100 Essential Things You Didn't Know You Didn't Know Math Explains Your World

Have you ever considered why you always get stuck in the longest line? Why two's company but three's a crowd? Or why there are six degrees of separation instead of seven? In this hugely informative and endlessly entertaining book, John D. Barrow takes the most baffling of everyday phenomena and'”with simple math, lucid explanations, and illustrations'”explains why they work the way they do. His witty, crystal-clear answers shed light on the dark and shadowy corners of the physical world we all think we understand so well.

JOHN D. BARROW is a professor of mathematical sciences and director of the Millennium Mathematics Project at Cambridge University. A Fellow of the Royal Society, he is the author of The Book of Nothing, The Constants of Nature, and the award-winning play Infinities. In 2008, he was awarded The Royal Society's Faraday Prize for the communication of science. He lives in Cambridge, England.