How Not to Be Wrong

The Power of Mathematical Thinking

Jordan Ellenberg | 4.13 | 14,955 ratings and reviews

Recommended by Bill Gates, Auston Bunsen, Nick Ganju, and 3 others. See all reviews

Ranked #3 in Math, Ranked #8 in Econometrics — see more rankings.

The Freakonomics of math—a math-world superstar unveils the hidden beauty and logic of the world and puts its power in our hands

The math we learn in school can seem like a dull set of rules, laid down by the ancients and not to be questioned. In How Not to Be Wrong, Jordan Ellenberg shows us how terribly limiting this view is: Math isn’t confined to abstract incidents that never occur in real life, but rather touches everything we do—the whole world is shot through with it.

Math allows us to see the hidden structures underneath the messy and chaotic surface of our world. It’s a science of not being wrong, hammered out by centuries of hard work and argument. Armed with the tools of mathematics, we can see through to the true meaning of information we take for granted: How early should you get to the airport? What does “public opinion” really represent? Why do tall parents have shorter children? Who really won Florida in 2000? And how likely are you, really, to develop cancer?

How Not to Be Wrong presents the surprising revelations behind all of these questions and many more, using the mathematician’s method of analyzing life and exposing the hard-won insights of the academic community to the layman—minus the jargon. Ellenberg chases mathematical threads through a vast range of time and space, from the everyday to the cosmic, encountering, among other things, baseball, Reaganomics, daring lottery schemes, Voltaire, the replicability crisis in psychology, Italian Renaissance painting, artificial languages, the development of non-Euclidean geometry, the coming obesity apocalypse, Antonin Scalia’s views on crime and punishment, the psychology of slime molds, what Facebook can and can’t figure out about you, and the existence of God.

Ellenberg pulls from history as well as from the latest theoretical developments to provide those not trained in math with the knowledge they need. Math, as Ellenberg says, is “an atomic-powered prosthesis that you attach to your common sense, vastly multiplying its reach and strength.” With the tools of mathematics in hand, you can understand the world in a deeper, more meaningful way. How Not to Be Wrong will show you how. less

Buy on Amazon

Reviews and Recommendations

We've comprehensively compiled reviews of How Not to Be Wrong from the world's leading experts.

Bill Gates CEO/MicrosoftThe writing is funny, smooth, and accessible -- not what you might expect from a book about math. What Ellenberg has written is ultimately a love letter to math. If the stories he tells add up to a larger lesson, it’s that 'to do mathematics is to be, at once, touched by fire and bound by reason' -- and that there are ways in which we’re all doing math, all the time. (Source)

Auston Bunsen I’ve got a few, one book that really impacted me early on as someone coming from a middle-class family was “Rich dad, Poor dad”. Since then I’ve read many books but one that really stands out is “How not to be wrong” by Jordan Ellenberg which really reignited my appetite & appreciation for math. (Source)

Nick Ganju Written for an audience of people who have historically been intimidated by math [...] and introduces things in a very simple way, and then works up to more complex concepts. (Source)

Rankings by Category

How Not to Be Wrong is ranked in the following categories:

#88 in Behavioral Economics
#32 in Critical Thinking
#75 in Data Science
#64 in Decision Making
#8 in Doctor
#74 in Linkedin
#41 in Logic
#39 in Logical Reasoning
#24 in Pregnancy
#29 in Probability
#75 in Problem Solving
#34 in STEM
#54 in Science and Math
#21 in Statistics
#50 in Thinking

Similar Books

If you like How Not to Be Wrong, check out these similar top-rated books:

Learn: What makes Shortform summaries the best in the world?

Learn More