What do you think?
Rate this book
Wiskunde is overal: Inclusief heerlijk simpele tekeningen!
In Wiskunde is overal neemt Ben Orlin je mee op een meeslepende reis in de wonderlijke wereld van de wiskunde. Hij vertelt je wat een dobbelsteen je kan leren over een economische crisis, legt uit waarom je statistiek nooit mag vertrouwen en verklaart waarom de Death Star uit Star Wars elke wiskundige migraine bezorgt.
Hij illustreert elk onderwerp in zijn boek met zijn unieke handelsmerk: heerlijk simpele tekeningen waarmee hij nooit of te nimmer een artistieke prijs zal winnen, maar die er als geen ander in slagen wiskundige begrippen glashelder uit te leggen. Van verzekeringen via stadsontwikkeling tot de loterij: met zijn wervende verhalen en vooral veel gevoel voor humor bewijst Ben Orlin als geen ander hoe wiskunde echt overal in ons leven aanwezig is.
368 pages, Kindle Edition
First published September 18, 2018
1292 people are currently reading
5049 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 247 reviews
August 6, 2020
I realized that I hadn't yet rated my own book, and that by giving it five stars, I could exert an infinitesimal upward pull on its rating. Propriety be damned! I know how averages work!
Also, though, I'm really proud of this strange blue thing.
Honestly, before writing it, I worried it wouldn't work. "The entirety of math" felt like way too big a topic to tackle. I mean, maybe it's doable if you're named Jordan Ellenberg. But my driver's license insists that I am not.
Somehow, though, it came together. The math is all pretty elementary. (I get a lot of wonderful emails from parents saying, "I bought the book for myself, but my 10- and 12-year-olds got their hands on it and won't stop reading.") But the connections and stories, I hope, keep things fresh and surprising, even for the most jaded PhD.
Apologies for the self-promotion. Even if the book falls short of your expectations, I thank you for giving it a shot, and I appreciate your forgiveness of my bad art.
(I really can't draw.)
Also, though, I'm really proud of this strange blue thing.
Honestly, before writing it, I worried it wouldn't work. "The entirety of math" felt like way too big a topic to tackle. I mean, maybe it's doable if you're named Jordan Ellenberg. But my driver's license insists that I am not.
Somehow, though, it came together. The math is all pretty elementary. (I get a lot of wonderful emails from parents saying, "I bought the book for myself, but my 10- and 12-year-olds got their hands on it and won't stop reading.") But the connections and stories, I hope, keep things fresh and surprising, even for the most jaded PhD.
Apologies for the self-promotion. Even if the book falls short of your expectations, I thank you for giving it a shot, and I appreciate your forgiveness of my bad art.
(I really can't draw.)
June 7, 2020
This translation is better than the original.
I can say this with confidence because I wrote the original.
Just one example: in English, I used the pedestrian and uninteresting word "hitter" to refer to a baseball player. In Dutch, this word appears instead as the vastly superior SLAGMAN.
Five stars, easy.
(NOTE: I apologize for writing this review in English. If someone were to translate this to Dutch, I'm sure it would become a better review as well.)
I can say this with confidence because I wrote the original.
Just one example: in English, I used the pedestrian and uninteresting word "hitter" to refer to a baseball player. In Dutch, this word appears instead as the vastly superior SLAGMAN.
Five stars, easy.
(NOTE: I apologize for writing this review in English. If someone were to translate this to Dutch, I'm sure it would become a better review as well.)
May 28, 2019
A Pixar movie of a book: the plot is for the kids; the jokes are for the adults.
With that said, the jokes are AWESOME, the little cartoons much better than the title suggests and the (ninth grade) math is explained so well I wish I had this book in ninth grade. Perhaps these days it’s an eighth grade book, I don’t know. (My kids are still too young.)
Also, rather embarrassingly, I LEARNED STUFF FROM HERE. No, I did not learn math. I learned stuff I ought to have figured out for myself but was too focused on my grades to ponder. Like, why elephants have thick legs: for the same reason the sky is black! I’m serious, it’s the same reason and you can read it here…
Halfway through the book the author actually runs out of amazing things about the natural world and from there he takes you to the mathematics of Wall Street and the IRS, which I did not find as captivating, let us say. It all remains just as funny, though.
So this was a fun book to read. Probably an awesome gift for your friends’ kids. If the little ones don’t read it, the adults will at least get some good laughs out of it.
With that said, the jokes are AWESOME, the little cartoons much better than the title suggests and the (ninth grade) math is explained so well I wish I had this book in ninth grade. Perhaps these days it’s an eighth grade book, I don’t know. (My kids are still too young.)
Also, rather embarrassingly, I LEARNED STUFF FROM HERE. No, I did not learn math. I learned stuff I ought to have figured out for myself but was too focused on my grades to ponder. Like, why elephants have thick legs: for the same reason the sky is black! I’m serious, it’s the same reason and you can read it here…
Halfway through the book the author actually runs out of amazing things about the natural world and from there he takes you to the mathematics of Wall Street and the IRS, which I did not find as captivating, let us say. It all remains just as funny, though.
So this was a fun book to read. Probably an awesome gift for your friends’ kids. If the little ones don’t read it, the adults will at least get some good laughs out of it.
October 26, 2021
Обожаю книжки, полностью соответствующие своему названию. «Дурацкие» рисунки на самом деле очень милые, и они помогут вам увидеть математику в повседневности.
Темы, которые мне понравились:
🔹геометрия и архитектура, или почему мосты состоят из балок с дырками
🔹почему все в США играют в лотерею, тратят кучу денег, выигрывают миллионы, а в плюсе все равно государство
🔹как с помощью статистики доказать величие Вирджинии Вульф и Эрнеста Хемингуэя
🔹❗️как устроены американские выборы (господи, неужели я наконец-то это поняла)
🔹почему вода дешевле алмазов, хотя без нее, в отличие от ярких камушков, мы совсем не можем обойтись
🔹как Астрид Линдгрен платила 102% налог на прибыль со своих книг и почему ее это не очень радовало.
Читала взахлёб, все очень понравилось, даже редактура: «к ночи Леон преодолел охоту к перемене мест и решил посвятить себя экономике» и «штаты бывают разные: пестрые, синие, красные» (поднимите руку, кто пропел!). Тони Моррисон в мужском роде встречается только однажды!)
Темы, которые мне понравились:
🔹геометрия и архитектура, или почему мосты состоят из балок с дырками
🔹почему все в США играют в лотерею, тратят кучу денег, выигрывают миллионы, а в плюсе все равно государство
🔹как с помощью статистики доказать величие Вирджинии Вульф и Эрнеста Хемингуэя
🔹❗️как устроены американские выборы (господи, неужели я наконец-то это поняла)
🔹почему вода дешевле алмазов, хотя без нее, в отличие от ярких камушков, мы совсем не можем обойтись
🔹как Астрид Линдгрен платила 102% налог на прибыль со своих книг и почему ее это не очень радовало.
Читала взахлёб, все очень понравилось, даже редактура: «к ночи Леон преодолел охоту к перемене мест и решил посвятить себя экономике» и «штаты бывают разные: пестрые, синие, красные» (поднимите руку, кто пропел!). Тони Моррисон в мужском роде встречается только однажды!)
December 27, 2018
An entertaining book on mathematics with, of course, bad drawings (but illuminating ones) that covers several sections of mathematics. Separated into different parts, it can be read at a sitting but I found that to be an overwhelming read, as it is thick with information that needs time to digest. Digging into its sections at leisure would probably be a better way to digest the entertaining and interesting mathematical information provided in the book.
Part One is on how to think like a mathematician and looks at mathematics from various viewpoints: the teacher, the student, mathematicians and scientists. Each has a different view on mathematics and probably accounts for why some people learning mathematics have a hard time understanding the relevance of mathematics to their lives until much later.
Part Two looks at geometry and via examples like the design of girders, why the A4 paper has irrational dimensions, the geometric scaling laws and the design of many sided dices, shows how geometry plays a part in our daily lives. He closes with an entertaining example about a fictional Star Wars Imperial Engineer grumbling over the various trade-offs required to design the Death Star to Gran Moff Tarkin's specifications.
Part Three looks at probability and via various examples like the lottery, genetics, telling the odds, the costs of buying (and not buying) certain types of insurance and misunderstanding the odds that an event are independent of other events (the pricing of CDOs [collaterized debt obligations]), show how probabilities can mislead people in thinking that the odds of certain events happening are actually lower or higher than people imagine them to be.
Part Four is related to Part Three but looks at statistics. It starts with a look at the terms used by statistics (like mean, median, etc.) and show how each of them can lead or mislead people into understanding statistical results if you don't know what they show (and don't show). The next part on baseball statistics may bore or interest you and covers the history of the various baseball statistics. Next, the P-value used in scientific statistics is covered and shows how and why it can mislead scientists into believing that an experimental finding is 'statistically significant' when it is not. Going closer to the authors field (teaching), he looks at the measures used to score schools and asks whether such scores are used as a window on a school's performance or as a score to show how good or bad a school is, both of which produce different outcomes for the schools concerned. The final section of statistics looks at the interesting field of determining authorship based on the statistics of words and sentences used by various authors over time.
Part Five is a bit of mixture with the theme of how small changes can have large effects. He first looks at the misunderstanding over marginal tax rates and tax brackets and how they affect your actual income and tax rates. The issue of voting, voting boundaries and gerrymandering is then looked at, followed by chaos theory and a look at fractal dimensions.
All in all, an interesting book that is best read part by part as and when you feel a need to learn or refresh your memory of some aspects of mathematics covered in the book.
Part One is on how to think like a mathematician and looks at mathematics from various viewpoints: the teacher, the student, mathematicians and scientists. Each has a different view on mathematics and probably accounts for why some people learning mathematics have a hard time understanding the relevance of mathematics to their lives until much later.
Part Two looks at geometry and via examples like the design of girders, why the A4 paper has irrational dimensions, the geometric scaling laws and the design of many sided dices, shows how geometry plays a part in our daily lives. He closes with an entertaining example about a fictional Star Wars Imperial Engineer grumbling over the various trade-offs required to design the Death Star to Gran Moff Tarkin's specifications.
Part Three looks at probability and via various examples like the lottery, genetics, telling the odds, the costs of buying (and not buying) certain types of insurance and misunderstanding the odds that an event are independent of other events (the pricing of CDOs [collaterized debt obligations]), show how probabilities can mislead people in thinking that the odds of certain events happening are actually lower or higher than people imagine them to be.
Part Four is related to Part Three but looks at statistics. It starts with a look at the terms used by statistics (like mean, median, etc.) and show how each of them can lead or mislead people into understanding statistical results if you don't know what they show (and don't show). The next part on baseball statistics may bore or interest you and covers the history of the various baseball statistics. Next, the P-value used in scientific statistics is covered and shows how and why it can mislead scientists into believing that an experimental finding is 'statistically significant' when it is not. Going closer to the authors field (teaching), he looks at the measures used to score schools and asks whether such scores are used as a window on a school's performance or as a score to show how good or bad a school is, both of which produce different outcomes for the schools concerned. The final section of statistics looks at the interesting field of determining authorship based on the statistics of words and sentences used by various authors over time.
Part Five is a bit of mixture with the theme of how small changes can have large effects. He first looks at the misunderstanding over marginal tax rates and tax brackets and how they affect your actual income and tax rates. The issue of voting, voting boundaries and gerrymandering is then looked at, followed by chaos theory and a look at fractal dimensions.
All in all, an interesting book that is best read part by part as and when you feel a need to learn or refresh your memory of some aspects of mathematics covered in the book.
August 18, 2021
I didn't think the drawings were bad at all. But then I got to the drawing of a T-Rex. The worst, though, was his portrait of economist Léon Walras. It looks nothing like him! And, I hope, not like any real human.
Apart from those, the drawings were fun and the text was fun. Of course, I already know all the math in this book, or think I do, and I think math is fun, especially when someone else is doing it, so your mileage may vary. The text is snarky, but not too much so.
The author is a teacher in the American school system. To me that would be a hellish job, but he seems to enjoy it, and his pleasure in teaching things comes through on the page.
The topics sort of go all-over-the-place near the end, but that is one of my few complaints.
Apart from those, the drawings were fun and the text was fun. Of course, I already know all the math in this book, or think I do, and I think math is fun, especially when someone else is doing it, so your mileage may vary. The text is snarky, but not too much so.
The author is a teacher in the American school system. To me that would be a hellish job, but he seems to enjoy it, and his pleasure in teaching things comes through on the page.
The topics sort of go all-over-the-place near the end, but that is one of my few complaints.
March 28, 2019
Fables and math have a lot in common. Both come from dusty, moth-eaten books. Both are inflicted upon children. And both seek to explain the world through radical acts of simplification. If you want to reckon with the full idiosyncrasy and complexity of life, look elsewhere... math makers are more like cartoonists.
Taken as a collection of words, literature is a dataset of extraordinary richness. Then again, take as a collection of words, literature is no longer literature. Statistics works by eliminating context. Their search for insight begins with the annihilation of meaning... Is there peace to be made between the rich contextuality of literature and the cold analytical power of stats?
So wise. You'd think a high-school maths teacher who draws intentionally badly wouldn't have much to say about the nature of reason, the ecstasy and despair of learning and abstraction, the beauty of inevitability. But here we are - this only looks like a children's book. For better or worse there's a pun or goofy self-deprecating joke every couple sentences. (The greatest of these: " CHAPTER 21: THE TIME HAS COME, LEON WALRAS SAID, TO TALK OF MANY THINGS")
Everything in it is elementary, but using these simple examples Orlin covers a dozen of the most important intellectual developments: constraint theory of beauty, "unreasonable effectiveness", probability theory (via fascinating government lotteries with positive expected value!), the Great Recession from the quants' perspective, the replication crisis, the marginalist revolution... And he disses school mathematics often enough to charm anyone. I learned plenty (about bridges, polar animals, sabermetrics, about the inevitability and brilliance of ISO 216, and so on).
Dissing folks for their probabilistic failures is a bit like calling them bad at flying, or subpar at swallowing oceans, or insufficiently fireproof. No big deal, right? I mean, does probability ever come up in the real world? It's not like we spend our lives clawing for intellectual tools that might offer the slightest stability in the swirling miasma of uncertainty that surrounds us every waking moment...
He goes a bit wrong in his probability / lottery chapter - he spreads the rational choice theory (the idea that lotteries are good because it buys you nice daydreams) without reflecting that human attention and gumption are finite, and that the daydream thus robs people of a mildly but actually better future. Surprisingly, he also disses expected value (first-order users of which are "educated fools") with the trivial fact that infinities are strange: "Perhaps the ultimate repudiation of expected value is the abstract possibility of tickets [promising infinite payoff but only asymptotically]". Luckily decision theory is larger than one rule, and nowhere says that you must ignore your budget (+ leverage) and blindly obey the result of one multiplication... He also uses the false positive / false negative framework, which is usually misleading for squishy things like medicine and social science.
(He also thinks Han Solo is valid.)
While I am bitter that my own early maths education was so mindless, I'm amazed and glad that a few kids out there get to learn from someone like this.
January 20, 2019
I bought this book for a teenager in my life and decided to read it first to test out the content.
I liked the basic premise of the book: explaining with the help of very basic mathematics and rudimentary but on-point drawings the real world topics/scenarios. You remember the common adage: "I never needed math after I finished school?" - The author begs to differ.
I did find the math too simplified - I personally felt that I could have stomached a lot more advanced math. But I don't believe I was the target audience for this book -- 12-18-year-olds - the ages of the students the author has taught to in the past would have been a better fit.
Overall I love the premise and I hope the author turns this into a series! And in the meantime - off to his blog I am!
I liked the basic premise of the book: explaining with the help of very basic mathematics and rudimentary but on-point drawings the real world topics/scenarios. You remember the common adage: "I never needed math after I finished school?" - The author begs to differ.
I did find the math too simplified - I personally felt that I could have stomached a lot more advanced math. But I don't believe I was the target audience for this book -- 12-18-year-olds - the ages of the students the author has taught to in the past would have been a better fit.
Overall I love the premise and I hope the author turns this into a series! And in the meantime - off to his blog I am!
February 17, 2020
Loved the humor and insights. I’m gonna read thencalculus book.
January 7, 2020
First off, the title is not quite accurate. There is, in fact, a good deal of math (although not that many equations), but the drawings aren't really "bad". They are, to be sure, stick-drawings or the equivalent. But, given that their purpose is to make more clear the math which is being discussed, and given that they succeed at doing that rather well, I think they are more "crude but effective" than "bad". "Math With Crude Drawings" might not have been as snappy a title.
I may not have been the right audience for this book, as I already knew nearly all of the math discussed. It was, as far as I can tell, an easily understandable treatment of it all, but probably someone who does not already know most of the math should judge that. Maybe I could have my daughter read it this summer. "A math book for my summer? Papa, you shouldn't have! No really, you shouldn't have."
The author's basic point is that existing math education (primary and secondary in particular) is more or less like mistaking scales for music, or mistaking syntax for programming, or mistaking grammar for literature. Math, he believes, should be more like puzzle solving, and less like rote drudgery; something challenging but fun. It is a common refrain from those who love math, and I'm not exactly sure why we have not as a society managed to come up with a better curriculum, especially given the ubiquity of computing devices. Every smartphone can do multiplication for you, but it cannot do higher level thinking for you, and that is exactly what is missing from the current public school standard. Certainly it takes some cleverness to teach math in a non-boring way, but not if the curriculum is already developed by someone else who was clever, and you would think it would have happened by now.
It may be that the problem is, good clever discussions of math happen in books like this, not in textbooks. What would happen if we made textbooks like we make open source software, with a working prototype developed by one author, and then many different authors helping to incrementally improve the curriculum until it was funny and clear and engaging from start to finish? I fear, we will never find out. The way we pay for textbooks, and authorial work generally, is not set up to create ever-better textbooks. So here we are, several centuries after we started offering math education to most children in the developed world, still stuck with textbooks that are, shall we say, not inspiring.
It is a depressing state of affairs. But, you know what isn't depressing? This book.
It's funny, it's light-hearted, it's informative, it's a page-turner. It's full of math (and crude but effective drawings). Enjoy!
I may not have been the right audience for this book, as I already knew nearly all of the math discussed. It was, as far as I can tell, an easily understandable treatment of it all, but probably someone who does not already know most of the math should judge that. Maybe I could have my daughter read it this summer. "A math book for my summer? Papa, you shouldn't have! No really, you shouldn't have."
The author's basic point is that existing math education (primary and secondary in particular) is more or less like mistaking scales for music, or mistaking syntax for programming, or mistaking grammar for literature. Math, he believes, should be more like puzzle solving, and less like rote drudgery; something challenging but fun. It is a common refrain from those who love math, and I'm not exactly sure why we have not as a society managed to come up with a better curriculum, especially given the ubiquity of computing devices. Every smartphone can do multiplication for you, but it cannot do higher level thinking for you, and that is exactly what is missing from the current public school standard. Certainly it takes some cleverness to teach math in a non-boring way, but not if the curriculum is already developed by someone else who was clever, and you would think it would have happened by now.
It may be that the problem is, good clever discussions of math happen in books like this, not in textbooks. What would happen if we made textbooks like we make open source software, with a working prototype developed by one author, and then many different authors helping to incrementally improve the curriculum until it was funny and clear and engaging from start to finish? I fear, we will never find out. The way we pay for textbooks, and authorial work generally, is not set up to create ever-better textbooks. So here we are, several centuries after we started offering math education to most children in the developed world, still stuck with textbooks that are, shall we say, not inspiring.
It is a depressing state of affairs. But, you know what isn't depressing? This book.
It's funny, it's light-hearted, it's informative, it's a page-turner. It's full of math (and crude but effective drawings). Enjoy!
November 15, 2018
As an electrical engineer with a deep love of statistics, I always enjoy reading popular books on mathematics. I particularly love writers that can "infect" the reader with the same joy they find in using basic math principles to make better decisions or to enhance their life (particularly by not being fodder to scams, disinformation, and whatever's in vogue). Mr. Orlin writes just such a book. The writing is energetic, with highly pertinent examples. I felt like he wrote with my worldview.... which, of course, predisposes me to give this book a great review - haha. My husband also enjoyed it greatly, and he is not an engineer. It is intended for the curious reader, and no background in math is needed at all.
April 1, 2021
Остаешься после прочтения в диком восторге, если и до этого был влюблён в математику. Если еще нет - возможно, прочтение приблизит к этому. Автор цитирует кучу моих любимых научпоп книг, как Маниболл, Фрикономика и Сигнал и шум. Картинки смешные)
December 24, 2020
If you like maths, then you will love this book and if you don’t like maths, then probably you will start liking maths because of this book. I have been reading Ben's blog posts (which also have similar stick-figure drawings) since a few years and I finally decided to read this book. One is lucky to have teachers like him who can inspire not just about the subject but about learning in general!
The book covers a variety of aspects of maths as well as “real-world” scenarios where maths is required. There are sections on maths and mathematicians (it’s my favourite section), geometry (with many cool use-cases!), probability, statistics and more.
The writing style is simple and easy to understand, not like the usual math books! Also, it’s filled with wit and humour. Mostly people cry about maths but I guess this is one of those rare books which makes people laugh! And then there are these hand-drawn illustrations of stick-figures (they are so expressive!) which make the topic fun and also drill down the key points!
A couple of my favourite quotes for this book are: “To do good work, you’ve first got to engage with nitty-gritty details. Then, to do great work, you’ve got to move beyond them.” and “Creativity is what happens when a mind encounters an obstacle. It’s the human process of finding a way through, over, around, or beneath. No obstacle, no creativity.”
The book covers a variety of aspects of maths as well as “real-world” scenarios where maths is required. There are sections on maths and mathematicians (it’s my favourite section), geometry (with many cool use-cases!), probability, statistics and more.
The writing style is simple and easy to understand, not like the usual math books! Also, it’s filled with wit and humour. Mostly people cry about maths but I guess this is one of those rare books which makes people laugh! And then there are these hand-drawn illustrations of stick-figures (they are so expressive!) which make the topic fun and also drill down the key points!
A couple of my favourite quotes for this book are: “To do good work, you’ve first got to engage with nitty-gritty details. Then, to do great work, you’ve got to move beyond them.” and “Creativity is what happens when a mind encounters an obstacle. It’s the human process of finding a way through, over, around, or beneath. No obstacle, no creativity.”
August 28, 2020
Definitely want to add this one to our personal library for homeschool supplementing, best for probably middle school on up. Math can be such a hard subject to understand the practical life applications for some of the nuances of the field. Orlin covers the connections of math to science and history, to statistics, Star Wars, and a variety of other topics told in an engaging way with entertaining "bad drawings."
April 12, 2019
It took me a little longer to finish this, but it was not the book's falt at all. The book is very easy to read, you can also read the sections in any order you like. From the first pages I found it quite funny and I never laughed so bad, while reading math books. The author has a great way of making fun of situations, math concepts and society. Moreover, he uses simple vocabulary and all of the mathematical concepts used in the book are explained thoroughly.
In addition to the funny stick man drawings, all of the other diagrams, charts and graphs are well done and used to explain different situations and examples. He uses all of his diagrams/drawings in a unique and funny way.
Also, all of the examples used in the book are very valuable at understanding mathematical concepts. The only issue I had from time to time was that most of the examples are about USA. Being from outside USA, I found it a little annoying by the end of the book, but I appreciate the usefulness they have in explaining some mathematical concepts.
Moreover, I want to mention the end notes. I am always very picky with them when it comes to math books because they are important in the process of understanding a notion. This book has really good end notes and I recommend you check them at the same time as reading the chapters.
In addition to the funny stick man drawings, all of the other diagrams, charts and graphs are well done and used to explain different situations and examples. He uses all of his diagrams/drawings in a unique and funny way.
Also, all of the examples used in the book are very valuable at understanding mathematical concepts. The only issue I had from time to time was that most of the examples are about USA. Being from outside USA, I found it a little annoying by the end of the book, but I appreciate the usefulness they have in explaining some mathematical concepts.
Moreover, I want to mention the end notes. I am always very picky with them when it comes to math books because they are important in the process of understanding a notion. This book has really good end notes and I recommend you check them at the same time as reading the chapters.
June 26, 2022
What it says on the tin. Its cute and has some interesting sections. I am not really sure who the intended audience is.
July 17, 2020
“If you want to reckon with the full idiosyncrasy and complexity of life, look elsewhere. Ask a biologist, or a painter of photorealistic landscapes, or someone who files their own taxes. Fable tellers and math makers are more like cartoonists. By exaggerating a few features and neglecting all the rest, they help explain why our world is the way it is." -Ben Orlin
I have seen researchers exaggerating, neglecting, assuming, simplifying, and complicating matters as they want. As a Ph.D. student, I am always bothered by these practices. This book somehow helped me make peace with these practices. This was something that I did not expect from this book.
Ben Orlin does a great job telling stories about math in the real-life scenario but fails to drive home the importance of math. I read this book because the title and the cover seemed creative. The introduction sets an expectation that it will motivate high school students to pursue and study math. I expected it to give insights into why and how math is useful in adult life and why kids should study it. But the book ended up being some random stories of math. No doubt I enjoyed the bad drawings and the stories: how the triangle is a special shape, why A4 paper is √2 ratio, etc. But I did not quite see the book achieving its purpose.
Some quotes:
“To do good work, you’ve first got to engage with nitty-gritty details. Then, to do great work, you’ve got to move beyond them.”
“A statistic is an imperfect witness. It tells the truth, but never the whole truth.”
“It is a funny paradox of design: utility breeds beauty. There is elegance in efficiency, a visual pleasure in things that just barely work.”
“The closer you look, the longer the coastline becomes—in theory, forever.”
“Chaos is complexity all the way down, never pixelating, never terminating, never resolving.”
I have seen researchers exaggerating, neglecting, assuming, simplifying, and complicating matters as they want. As a Ph.D. student, I am always bothered by these practices. This book somehow helped me make peace with these practices. This was something that I did not expect from this book.
Ben Orlin does a great job telling stories about math in the real-life scenario but fails to drive home the importance of math. I read this book because the title and the cover seemed creative. The introduction sets an expectation that it will motivate high school students to pursue and study math. I expected it to give insights into why and how math is useful in adult life and why kids should study it. But the book ended up being some random stories of math. No doubt I enjoyed the bad drawings and the stories: how the triangle is a special shape, why A4 paper is √2 ratio, etc. But I did not quite see the book achieving its purpose.
Some quotes:
“To do good work, you’ve first got to engage with nitty-gritty details. Then, to do great work, you’ve got to move beyond them.”
“A statistic is an imperfect witness. It tells the truth, but never the whole truth.”
“It is a funny paradox of design: utility breeds beauty. There is elegance in efficiency, a visual pleasure in things that just barely work.”
“The closer you look, the longer the coastline becomes—in theory, forever.”
“Chaos is complexity all the way down, never pixelating, never terminating, never resolving.”
April 25, 2023
Munroe Fun
This is not just your typical math book, it's a hilarious and creative approach to learning math.
The author's sense of humor is simply infectious and will keep you entertained throughout the book. The book is packed with witty and insightful illustrations that make complex mathematical concepts easy to understand.
I particularly enjoyed how Orlin uses his quirky drawings to explain abstract mathematical concepts. He makes it seem effortless, and that's what makes the book so relatable and engaging. If you're a fan of Randall MunroeRandall Munroe's books, then you'll definitely enjoy Math with Bad Drawings - I found it particularly similar to Thing Explainer: Complicated Stuff in Simple Words
I highly recommend this book to anyone who wants to brush up on their math skills or just wants to enjoy a fun read. Whether you're a math whiz or a complete novice, this book has something for everyone.
Trust me, you won't be able to put it down once you start reading! A quick read too.
Overall, Math with Bad Drawings is a great book that's fun for all ages.
If you're looking for a lighthearted approach to learning math, then this book is definitely worth checking out!
4.6/5
This is not just your typical math book, it's a hilarious and creative approach to learning math.
The author's sense of humor is simply infectious and will keep you entertained throughout the book. The book is packed with witty and insightful illustrations that make complex mathematical concepts easy to understand.
I particularly enjoyed how Orlin uses his quirky drawings to explain abstract mathematical concepts. He makes it seem effortless, and that's what makes the book so relatable and engaging. If you're a fan of Randall MunroeRandall Munroe's books, then you'll definitely enjoy Math with Bad Drawings - I found it particularly similar to Thing Explainer: Complicated Stuff in Simple Words
I highly recommend this book to anyone who wants to brush up on their math skills or just wants to enjoy a fun read. Whether you're a math whiz or a complete novice, this book has something for everyone.
Trust me, you won't be able to put it down once you start reading! A quick read too.
Overall, Math with Bad Drawings is a great book that's fun for all ages.
If you're looking for a lighthearted approach to learning math, then this book is definitely worth checking out!
4.6/5
January 30, 2022
Written for the educated mass audience, this is an amusing journey through many real world situations and the underlying math behind them.
Covering everything from lotteries to elections to insurance and many things in between, you get an easy-to-read, well-illustrated reminder of how to interpret the world.
Most of what was in here I already knew though it is always good to have the underpinnings reinforced.
If there was one item that stood out to me it was the thought experiment - how could you guess the age of the universe by considering the brightness of the night sky? For other readers, different chapters will have different resonances.
Recommended for the math-curious - especially as applied to real world constructs. There's no calculus and precious little algebra - more proportions, probability and statistics so easy to grasp.
Covering everything from lotteries to elections to insurance and many things in between, you get an easy-to-read, well-illustrated reminder of how to interpret the world.
Most of what was in here I already knew though it is always good to have the underpinnings reinforced.
If there was one item that stood out to me it was the thought experiment - how could you guess the age of the universe by considering the brightness of the night sky? For other readers, different chapters will have different resonances.
Recommended for the math-curious - especially as applied to real world constructs. There's no calculus and precious little algebra - more proportions, probability and statistics so easy to grasp.
September 12, 2020
Some parts of this book were funny and occasionally even informative (I finally have some inkling of what a p-value is and what the deal with Bayes' theorem is), while other chapters were unfortunately a little dull, even with the drawings (I skipped the baseball chapter entirely). In conclusion: The book's alright.
June 4, 2023
At first I was a little confused who the target audience is for this book, since it seems to rely on you remembering some math from school, but is very much on the “pop math” side of things. The dependencies aren’t that strong, however, and the right way to think of it is a collection of fun examples and toy problems.
I really enjoyed the tone of the book, and it’s a very easy read.
I really enjoyed the tone of the book, and it’s a very easy read.
November 12, 2018
Fun book. Sometimes funny drawings, frequently helpful drawings. The book has taught me to use my underdeveloped and perhaps non-existent artistic talent to draw or sketch possible thought pictures to visualize math problems, solutions, and procedures.
October 24, 2025
That was enormous fun, and the bad drawings did add to the pleasure, but the writing is interesting enough to stand on its own. I'd just finished Here's Looking at Euclid which is a slightly different beast and not as enjoyable. MWBD covered a range of mathematical topics (and some which are mathy but you may not have realised before), and was a bit of a treat: sort of like Understanding Comics, but for math.
There seem to be two types of math books, and I like one and the other's a chore. There's the kind that assume we are interested in math, and then there's the kind that assume we want to learn how to do the math. No. I'm interested in Architecture, but I don't want to read books on structural engineering, I want to look at pictures of things and learn about different styles and such. This is that kind of math book: it knows we're interested in math, but aren't trying to become mathematicians. (I'm looking at you, The Grapes of Math, trying to explain sinusoidal functions to me! No, thank you).
(5* = amazing, terrific book, one of my all-time favourites, 4* = very good book, 3* = good book, but nothing to particularly rave about, 2* = disappointing book, and 1* = awful, just awful. As a statistician I know most books are 3s, but I am biased in my selection and end up mostly with 4s, thank goodness.)
There seem to be two types of math books, and I like one and the other's a chore. There's the kind that assume we are interested in math, and then there's the kind that assume we want to learn how to do the math. No. I'm interested in Architecture, but I don't want to read books on structural engineering, I want to look at pictures of things and learn about different styles and such. This is that kind of math book: it knows we're interested in math, but aren't trying to become mathematicians. (I'm looking at you, The Grapes of Math, trying to explain sinusoidal functions to me! No, thank you).
(5* = amazing, terrific book, one of my all-time favourites, 4* = very good book, 3* = good book, but nothing to particularly rave about, 2* = disappointing book, and 1* = awful, just awful. As a statistician I know most books are 3s, but I am biased in my selection and end up mostly with 4s, thank goodness.)
September 14, 2019
This is an entertaining and very readable walk through some interesting (and in some cases profound) areas of math. It begins with basic ideas from geometry (and its impact on architecture) and moves on to probability (with links to gambling, insurance, and the economy - including a fascinating discussion about the financial crash of 2008 and the dangers of correlated outcomes) and then statistics (including baseball/"Moneyball", p-hacking in scientific studies, school rankings, and stylometrics). The book concludes with an extremely useful discussion of how progressive tax brackets work (all taxpayers would benefit from understanding this) and a somewhat deflating discussion of the process by which the U.S. handles its elections (allocates electoral votes) - deflating because the author makes a great case for the drawbacks of our current system and the obstacles that keep states from fixing it. Each chapter is a digestible and standalone package of ideas, so you can dip in and out if you like. And as promised by the title, each one is amply illustrated with bad drawings. :)
February 18, 2020
My math professor son gave me this book for Christmas. He met the author and also thought I would enjoy it. I read a few scenarios every few days and I liked learning and reinforcing some math from past years with the stories and drawings. I read about the meaning of math, what a good versus great mathematician does, the basics of lottery play, and many other math concepts. I think my favorite chapter was early in the book, "The Square-Cube Fables." Here I could really relate to why big pans make better brownies!!!! Thanks to the author for making math fun for me and can't wait to share my new found understanding of some math when I connect with my son. He also does an amazing job of using diagrams and stories to talk about his research and work.
April 22, 2021
I sought this out because the title made me laugh, and 14 seconds of research made it sound entertaining and educational.
And it is. Both of those. My one nitpick is that it doesn't seem to cohese; there's no gestalt takeaway.
Still, it's a quick read about a lot of interesting topics. Would recommend.
P.S. For me, the most interesting (depressing) thing was the explanation for how much the 5%/2-standard-deviation threshold standard fails science, and the various reasons why many (MANY) more of published studies with significant results aren't reproducible. It's not 5% of them - false positive outnumber the 'real' positives.
And it is. Both of those. My one nitpick is that it doesn't seem to cohese; there's no gestalt takeaway.
Still, it's a quick read about a lot of interesting topics. Would recommend.
P.S. For me, the most interesting (depressing) thing was the explanation for how much the 5%/2-standard-deviation threshold standard fails science, and the various reasons why many (MANY) more of published studies with significant results aren't reproducible. It's not 5% of them - false positive outnumber the 'real' positives.
August 21, 2019
Look, I've been reading Ben's blog for years AND I teach high school math, so I'm a super biased reviewer. But I really enjoyed this and I think you (non-blog reading, high school math teaching person (or not?)) will enjoy it too. Nothing in this gets too deep into the weeds and the topics are broad-ranging enough that you get some insight into a lot of different areas where mathematics plays into our everyday lives. Plus there are bad drawings! Nothing says education like stick figures! (No, really.)
November 23, 2018
<3. So many instructional ideas from this, laughed out loud MANY times and just generally appreciated how lucid Ben makes these mathematical ideas.
June 26, 2019
Great Book. Fun, entertaining and informative.
December 6, 2019
Entertaining and educational. Highly recommended for the Probability and Statistics sections especially.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 247 reviews