Category: Science and Math

“Never express yourself more clearly than you can think.” — Niels Bohr

I’ve been reading Ben Orlin’s new book, Math for English Majors. Ben always has a brilliantly philosophical way of looking at numbers and math, and it got me thinking about how we often misunderstand precision.

I’ve always been fascinated by the way we handle precision—how we assume that if we know one number exactly and another is only “about right,” the overall result is still only “about right.” It’s a reminder that even when we want precision, the world often delivers something a little fuzzier.

In the past few years, I’ve seen books written about lots of different things like elements, molecules, and colors. I’m surprised that no one has written a biography of numbers.

Math nerds like me would love this book. I’m thinking it would look like Elements: A Visual Exploration of Every Known Atom in the Universe. Each page would have a fancy drawing of the number with some text.