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Two beguiling books show how mathematics is revolutionising our lives

Enjoy Piero Martin’s The Seven Measures of the World, stories about measurement, and explore Four Ways of Thinking by David Sumpter, as he argues that maths can improve our lives

23 October 2023

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The Seven Measures of the World

Piero Martin

Yale University Press

Four Ways of Thinking

David Sumpter

Allen Lane

Blame the sundial. A dinner guest in a poem by the Roman writer Plautus, his stomach rumbling, complains that: “The town’s so full of these confounded dials / The greatest part of the inhabitants, / Shrunk up with hunger, crawl along the streets”.

We have been slaves to number ever since. Not that we need complain, according to two recent books. Experimental physicist Piero…

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