Mathematics Minus Fear: How to Make Math Fun and Beneficial to Your Everyday Life - Softcover

Lawrence Potter attended Oxford University and graduated with a degree in classics  before becoming an adventurous mathematics teacher in Romania and Rwanda. He is the author of This May Help You Understand the World and lives in London.

As a smart shopper watches her purchases traverse the supermarket conveyor belt, how can she accurately estimate her total costs? This question provides Potter with an occasion for illustrating the usefulness of mathematics in ordinary situations. Other cases pop up in throwing dice, assessing weather forecasts, and sizing up the wardrobe possibilities within a closet. Potter tirelessly demonstrates just how enjoyable and productive math can be! Laced with puckish humor, the lucid and even entertaining narrative eases readers past the anxieties associated with decimals and fractions, probabilities and proportions, algebra and formulas. After sharpening their skills on the brainteasers sprinkled throughout the text and trying out the Sudoku tricks Potter shares, readers are primed to tackle real-world numerical tasks. And Potter embeds such tasks in an exciting mathematical history running through Laplace, Fermat, Pascal, Vičte—and the nameless pioneers of early Hindu and Arabic theorizing. Except perhaps for those reckless enough to test Potter’s strategy for Russian roulette, this book will turn mathematics into a long-lasting intellectual adventure. --Bryce Christensen