Humble Pi: A Comedy of Maths Errors

· Penguin · Narrated by Matt Parker
4.7
34 reviews
Audiobook
9 hr 33 min
Unabridged
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About this audiobook

Penguin presents the audiobook edition of Humble Pi written and read by Matt Parker.

What makes a bridge wobble when it's not meant to? Billions of dollars mysteriously vanish into thin air? A building rock when its resonant frequency matches a gym class leaping to Snap's 1990 hit I've Got The Power? The answer is maths. Or, to be precise, what happens when maths goes wrong in the real world.

As Matt Parker shows us, our modern lives are built on maths: computer programmes, finance, engineering. And most of the time this maths works quietly behind the scenes, until ... it doesn't. Exploring and explaining a litany of glitches, near-misses and mishaps involving the internet, big data, elections, street signs, lotteries, the Roman empire and a hapless Olympic shooting team, Matt Parker shows us the bizarre ways maths trips us up, and what this reveals about its essential place in our world.

Mathematics doesn't have good 'people skills', but we would all be better off, he argues, if we saw it as a practical ally. This book shows how, by making maths our friend, we can learn from its pitfalls. It also contains puzzles, challenges, geometric socks, jokes about binary code and three deliberate mistakes. Getting it wrong has never been more fun.

Ratings and reviews

4.7
34 reviews
Katie Spencer
October 3, 2023
This book has entertained my whole family from ages 8 to 40. Accessible, entertaining and wonderfully read by the charismatic author Matt Parker. You might want to avoid if you're planning on flying anywhere soon though...
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James Walker
December 23, 2020
I decided to try audio books with this title, and I really enjoyed it. on top of being funny and informative, the way Matt Parker reads feels almost like a podcast - and I mean that in the best possible way. You get the feeling that he's speaking with passion and enjoyment (which makes sense since he also wrote the book) perhaps as if he were talking to you in a pub. What I'm trying to get at is that Matt has made everything here feel friendly and approachable with both his writing and his reading.
5 people found this review helpful
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Joaquín Marcher
November 6, 2019
I have the hard copy, but Matt's voice is just superb, I'm loving it!
11 people found this review helpful
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About the author

Originally a maths teacher from Australia, Matt Parker now lives in Godalming in a house full of almost every retro video-game console ever made. He is fluent in binary and could write your name in a sequence of noughts and ones in seconds. He loves doing maths and stand-up, often simultaneously. When he's not working as the Public Engagement in Mathematics Fellow at Queen Mary University of London, he's performing in sold-out live comedy shows, spreading his love of maths via TV and radio, or converting photographs into Excel spreadsheets. He is the author of Things to Make and Do in the Fourth Dimension.

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