The Encyclopaedia of Everything Else

Emma — Thu, 03 Nov 2022 00:00:00 +0000

A delightful and witty treasure trove of utterly useless information by the author of The Things That Nobody Knows.Most encyclopaedias are boring. They are so packed with worthy but dull facts that a great deal of weird and wonderful material is squeezed out. The Encyclopaedia of Everything Else takes the opposite approach and leaves out all the dreary stuff you can find elsewhere. The result is the most fascinating, astonishing, varied and utterly useless collection of information ever assembled and organized between two covers. From aardvark tooth bracelets to the genus of tropical weevils known as Zyzzyva, via Mark Twain’s views about cabbages, this is a quarter of a million words of sublime pointlessness.

Numb and Number: How to Avoid Being Mystified by the Mathematics of Modern Life

Emma — Thu, 05 Nov 2020 00:00:00 +0000

‘A wise, witty and insightful guide to clear thinking amid a deluge of percentages and probabilities.’ Ian StewartLike it or not, our lives are dominated by mathematics. Our daily diet of news regales us with statistical forecasts, opinion polls, risk assessments, inflation figures, weather and climate predictions and all sorts of political decisions and advice backed up by supposedly accurate numbers. Most of us do not even pause and question such figures even to ask what they really mean and whether they raise more questions than they answer. In this simple guide for anyone numbed by numbers, William Hartston reveals with clarity and humour why the figures being flung at us may not tell the whole story. Along the way he explains commonly misused mathematical terms, solves everyday mathematical problems and shows how to steer a safe path through the minefield of mathematics that surrounds us.

Hartston, William – The Bell Bookshop

The Encyclopaedia of Everything Else

Numb and Number: How to Avoid Being Mystified by the Mathematics of Modern Life