Hey Simon, whatcha reading? — Ben Orlin, Math with Bad Drawings
Hey Simon, whatcha reading?
I’ve just finished Math with Bad Drawings by Ben Orlin.
Ben Orlin? Who’s he?
At the time of writing this book (it was published in 2018), he was a high school teacher in California, having previously also taught in the UK. Today it seems like he’s made writing about maths his day-job, in both book and blog form.
What’s it about?
Math with Bad Drawings is pretty much what it says on the tin: an exploration of various mathematical topics, accompanied by drawings that are not of a high artistic standard. It covers five broad topics: thinking like a mathematician, geometry, probability, statistics, and step changes (discontinuous change rather than adjusting choreography). Within these topics, Orlin explores areas as diverse as winning the lottery, how marginal tax bands work, and the replication crisis in psychology.
What do you think of it?
I loved it! Having spent a significant period of time using maths I thought it might be a bit simple, but for me it captured not only what makes maths important, but also what makes it fun. The education system is predicated on making mathematics as routine as possible: churning out answers to questions where the answer is known in advance. The things is, maths is more about how you get to the answer than the answer itself. It is a form of creativity within constraints, where the constraints themselves are also up for debate:
Creativity is what happens when a mind encounters an obstacle. It’s the human process of finding a way through, over, around, or beneath. No obstacle, no creativity.
But mathematics takes this concept one step further. In math, we don’t just follow rules. We invent them. We tweak them. We propose a possible constraint, play out its logical consequences, and then, if that way leads to oblivion — or worse, to boredom — we seek a new and more fruitful path.
Orlin’s section on statistics was especially useful. In the Christian sphere there can be a wariness around attempts to quantify things, a sentiment that I am sympathetic to as statistics can often feel like an impersonal shortcut that removes hearing people’s stories. But Orlin provides an alternative: that whilst they are a simplification and compression of reality, by doing this they make reality possible to grasp. By understanding how things like the mean or standard deviation or correlation are formed from a data set, we will be able to better understand if they are being used responsibly.
Would you recommend it?
A qualified yes. I am not surprised that I enjoyed this book — anyone who has spent some time with me will know that I enjoy pursing a silly idea to its logical conclusion. However, having completed a physics degree I am aware that I am significantly more mathematically literate than your average person! So I would heartily recommend this book as a good introduction to some mathematical ideas, with the proviso that because I was familiar with quite a few of them already it might not be as easy to understand as I think!
If you’re interested, I would definitely recommend following Ben on Twitter and/or checking out his blog, where this book started life. His next book (on calculus, joy of joys!) is definitely on my wish list.
Thanks for reading. Check out my Twitter for more twittering.