Product Description: Our species, it appears, is hardwired to get things wrong in a staggering variety of ways. Why did recipients of a loan offer accept a higher interest rate when a pretty woman's face was printed on the flyer? Why did one poll on immigration find that the most despised foreigners were from a group that did not exist? Why does giving someone power make them more likely to chew with their mouth open and pick their nose? And why is your sister going out with that biker dude? In fact, our cognitive, logical, and romantic failures may be a fair price to pay for our extraordinary success as a species—they are the necessary cost of our adaptability...read more

Product Description: Who hasn't feared the math Minotaur in its labyrinth of abstractions? Now, in Out of the Labyrinth, Robert and Ellen Kaplan--the founders of The Math Circle, the popular learning program begun at Harvard in 1994--reveal the secrets behind their highly successful approach, leading readers out of the labyrinth and into the joyous embrace of mathematics...read more

A layperson's sojourn into the realm of probability evaluates statistical information for a wide variety of arenas, from poker and politics to weather and war, in an account that profiles numerous men and women who use the forces of probability in creative and revelatory ways. Reprint. 30,000 first printing.

The authors offer a thoughtful but entertaining journey into the heart of mathematics covering the great road from Pythagoras through Descartes, Leibniz, Cantor and others. (Science & Mathematics)

It is easy to be wary of mathematics - but as this book shows, drawing on science, literature and philosophy, its patterns are everywhere.

Product Description: A symbol for what is not there, an emptiness that increases any number it's added to, an inexhaustible and indispensable paradox. As we enter the year 2000, zero is once again making its presence felt. Nothing itself, it makes possible a myriad of calculations...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)