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| Coincidences, Chaos, and All That Math Jazz: Making Light of Weighty Ideas | 
| Authors: Edward B. Burger, Michael Starbird
Publisher: W. W. Norton
Category: Book
List Price: $15.95
Buy New: $6.00
You Save: $9.95 (62%)
New (39) from $6.00
Avg. Customer Rating:  17 reviews
Sales Rank: 238522
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 304
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.6
Dimensions (in): 8 x 5.5 x 0.6
ISBN: 0393329313
Dewey Decimal Number: 510
EAN: 9780393329315
ASIN: 0393329313
Publication Date: October 30, 2006
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
"A profusely illustrated, bemusingly unorthodox introduction to math."—Booklist
A book for the eternally curious, Coincidences fuses a professor's understanding of the hidden mathematical skeleton of the universe with the sensibility of a stand-up comedian, making life's big questions accessible and compelling. Each chapter opens with a surprising insight—not a mathematic formula, but a common observation. From there, the authors leapfrog over math and anecdote toward profound ideas about nature, art, and music. Coincidences is a book for lovers of puzzles and posers of outlandish questions, lapsed math aficionados and the formula-phobic alike. 160 illustrations.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 12 more reviews...
 Coincidences,Chaos,and All That Math Jazz March 6, 2008
Arrived on time and perfect condition.It uses easy language for serious subject, entertaining and teatching.
 Pinwheel Tiling, Folded Dragons, And The Unknot February 21, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
Michael Starbird and Edward Burger have created a duality in this book. On one hand it is a masterpiece of clearly explained math for the non-technically inclined, on the other hand it is a concise summary of some of the most complex mathematical concepts in the contemporary world. The ability to explain extraordinarily complex subjects in clear, nontechnical terms and using interesting and often amusing examples is what truly sets this book apart from most any other math book.
I like math, and was a relatively good math student, but I never really understood many of the subtleties underlying advanced mathematical principles; rather, I just memorized them as a chore, and applied them. No more. This book has helped open my eyes to some of the mathematical world's underlying beauty and mystery.
The book ranges widely over numerous subjects, but the ones I found most interesting were the discussions of chaos theory, the aesthetics of the Golden Ratio (and Fibonacci numbers), and the peculiarities and curiosities of topology. Using examples that are deceptively simple, like paper folding ("Origami For The Origamically Challenged"), ancient Greek architecture and the related "Golden Rectangles" ("Their proportions are breathtaking to behold. Such a rectangle is the quintessence of rectangularity, the sine qua non of rectangleosity, the sexiest rectangle ever."), pineapples, and tavern puzzles, Starbird and Burger manage to simultaneously entertain and educate any audience, regardless of previous mathematical proclivities.
The authors have a great sense of fun, clearly love writing, teaching, and entertaining, and they are never above poking fun at themselves, as in this example from a discussion of the topology of knots: "A mathematical knot is simply a closed loop of string that may or may not be knotted. The simplest knot is a loop that contains no knot at all and is called the unknot. (The fact that the math community refers to the unknot as a knot is reason #73 why people tend to avoid socializing with mathematicians.)"
I love this book, and found eminently readable, enjoyable, and educational. As an aside, I have previously watched (and reviewed) Dr. Starbird's "Meaning From Data: Statistics Made Clear" on DVD, and highly endorse that as well. Clearly Starbird and Burger are talented mathematicians, brilliant minds, and great teachers: I wish I had had math teachers like them. I can't recommend this book highly enough.
Highly Thought Provoking Way to Look at Math January 27, 2008
This book was a pleasure to read and would engage the math lover and hater alike. The authors did an outstanding job of discussing a number of different topics, comparing and contrasting some, with a building theme throughout the book. The concepts were all interesting and built on previous topics the authors presented. This was a fun read and may be dismissed by more hardcore mathematicians as "pop-math" but I recommend it to those interested in seeing how math applies to the world around us (students especially). I've discussed many of the topics with friends and co-workers and highly recommend this book to anyone who wants to see complex mathematics applied in everyday life.
What they said ... making light of weight ideas! June 2, 2007
6 out of 6 found this review helpful
What a wonderful motto for learning! To understand deep things simply, investigate simple things deeply. In "Coincidences, Chaos and All That Math Jazz", Burger and Starbird take that motto to heart and bless their readers with an entertaining, irreverent, always amusing yet eminently readable and completely understandable exploration of some of the frontiers of mathematics.
In the opening chapters, real-life numbers - the roulette wheel, nature vs nurture studies of twin's characteristics, e-mail stock picking scam and spam artists, air safety standards, HIV testing and the puzzle of coincident birth dates at a party - are used to put meat onto the bones of the familiar saying "lies, damned lies and statistics" and to introduce the modern concept of mathematical chaos.
A simple straightforward chapter on the nature of numbers that almost effortlessly leads us into a basic understanding of much more complex topics such as cryptography, the Goldbach and the Twin Prime conjectures closes with the interesting comment, "... our instinctive desire to wonder about the world of numbers has paid enormous practical dividends in the past - abstract ideas about primes and factoring unexpectedly led to public key cryptography and security in Internet commerce. Somehow human curiosity about numbers from ancient times to the present seems to be in synchronicity with the universe."
Counting spirals on pineapples and sunflowers and the simple act of folding and unfolding a strip of paper is used as a springboard to take the reader, who is now thoroughly engrossed in the enjoyable style of the book, to a basic understanding of the Fibonacci sequence, the golden ratio, chaos and fractals.
But for me personally, the most interesting section was the last one. Burger and Starbird used extremely simple notions of counting, matching and a hotel with an infinite number of rooms to guide the unsuspecting reader to a brilliant "aha" moment - a concise, clear understanding of Cantor's ideas regarding the cardinality of infinity, the completely counterintuitive idea that some infinities are bigger than others.
Mathematics is fun and beautiful and this wonderful little book will show even the most math-phobic reader why! Highly recommended.
Paul Weiss
This book = Great Fun + Great Insight! February 6, 2007
10 out of 10 found this review helpful
Who says math is boring or irrelevant?
Certainly not someone who's read this book and seen the many ways math serves as the skeleton key to life and the mysteries of the universe itself!
At the beginning of each chapter the authors skillfully say what they're going to prove in simple English and then by the end of the chapter end up proving it not only in English but math as well.
Starting simply with the subject of coincidences, the authors show how and why even in very small groups you may share a birthday with someone else. From coincidences the authors discuss choas, the reverse of coincidence where small differences ultimately make for...well...even bigger differences. Why is this so? They tell you.
Later they tackle cryptography and show how the patterns of running a lottery are in the end very similar to the patterns that govern the forms life takes. Amazingly, in twenty pages they manage to cover the same ground covered in the book "The Golden Ratio" (which by the way, is also very, good book but just a longer discussion).
Moving from the mysteries of life to the mysteries of the universe, the authors ACTUALLY MAKE YOU UNDERSTAND what the 4th dimension would be like. In this way, they manage through a brief treatment what the longer work "Flatterland" by Ian Stewart (also, by the way, a very good book, just longer) manages to do.
Finally, they plum that ultimate mystery of mathematics and creation -- infinity. Here again, they also manage in a brief treatment that which is also dealt with in a longer book, "Zero" by Charles Seife (again, also a very, good book but again just longer).
As both an introductory work to all the other books cited in this review or merely as a book read on its own, this book delivers both great fun and great insight.
Buy it now!
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