A Good Introduction and a Light Read

“Innumeracy” is at heart a book on the use, misuse, and abuse of statistics and probability that are made by a (unfortunately) large number of people (this reader included). Paulos has managed to make a quick read that is packed with facts and examples of numerical illiteracy.

It would be easy to call this book a sort of Malcolm Gladwell-lite (though it was written well before Gladwell’s entering into the spotlight). It doesn’t even come near 200 pages (even with the book’s large font) and the insights it describes are not original. However, Paulos does a great job bringing several concepts together in a format that is well suited for the general (and usually math-phobic) audience.

On the downside, if you are already familiar with the Gambler’s Fallacy, Bayesian Theory, and how to calculate the combinations of dice rolls or card hands, you might find the book a little too elementary. I’d recommend giving it a quick read anyway: the book is short enough and bound to have a couple things you didn’t know (Von Neumann’s coin flip trick was a favorite one for me).

The book desperately needs to have drawings and diagrams to illustrate the points it makes. Paulos doesn’t waste much ink with needless fluff. But the constant presentation of text-only descriptions of number and probability that make for a dry, even sometimes tedious, read. (His next book, “Beyond Innumeracy”, is reportedly better although I haven’t personally read it yet.) And it’s hard to remember in what chapter or on what page you read a particular factoid or anecdote. An index or a detailed table of contents with sections listed would have been helpful.

All in all, I would recommend John Allen Paulos’s “Innumeracy” as a fun and informative read to anyone, whether they count mathematics as one of their interests or not. Four out of five stars.

Practical, insightful, and delightful. (5 out of 5 stars.)

Axelrod’s “The Evolution of Cooperation” delivers ideas that are at the same time obvious but surprisingly insightful to human nature. It is a small and readable book which every chapter left me thinking, “Of course, why didn’t I think of it like that?”

The core of the book focuses on a computer simulation tournament of the Prisoner’s Dilemma. The Prisoner’s Dilemma is a simple game as follows: two convicts have been arrested and are interrogated separately. If they both remain silent, they only get three (or some other nominal amount) years of prison. But if one snitches on the other, he goes free and the other serves ten years. This gives both of them the incentive to snitch, however if they both end up snitching on each other, then they both get life sentences.
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Interesting, but ultimately disappointing and unconvincing. (2 out of 5 stars)

Noe avoids mystical explanations and the supernatural. He doesn’t put forth souls or the vague appeals to quantum mechanics that are the hallmarks of new age quackery. And while he skates close, he doesn’t present consciousness as just merely a postmodern social construction. “Out of Our Heads” is grounded in this sense.

Consciousness, Noe states, is not a something that takes place in the brain like digestion takes place in the stomach. And it is more than just the sum of its parts, just as a performing dancer is more than just muscles. But as poetic as Noe gets, his arguments are full of discrepancies and far from compelling. His biggest mistake is that you can easily replace his use of the words “environment” or “body” with “the brain’s sensory input” and all his anecdotes and scientific appeals are just as valid and consistent. (more…)