Ross A. Baker reviewed How Not to Be Wrong by Jordan Ellenberg
Fun for an old math minor, but will it stick?
4 stars
I got well into this book on my annual beach trip last year. My son took an interest, so I lent it to him, and didn't get it back for a year. I couldn't remember where I'd left off, so I started from the beginning. The fallacies covered all seemed familiar, but all of the anecdotes felt novel. Surely I'd eventually read beyond where I left off and it would all be fresh? I never got to that point.
I was a math minor. I know enough to keep pace with the material, yet it never challenged me with notation better learned by the math majors. Maybe if it either broke more ground or got deeper into the formulae, I'd remember more of it next year. That said, I enjoyed the author's humor, and it's useful to remind ourselves of the common fallacies.
Ellenberg veers into political themes, particularly toward …
I got well into this book on my annual beach trip last year. My son took an interest, so I lent it to him, and didn't get it back for a year. I couldn't remember where I'd left off, so I started from the beginning. The fallacies covered all seemed familiar, but all of the anecdotes felt novel. Surely I'd eventually read beyond where I left off and it would all be fresh? I never got to that point.
I was a math minor. I know enough to keep pace with the material, yet it never challenged me with notation better learned by the math majors. Maybe if it either broke more ground or got deeper into the formulae, I'd remember more of it next year. That said, I enjoyed the author's humor, and it's useful to remind ourselves of the common fallacies.
Ellenberg veers into political themes, particularly toward the end. I suspect his casual mention of Gödel's Loophole near the end was less weighty in 2014 than in 2024.
