which applies the technique to give a quick answer to a related question. Nothing is really practical, but the gentle wit and verry British irony passes the time pleasantly enough.
Yeah, like that. And each exercise is followed by a "practical application" which applies the technique to give a quick answer to a related question. Nothing is really practical, but the gentle wit and verry British irony passes the time pleasantly enough.
February 4, 2016
A fun look at the many ways that math surrounds us. Believing that insufficient numeracy is like living in a foreign country without being able to speak the language, Tattersall explains with humor how to use math to analyze and understand the world. Sample problems include estimating the size of your vocabulary, determining the number of piano tuners in Boston, and calculating the number of flies it would take to pull a car. Despite being a bit of a math geek myself, I found it difficult to read this book from cover to cover as some of the explanations of concepts and processes seemed repetitive. Fortunately, though, this is a book that's ideal for browsers; it can easily be appreciated in small chunks and in any order. In fact, the problems and their explanations would be great discussion material for high school math or physics classes.
May 26, 2011
Given by a friend at work; so far, it seems like a better title should be "The Explaining Man's Guide to Armchair Estimates of All Sorts of Random Crap". Mixed feelings, but it's a quick enough read that I'll probably finish it.
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Update: Had to give up halfway through. The writer is that particular kind of geek you hope never to meet at a party - the kind that knows everything better than everyone else, not because they actually know it, but because they have utter faith in their ability to work anything out through pure logic, and will proceed to attempt to prove this to you without invitation. At a party, you'd be well advised to seek the bathroom or a drink refill within the first five minutes. With a book, you can simply put it down.
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Update: Had to give up halfway through. The writer is that particular kind of geek you hope never to meet at a party - the kind that knows everything better than everyone else, not because they actually know it, but because they have utter faith in their ability to work anything out through pure logic, and will proceed to attempt to prove this to you without invitation. At a party, you'd be well advised to seek the bathroom or a drink refill within the first five minutes. With a book, you can simply put it down.
February 10, 2015
I may not be as curious about the world as Mr. Tattersall, but this is one nice book to have.
As the subtitle said, most if not all of the questions here are ridiculous and out of this world. But the ways of answering them are at least backed up by math, physics, logic, and common sense. It's full of "guesstimates" but it's fine, given the kind of questions in this book.
The solutions that I particularly liked and remembered the most are: calculating the weight of a bus just by looking at it, the effects and extent of global warming, storms vs atomic bombs, flies lifting cars, and the size of an angel's wings.
It's definitely geeky. And Mr. Tattersall always has that witty punchline to end his explanations. :)
As the subtitle said, most if not all of the questions here are ridiculous and out of this world. But the ways of answering them are at least backed up by math, physics, logic, and common sense. It's full of "guesstimates" but it's fine, given the kind of questions in this book.
The solutions that I particularly liked and remembered the most are: calculating the weight of a bus just by looking at it, the effects and extent of global warming, storms vs atomic bombs, flies lifting cars, and the size of an angel's wings.
It's definitely geeky. And Mr. Tattersall always has that witty punchline to end his explanations. :)
March 15, 2012
While full of interesting facts, the book is more of a how-to guide, teaching you how to approach estimation of everyday calculations. But more than that, the book is encourages you to ask the questions in the first place. How large would angels wings have to be to support flight? How many windmills would you need to power a city or a country? How soon will the ice caps melt? Etc. Ask the questions and try to figure things out. You will understand your world more completely.
September 25, 2015
I really want to give this book four stars, because I really loved all the parts I understood. And there's the rub: I hardly understood any of the math, my eyes glazed over for those parts. The stories and posits that strung the math together were both interesting food for thought, and reminiscent of what a math book written by Monty Python might be like.
May 6, 2009
Not being a true geek (my kids may disagree with this), I occasionally got lost in the math, but I loved his message to consider what "the experts" say about any given topic, rather than just accepting it at face value.
June 12, 2013
Very enlightening and helpful book for the geek at heart. There is a lot of environmental nuances expressed throughout the book, which got a little old by the end. Otherwise, an easy and enjoyable read.
July 30, 2008
A math-is-fun! book. Unfortunately there is no theme here, just random how-to-estimate problems and solutions.
January 21, 2009
Interesting, but too much math
December 14, 2008
surprisingly non-geeky and easy to read chapters about using maths to suss out everyday situations.
February 10, 2009
I would have probably given it five stars but I didn't finish it and had to return it to the library.
January 9, 2009
My estimated vocabulary is around 46,000 words!
March 21, 2009
author thinks he is a geek, but he just poorly estimates boring everyday things in far from a scientific method
October 14, 2009
Interesting although a little eye-crossing at times.
March 29, 2011
It was amusing. It's fun to look at average things in a different way, even if it is not exactly practical or useful information.
January 19, 2015
a book about math.
gah.
gah.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 33 reviews