Science and Inquiry discussion

For July 2023, we will be reading Shape: The Hidden Geometry of Information, Biology, Strategy, Democracy, and Everything Else by Jordan Ellenberg.

Please use this thread to post questions, comments, and reviews, at any time.

I really loved the Chapter, "How Many Holes Does a Straw Have?" Has anybody watched the college kids arguing about it on Snapchat? I'm gonna level with you, I'm not 100% sure what Snapchat even is so I can't comment on that. But I do have a new appreciation for holes and I can now envision the hole that is inside a blown up balloon.

I also really liked this chapter. I'm definitely going to ask my students what they think of this. Bringing the analogy to jeans was fun too.

I truly enjoyed the book Shape: The Hidden Geometry of Information, Biology, Strategy, Democracy, and Everything Else by Jordan Ellenberg. Here is a book that discusses politics, eigenvectors, Poincare, neural networks, and Euclid! Here is my review.

I'm having some trouble with this book. The first few chapters seem to be primarily a paean to and history of geometry, which I found rather boring. Also, a few times I had so much trouble following what he was saying that I honestly asked myself, is this English? However, I liked the section on programming computers to play games like chess and go, and I'm looking forward to the discussion of gerrymandering.

I get it Betsy, I slogged my way through a couple sections I'm not sure were written in English. Then I decided it was worth using an Audible credit so I am now listening and reading which helps. The author narrates his own book so his sense of humor comes through. On the audible version, he actually plays his rendition of space farts for you.

I finished this book. There were a few sections that I found really interesting and some that I was really bored by and some that I just didn't get. So ... three stars. Here is my review.

I just read your review Betsy and I'm glad I'm not the only one who was completely lost on eigenvalues. In fact, the only thing I can say about it, even after having read that chapter just a few days ago, is that eigenvalue is a word and presumably it has a definition. :-P I'm glad David enjoyed that chapter.

I just have to finish the last chapter and then I will be finished with this book and I will consider a major accomplishment!

I listened to the audiobook and was lost after the discussion about jeans. I decided that it was not written for me. I love math, but some of the technical discussions were beyond me.