by Brian Hayes
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Product Description
An Award-Winning Essayist Plies His Craft
Brian Hayes is one of the most accomplished essayists active today—a claim supported not only by his prolific and continuing high-quality output but also by such honors as the National Magazine Award for his commemorative Y2K essay titled “Clock of Ages,” published in the November/December 1999 issue of The Sciences magazine. (The also-rans that year included Tom Wolfe, Verlyn Klinkenborg, and Oliver Sacks.) Hayes’s work in this genre has also appeared in such anthologies as The Best American Magazine Writing, The Best American Science and Nature Writing, and The Norton Reader. Here he offers us a selection of his most memorable and accessible pieces—including “Clock of Ages”—embellishing them with an overall, scene-setting preface, reconfigured illustrations, and a refreshingly self-critical “Afterthoughts” section appended to each essay.
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Average Customer Review:
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
Math Applied To Some Everyday Things, 2008-10-21
This delightful book takes a playful look at some interesting and unusual ways that math can be applied. Much more than puzzles, each of the 12 chapters examine a particular everyday object or action in ways that are easy to understand and give more depth to some of the discoveries made along the way. An easy and enjoyable read for the curious of all ages. Complemented by an extensive section for those who want to do a deeper dive on the magic and mystery of how math can explain how some everyday things work.
7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
Excellent Book on Perspective and Framing Problems, 2008-08-16
This is an excellent collection of thought-provoking essays related to mathematics. Brian Hayes covers a wide array of topics through the lens of mathematics in an engaging, thought-provoking and entertaining manner.
The essays contained in this book, addressing topics such as the genetic code, the Continental Divide and randomness, among other topics, vary widely in subject matter, but share a common underlying theme. Specifically, each of these essays asks the reader to examine "things," such as the genetic code, from a unique perspective. Moreover, Hayes pulls the reader through a thoughtful and insightful problem framing approach that has broad applications across many disciplines.
I found the content and style across each essay to be first-rate. This book teaches the reader many things...most importantly, I feel it offers rare insight into the power of shifting perspective and framing problems.
3 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
Group Theory made simple, 2008-07-09
As David Hilbert had wanted to make Math easy for any person on the street to understand, this book has surely achieved the goal. In the chapter on Group Theroy in the Bedroom, the author explained Klein 4-Group (I,P,R,Y) using mattress flipping, and Cyclic 4-Group by rotating 4 car tyres. One needs not have to go through the complicated Group jargons to appreciate its usefulness in daily life.
17 of 18 people found the following review helpful:
Extremely Interesting Even for Math-a-phobics, 2008-04-30
If you liked the book "Freakonomics: a rogue economist explores the hidden side of everything" (which I loved), there is a good chance you will like this one too. The author may have screwed-up giving it the title he did and by adding "and Other Mathematical Diversions", as it may put off or scare off a lot of people who would find it enjoyable. One would be hard pressed to find a mathematical equation anywhere in the book.
Take for instance the first chapter, "Clock of Ages", on the astronomical clock located in the Strasbourg Cathedral, in the city of Strasbourg, Alsace. Though the current version of the clock dates from 1843, not only was it designed to be Y2K compliant, it is also Y10K functional, designed to directly display the current year up to 9999 and the only revision needed to make it correct for subsequent years would be to paint the number "1" to the left of the display. It will continue to display such events as the correct date for Easter even in the year 19999 (Easter falls on April 3rd in 11842). Though solely a mechanical device, the gears of the clock were designed to be accurate to an error of less than one second per century. There is a gear in the clock that turns only once every 2,500 years and the celestial sphere out in front of the clock will complete one full precessional cycle after the passage of 25,806 years.
After his discussion of the beauty of the design of this clock, the author then takes up a philosophical discussion of time, asking if anyone will still care what date Easter will be in 11842, or even if we will still be counting in years of the Common Era.
The second chapter, "Follow the Money", demonstrates how through even an entirely random process, wealth tends to become concentrated in the hands of a few people, even in a fair system.
The remaining chapters are similarly varied and all are interesting.
A great book with a wide variety of interesting subjects and an engaging, erudite writing style.
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