Math Nonfiction Review: Humble Pi

Summary: Surprisingly light, fun, and entertaining!

I enjoyed math in school, but when it comes to nonfiction reading, I’m definitely a life sciences kind of reader. Several other members of my book club shared my doubts about whether this book on the way math errors can significantly impact our lives would be a fun read. Fortunately, the author’s sense of humor and the interesting stories he found to tell won us all over.

I had already heard perhaps as many as a third of the stories in this book (Y2K panic, Tacoma narrows bridge, etc). Several of these stories were early in the book and I was immediately impressed by the author’s retellings. They were told in a funny and unique enough way that even the stories I knew felt fresh. Not everyone in my book club enjoyed every section – some people found the coverage of many stories related to similar errors or the section focusing on computers a bit dry. I can’t say that I had that problem. I thought the whole thing was great. The author came up with some truly incredible stories, such as the flooding of an entire salt mine and the sinking of numerous boats because of a triangulation error. He also did a great job timing the punch line of each story so I was often surprised into laughter as a story progressed. I thought the explanations of the math were clear, although most stories relied on concepts I was familiar with, so take that with a grain of salt.

My only complaint with this book is that I didn’t feel like I learned much. It was light and fun, but the math concepts were fairly basic. It was entertaining and kind of cool that errors in basic math can lead to huge real-world consequences. I should note that a few of the stories do cover cases where people died as a result of these mistakes. The author did a good job shifting tone into and out of these sections. It didn’t feel like he took the tragedies too lightly, but they also didn’t pull down the tone of the whole book. Overall, while I might like something slightly more technical when reading with my science nonfiction book club, this was a surprisingly fun read.

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