Thinking in Numbers: How Maths Illuminates Our Lives

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This is the book that Daniel Tammet, bestselling author and mathematical savant, was born to write. In Tammet's world, numbers are beautiful and mathematics illuminates our lives and minds. Using anecdotes and everyday examples, Tammet allows us to share his unique insights and delight in the way numbers, fractions and equations underpin all our lives.Inspired by the complexity of snowflakes, Anne Boleyn's sixth finger or his mother's unpredictable behaviour, Tammet explores questions such as why time seems to speed up as we age, whether there is such a thing as an average person and how we can make sense of those we love.Thinking in Numbers will change the way you think about maths and fire your imagination to see the world with fresh eyes.ReviewThinking in Numbers is unprecedented: a pitch-perfect duet between mathematics and literature ... Mathematics, Tammet says, is illimitable. It is a language through which the human imagination expresses itself. Presumably this means mathematics has, or deserves, a literature. In Tammet, it already has a laureate. -- New Scientist A collection of essays on subjects as diverse as Shakespeare and Tolstoy, a rumination on snow and another on chess, as well as a fantastically nuanced piece about his mother. It is a collection which showcases Tammet's extraordinary talent ... a writer of unique capabilities. -- Scotsman Magazine An interesting and often beautiful approach: Tammet writes well... and his love of numbers shines from the page... Tammet's discussion of big numbers is fascinating. -- Daily Telegraph Tammet's choice of subjects is personal, and wonderfully eclectic... What lifts Tammet's entertaining collection above the ordinary are the often surprising links that he sees, explores and explains. -- Sunday Telegraph Explores the 'what if' of maths and links it with literature and life. He is an exhilarating thinker, an exciting writer, and looks at the world with an eclectic, quizzical eye. -- Saga magazine Tammet is an accomplished writer with a prose style akin to a warm embrace... scintillating ... enlightens and entertains in (approximately) equal measure. -- Daily Express When he talks about his own extreme skills, such as his feat of pi memorisation, the book comes alive. -- BBC Focus Daniel Tammet's unique take on the world will prove that life - not just classroom maths - is more than just a numbers game. -- Gay Times As fluid with words as with numbers, his essays are artfully constructed: intriguing openings to entice us; interesting snippets of history; accessible but unpatronising tones; neat endings. -- Independent In Tammet's mind, literature, art and maths are united. For him, maths' real-life applications are not merely tax returns and restaurant bills, but the storytelling of an infinite subject and the reasoning behind our daily existence. -- The Huffington Post Thinking in Numbers is a mind-expanding, kinetic aesthetic experience. My mind shot off the page, spurred to see universal patterns very much alive in everything from the natural world we share to how imagery and metaphor occur in my own creative process. Tammet's poetic mathematics are beautiful guideposts for thinking about life and even love. As I read, I found myself saying, 'Yes, this is true, and this is true, and this is so true...' -- Amy Tan Always informative, always entertaining, Daniel Tammet never loses his respect for the mystery of the universe of number. -- JM Coetzee Born on a Blue Day introduced us to the extraordinary phenomenon of Daniel Tammet, and Thinking in Numbers enlarges one's wonder at Tammet's mind and his all-embracing vision of the world as grounded in numbers. -- Oliver Sacks, MD His aim with Thinking in Numbers is to show that mathematics can be as rich, inspiring and human as literature - and to "bruise" the line between fiction and non-fiction... he succeeds magnificently. -- Times Literary Supplement About the AuthorDaniel Tammet is the critically acclaimed author of the worldwide bestselling memoir, BORN ON A BLUE DAY, and the international bestseller EMBRACING THE WIDE SKY. Tammet's exceptional abilities in mathematics and linguistics are combined with a unique capacity to communicate what it is like to be a savant. His idiosyncratic world view gives us new perspectives on the universal questions of what it is to be human and how we make meaning in our lives. Tammet was born in London in 1979, the eldest of nine children. He lives in Paris.