Skip to content
Menu
Lucky's Bookshelf
  • Browse
  • About
Lucky's Bookshelf

Book Review: How Not to Be Wrong by Jordan Ellenberg

Posted on November 1, 2019April 10, 2022
Topics: Mathematics, Nonfiction

Rating: 6.8/10.

Kind of like the Freakonomics of math, describes a variety of situations where math (mostly statistics) is useful in real life. Some of it is heuristics to avoid common fallacies, then a mix of random topics with tenuous connection to real life events, but the author doesn’t have much of a coherent point to make. Having studied a lot of math, most of the book was obvious or stuff I’ve seen before, so the book felt long and boring. A few ideas were new:

  • Applying coding theory to pick lottery numbers that guarantees a certain amount of winning, thereby decreasing variance (Ch 13).
  • Voter’s paradox: in elections with more than 2 choices, the majority opinion may be non-transitive, so A>B>C>A, and even ranked ballot may produce strange outcomes (Ch 16).

See more reviews on Amazon.com

Share this:

  • Facebook
  • LinkedIn
  • Reddit
  • Twitter

Most similar books:

Birth of a Theorem by Cedric Villani Maps of Meaning: The Architecture of Belief by Jordan B. Peterson 12 Rules for Life by Jordan B. Peterson Beyond Order: 12 More Rules for Life by Jordan B. Peterson

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Search

Enjoying these books?

Join our mailing list to receive weekly book reviews!

No spam, unsubscribe at any time

Check your inbox or spam folder to confirm your subscription.

Subjects

  • Meta (2)
  • Topics (227)
    • Arts and Music (12)
    • Business / Finance (25)
    • Canada (11)
    • China (17)
    • Current Events (8)
    • Data Science / ML (8)
    • Economics (11)
    • History (27)
    • Indigenous (9)
    • Linguistics (17)
    • Mathematics (5)
    • Medicine / Health (14)
    • Natural Sciences (20)
    • Philosophy (15)
    • Self-Help / Career (12)
    • Social Sciences (12)
    • Software Engineering (3)
    • Startups (12)
    • World (22)
  • Type (244)
    • Classics (18)
    • Nonfiction (162)
    • Novels / Fiction (29)
    • Textbooks (36)

Lucky’s Bookshelf is a participant of the Amazon Affiliates Program.

©2023 Lucky's Bookshelf | Powered by SuperbThemes & WordPress