A Mathematician Reads the Newspaper,   ISBN:9780385482547

Customer Rating: 

A very well written book, both interesting and instructive. Full of common sense, the author provides a plethora of reports commonly found in almost any newspaper, and highlights errors of facts, of inferences from bad assumptions, of statements supported by little or no evidence, of our poor grasp of probabilities of events, and of much else. An excellent read that will make us more critical in our reading of newspapers.

Customer Rating: 

Some interesting anecdotes don't save you from feeling a little cheated by this book which promises an entire mathematical world view but only delivers a few snippets.

Customer Rating: 

"Don't believe everything you read in the papers" - more or less sums up what John Allen Paulos says in this Mathematician's eye-view of the printed news. But I would take that caveat a step further - especially in the light of today's news media: "Don't believe what you hear or see either!" Mainstream media it seems, is way to easy to manipulate, subjugate and otherwise coerce into only telling stories which the powers-that-be want the people to hear. Who decides what is written about? Who decides what ends up on television? This book was written at a time when the Internet was not quite the ubiquitous source of information it is today. Heck, in 1995 - even to someone like me, the word "Amazon" still conjured up the image of a lush, steamy rainforest somewhere in South America. In this light, the book represents a sort of snapshot of history in the days when people still had a modicum of respect for print on pulp from (possibly) rainforest trees, delivered every morning to their doorsteps. Strangely enough, this book may even serve as an epitaph to the Newspaper itself.

The book is actually structured like a regular newspaper, however with insightful (if a little mathematical) criticism by the author himself. You won't need a degree to understand what he is saying, however you will require some basic (High School level) knowledge of Statistics and Probability. John A.Paulos is a Ph.D. in Mathematical Logic - and thus he frames most of his arguments in an Aristotelian fashion, avoiding the cryptographic symbolism which pollutes (or, clarifies?) modern day mathematics. In short, you can read this book without a pencil and paper. What makes the book delightful however, is the author's ever-present sense of humor (which I suspect is a little funnier to those with some mathematical background themselves!)

The only problem I have with this book is the subject matter itself. I do believe that eventually, newspapers will go the way of the dinosaur. And maybe in another 65 million years or so, sapient beings will wonder at how strangely attached our minds were to the woody pulp of Amazonian trees.

Customer Rating: 

I love this book. It gives concrete numbers to common sense -- and not-so-common sense. I particularly liked how Paulos uses examples from all areas of life. The political/voting section is especially interesting!

Customer Rating: 

This 1995 Paulos book is written in the form of a newspaper, with many short chapters not particularly related to each other, grouped into sections--politics, economics, and the nation; local, business, and social issues; lifestyle, spin, and soft news; science, medicine, and the environment; and food, book reviews, sports, obituaries. Each chapter is headed with an actual newspaper headline that bears some relation to the topic discussed.

The book has a few minor repetitions from Paulos' other works, but is mostly new material. It is entertainingly written and informative, providing useful information about how to critically analyze a wide variety of subjects, suitable for both readers and writers of newspapers and other forms of news reporting, including blogs.