Aftermath: The Life-Changing Math That Schools Won't Teach You

by Ted Dintersmith

Whether you loved or loathed high-school math, Aftermath will change how you think about math—and life.

Forget rote math’s dry formulas and abstract symbols. This book illuminates the fascinating math ideas that are essential to you and your loved ones—ideas totally ignored in school.

“In the age of AI and data, we badly need to rethink the way we teach math in U.S. schools. Dintersmith has joyfully illustrated how we can pull the subject out of irrelevance in the eyes of our students—a must read for teachers and parents alike.”

—Steve Levitt, Co-Author, Freakonomics and SuperFreakonomics

280 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2026

Reviews

[Literary Redhead · Rating 3 out of 5]

I found the author's life story on his experience with
math eye-opening and compelling. But had a hard time getting through the dense subsequent text. I plan to give this another read when I have more time for concentration. I suspect that other readers less cowed by math won't have my challenges with the book.

[Sandy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ted is a personal friend and it is clear he actually should be in charge of our country with his ability to see where we have screwed up so many aspects from education, to politics, to voting, to defense spending, to business decisions and more. He is trying to make the point that Math has been horribly misused and miss-taught leading to massive waste, poor results, unnecessary frustrations and missed opportunity to teach children how to create, think, apply logic and solve problems. I have to say I totally agree with him and like most people had no idea what poor paths we have gone down as a nation.

I was like a fortunate few who found it relatively easy to follow the rote path and score well on standardized tests allowing access to Ivy League education. As a Math major, I took many high level esoteric classes where I learned a process and how to regurgitate it back successfully without really gaining anything of value. Once I went into a financial career it turned out I never used or needed anything beyond basic Algebra wasting lots of time and effort on Calculus and bizarre advanced math subjects. In retrospect I would have much preferred learning more about prediction, statistics, probability, game theory, optimization and decision making which were all touched on lightly but not to the depth they deserved.

[David Goodrich · Rating 5 out of 5]

Journal of a live mind. Dintersmith uses the math that we didn't necessarily learn in school to address a kaleidoscope of issues. Dry topics like statistics, optimization and game theory are given starring roles in addressing topics like covid, the fall of Lehman, and AI.