Ebook: 100 essential things you didn't know you didn't know: math explains your world

Two's company, three's a crowd -- It's a small world after all -- Monkey business -- Independence day -- Rugby and relativity -- Wagons roll -- A sense of proportion -- Why does the other queue always move faster? -- Pylon of the month -- A sense of balance -- Bridging that gap -- On the cards -- Tally ho -- Relationships -- Racing certainties -- High jumping -- Superficiality -- VAT in eternity -- Living in a simulation -- Emergence -- How to push a car -- Positive feedback -- The drunkard's walk -- Faking it -- The flaw of averages -- The origami of the universe -- Easy and hard problems -- Is this a record? -- A do-it-yourself lottery -- I do not believe it! -- Flash fires -- The secretary problem -- Fair divorce settlements: the win-win solution -- Many happy returns -- Tilting at windmills -- Verbal conjuring -- Financial investment with time travellers -- A thought for your pennies -- Breaking the law of averages -- How long are things likely to survive? - A president who preferred the triangle to the pentagon -- Secret codes in your pocket -- I've got a terrible memory for names -- Calculus makes you live longer -- Getting in a flap -- Your number's up -- Double your money -- Some reflections on faces -- The most infamous mathematician -- Roller coasters and motorway junctions --;Mathematics can reveal and illuminate things about the complex world we live in that can't be found any other way. In this informative and entertaining book, John D. Barrow takes the most perplexing of everyday phenomena--from the odds of winning the lottery and the method of determining batting averages to the shapes of roller coasters and the reasoning behind the fairest possible divorce settlements--and explains why things work the way they do. With elementary math and accompanying illustrations, he sheds light on the mysterious corners of the world we encounter every day. Have you ever considered why you always seem to get stuck in the longest line? Why two's company but three's a crowd? Or why there are six degrees of separation instead of seven? This clever little book has all the answers to these puzzling, everyday questions of existence that need not perplex us any more.--From publisher description.