Paulina Rowinska, "Mapmatics: How We Navigate the World Through Numbers" (Pan Macmillan, 2024)
How does a delivery driver distribute hundreds of packages in a single working day? Why does remote Alaska have such a large airport? Where should we look for elusive serial killers? The answers lie i...
19 Juni 202452min
David S. Richeson, "Tales of Impossibility: The 2000-Year Quest to Solve the Mathematical Problems of Antiquity" (Princeton UP, 2019)
David S. Richeson's book Tales of Impossibility: The 2000-Year Quest to Solve the Mathematical Problems of Antiquity (Princeton University Press, 2019) is the fascinating story of the 2000 year quest ...
28 Maj 202450min
Thomas A. Garrity, "All the Math You Missed (But Need to Know for Graduate School)" (Cambridge UP, 2021)
Graduate students in many programs besides mathematics will need to be familiar with the methods and results of a variety of mathematical topics. Just as importantly, these students will need to devel...
10 Maj 202446min
Kevin Lambert, "Symbols and Things: Material Mathematics in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries" (U Pittsburgh Press, 2021)
The stereotype of the solitary mathematician is widespread, but practicing users and producers of mathematics know well that our work depends heavily on our historical and contemporary fellow traveler...
15 Apr 20241h 16min
Ismar Volić, "Making Democracy Count: How Mathematics Improves Voting, Electoral Maps, and Representation" (Princeton UP, 2024)
What's the best way to determine what most voters want when multiple candidates are running? What's the fairest way to allocate legislative seats to different constituencies? What's the least distorte...
1 Feb 202439min
A Better Way to Buy Books
Bookshop.org is an online book retailer that donates more than 80% of its profits to independent bookstores. Launched in 2020, Bookshop.org has already raised more than $27,000,000. In this interview,...
12 Sep 202334min
Barbara Sattler, "The Concept of Motion in Ancient Greek Thought: Foundations in Logic, Method, and Mathematics" (Cambridge UP, 2020)
Barbara M. Sattler's book The Concept of Motion in Ancient Greek Thought: Foundations in Logic, Method, and Mathematics (Cambridge UP, 2020) examines the birth of the scientific understanding of motio...
28 Aug 20231h 10min
Lawrence Goldman, "Victorians and Numbers: Statistics and Society in Nineteenth Century Britain" (Oxford UP, 2022)
A defining feature of nineteenth-century Britain was its fascination with statistics. The processes that made Victorian society, including the growth of population, the development of industry and com...
25 Aug 20231h 32min
