I’m very proud to say that an article I wrote about statistics and the human brain has made its way into The Best Writing on Mathematics 2017 from Princeton University Press.
It’s a piece I did for the Royal Statistical Society’s magazine Significance about how the human brain judges probability – specifically whether or not we’re programmed to use a method called Bayesian inference. Fair enough, most people don’t get that excited about Bayesian inference, but trust me, those who do get excited about it, get really excited about it.
And as the blurb on the back of the book says, you don’t need to be a mathematician to enjoy it! Other articles in the book look at the search for incomprehensibly large prime numbers, how finger-counting opens children’s minds to mathematical concepts, and how the Renaissance painter Luca Pacioli managed to convincingly depict a twenty-six-sided solid. If that sounds like it ought to be in the Christmas stocking of someone you know, you can get it here and here.
And as the blurb on the back of the book says, you don’t need to be a mathematician to enjoy it! Other articles in the book look at the search for incomprehensibly large prime numbers, how finger-counting opens children’s minds to mathematical concepts, and how the Renaissance painter Luca Pacioli managed to convincingly depict a twenty-six-sided solid. If that sounds like it ought to be in the Christmas stocking of someone you know, you can get it here and here.