100 Essential Things You Didn't Know You Didn't Know

Mathematics can reveal and illuminate things about the complex world we live in that can't be found any other way. In this informative and entertaining book, John D. Barrow takes the most perplexing of everyday phenomena--from the odds of winning the lottery and the method of determining batting averages to the shapes of roller coasters and the reasoning behind the fairest possible divorce settlements--and explains why things work the way they do. With elementary math and accompanying illustrations, he sheds light on the mysterious corners of the world we encounter every day. Have you ever considered why you always seem to 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? This clever little book has all the answers to these puzzling, everyday questions of existence that need not perplex us any more.--From publisher description.