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Is that a big number? / Andrew C. A. Elliott.
- Format:
- Book
- Author/Creator:
- Elliott, Andrew C. A., author.
- Language:
- English
- Subjects (All):
- Mathematics--Popular works.
- Mathematics.
- Genre:
- Popular works.
- Physical Description:
- x, 338 pages : illustrations (some color) ; 25 cm
- Edition:
- First edition.
- Place of Publication:
- Oxford ; New York, NY : Oxford University Press, 2018.
- Summary:
- Impressive statistics are thrown at us every day - the cost of health care; the size of an earthquake; the distance to the nearest star; the number of giraffes in the world. We know all these numbers are important - some more than others - and it's vaguely unsettling when we don't really have a clear sense of how remarkable or how ordinary they are. How do we work out what these figures actually mean? Are they significant, should we be worried, or excited, or impressed? How big is big, how small is small? With this entertaining and engaging book, help is at hand. Andrew Elliott gives us the tips and tools to make sense of numbers, to get a sense of proportion, to decipher what matters. It is a celebration of a numerate way of understanding the world. It shows how number skills help us to understand the everyday world close at hand, and how the same skills can be stretched to demystify the bigger numbers that we find in the wider contexts of science, politics, and the universe.Entertaining, full of practical examples, and memorable concepts, Is That A Big Number? renews our relationship with figures. If numbers are the musical notes with which the symphony of the universe is written, and you're struggling to hear the tune, then this is the book to get you humming again.-- publisher's website.
- Contents:
- Counting numbers
- Measuring up
- Intermission
- The numbers of science
- Numbers in public life.
- Notes:
- Includes bibliographical references, webology and index.
- Local Notes:
- Acquired for the Penn Libraries with assistance from the James Hosmer Penniman Book Fund.
- ISBN:
- 0198821220
- 9780198821229
- OCLC:
- 1023090449
- Publisher Number:
- 99977931665
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