Math for Decision-Making Term Paper

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Math to Answer Everyday Imponderables by Clint Brookhart is a math book, which can be described as interesting, engaging and yet too simplistic. While it covers some truly amazing imponderables, there are some serious errors in the book which later editions are likely to address and rectify. But any first time reader is likely to try the formulas given in the book to see if they can actually predict how tall a child would grow, or to determine how far is the horizon. These are some of the areas covered with appropriate formulas, which might help readers figure out how does the universe operate.

The interesting thing is that most of us would find it light reading despite the fact that it is all about mathematics, the most boring and driest of subjects otherwise. The book discusses every imponderable imaginable right from the mundane ones such as lottery odds, predicting a child's height, baseball arithmetic, to more complex ones including Windchill equivalent temperature, carbon dating, Newton's relativity theory and synchronous satellites.

The book begins with calculation of distance between one particular point and the horizon. Brookhart gives a simple geometric formula to predict the approximate distance. A casual look at these formulas in the beginning of the book prepares the reader for what comes later. However the very simple tone of the book is what arouses skepticism in readers. Some have even pointed out the errors they found in the book. For example the rejection of Goldbach's well-known assumption that "no one has ever found a number greater than 2 that could not be expressed as the sum of two prime numbers" is one such error. The book may prove handy in some cases but I feel that most readers would use it more for fun than any serious calculations.

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However the writer must be commended for making an attempt to address the innumeracy factor.

A liked this book to certain extent. At least it improves one's problem solving skills by making them think about imponderables. Secondly, it also aids one's understanding of mathematical concepts and sheds light on their useful application in our everyday lives. Readers can appreciate the effort made by Clint Brookhart if they know why it was written in the first place?

Somewhere in the ate 1980s, it was found that general American public knew very little about mathematics and most found it too confusing to be useful. J.A. Paulos's termed this lack of mathematical knowledge as innumeracy. It was the same thing as illiteracy only it was limited to the area of mathematics. Since then many attempts have been made to improve numeracy among American public by making them more aware of the usefulness of mathematics in their lives. Go Figure is one example of such an attempt. Despite its flaws, I found the book interesting because it makes you take notice of things that you rarely think about, if ever.

It helped me improve my problem solving skills but exactly through the formulas that it offered but by reaching the conclusion that mathematics could indeed be used to make sense of our universe. True, I am not interested in synchronized satellites, but then it doesn't hurt to find out how the phone lines capacity is calculated or why Shroud of Turin cannot date back to earlier than 1260 A.D. I have noticed that when a book makes you think about seemingly mundane yet largely neglected things; it improves one problem solving skills.….....

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