Humble Pi
A Comedy of Maths Errors
by Matt Parker · first published 2019
50% recommend44% neutral6% critical
Why HN recommends it
Covers real-world maths and software errors, many involving spreadsheets and engineering failures. Fun and accessible for anyone curious about how such mistakes happen.
Summarised by Claude from recommending comments
The book-length answer to anyone who ever put their hand up in math class and asked, "When am I ever going to use this in the real world?" "Fun, informative, and relentlessly entertaining, Humble Pi is a charming and very readable guide to some of humanity's all-time greatest miscalculations--that also gives you permission to feel a little better about some of your own mistakes." --Ryan North, author of How to Invent Everything Our whole world is built on math, from the code running a website to the equations enabling the design of skyscrapers and bridges. Most of the time this math work
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…The Madness of Crowds by Douglas Murray • Consciousness by Annaka Harris • More From Less by Andrew McAffee • The School of Life: An Emotional Education • Perfect Sound Whatever by James Acaster • Humble Pi by Matt Parker • The Last Pirate of New York by Rich Cohen
on “Ask HN: Favorite Nonfiction Books of 2019?” ↗For broadening his view, and sparking some fun and joy of maths, try "Humble Pi" by Matt Parker: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/39074550-humble-pi
on “Ask HN: Recommend a maths book for a teenager?” ↗If this kind of thing amuses you, check out the book Humble Pi by Matt Parker. Its a collection of stories about maths errors. Lo and behold, most of them happen in Excel.
on “Scientists rename human genes to stop MS Excel from misreading them as dates” ↗Matt Parker's 'Humble Pi' book is also well worth a read: https://mathsgear.co.uk/products/humble-pi-signed-paperback
on “Excel warriors who save governments and companies from spreadsheet errors” ↗If anyone is interested in reading about Excel related disasters then I recommend Matt Parker's intersting and entertaining 'Humble Pi' book.
on “Excel Never Dies” ↗Thanks for the recommendation. A lighter read that includes this kind of errors is Humble Pi: A Comedy of Maths Errors by Matt Parker.
on “The Patriot Missile Failure (2000)” ↗"When Machine Learning Fails" reminds me a lot to Matt Parker's "Humble Pi"[1]to me [1]:https://www.amazon.com/Humble-Pi-Comedy-Maths-Errors/dp/0241...
Matt Parker of Youtube fame also wrote a book called Humble Pi: When Math Goes Wrong in the Real World which covers several post-mortems from the engineering space. I found it interesting that he compared and contrasted the airline industry where failures are seen…
on “Missing radioactive capsule found in WA outback after frantic search” ↗A similar case is also described in Humble Pi: When Math Goes Wrong in the Real World by Matt Parker, which I'd recommend. However, in that case it was profitable to buy _all_ lottery numbers. Which is a massive logistic operation.
on “Michigan couple spotted a lucrative lottery loophole” ↗Matt Parker's book Humble Pi is full of math/programming errors like this.
on “Senate passes bill to decrease grid digitization, move toward manual control” ↗Definitely recommend 'Humble Pi'. Funny as well as informative.
on “Missing Covid-19 test data was caused by the ill-thought-out use of Excel” ↗…using an 8-digit binary number, and when that number reaches 11111111 it rolls over to 00000000. Any trains which bring the count back to exactly zero move around undetected, as phantom trains. From: "Humble Pi: A comedy of maths errors" by Matt Parker (https://mathsgear.co.uk/collections/books/products/humble-pi...), page 191. edit: Added quote attribution.
on “Trains in Switzerland are not allowed to have 256 axles” ↗Was just reading the chapter about using Excel as a database in this book two days ago: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/39074550-humble-pi Apparently it's super common, which fills me with horror. But these guys managed to take it to 11 by abusing it in yet another novel way.
on “Missing Covid-19 test data was caused by the ill-thought-out use of Excel” ↗Bad statistics again. See Matt Parker's book "humble pi" for a discussion on this. But basically in the week following a clock change, there is no statistical variation in heart attacks or strokes. On the Monday, there's a slightly higher rate when we short…
on “Opinion: Standard Time all year round is the healthy choice” ↗I learned about this from the book "Humble Pi: A Comedy of Maths Errors" by Matt Parker. It was interesting in the context of describing this concept of 'Swiss Cheese Model' where if just the right holes line up, something disastrous like this can…
on “British Airways Flight 5390” ↗