Stefan Buijsman

Hay muchas personas hoy en día que tienen la misma sensación que tenía yo en la escuela secundaria: se encuentran ante una pizarra llena de fórmulas que no comprenden demasiado bien y que no volverán a ver nunca mas en la vida cotidiana, asi que no es de extrañar que las matematicas les parezcan incomprensibles e inutiles, y a menudo, para quien mire detras de las formulas, tambien pueden llegar a comprenderse mejor de lo que suele creerse. La manera en que Google nos elige la informacion muestra la influencia que ejercen las matematicas en nuestra vida diaria, tanto en el sentido positivo como en el negativo, y una muestra de los efectos secundarios que encontramos en servicios digitales tales como Google, Facebook o Twitter son las capacidades que tienen de reforzar opiniones ya existentes. Este libro quiere mostrar que las matematicas son mas importantes y comprensibles de lo que creemos.

Thousands of years ago the inhabitants of Mesopotamia became the first to use numbers. Since then, mathematics has been unstoppable. Its behind almost everything, from search-engines to cruise-control, from coffee-makers to timetables. But now that we hardly ever need to do arithmetic, how relevant is mathematics to everyday life?Pluses and Minuses demonstrates the role mathematics plays in human endeavour. It answers questions such as: What is life without numbers? Is the usefulness of mathematics mere chance? How can we get a grip on uncertainty? Stefan Buijsmans richly entertaining guide makes connections between philosophy, psychology and history, while explaining the wonderful world of mathematics for absolutely everyone.

A guide to changing how you think about numbers and mathematics, from the prodigy changing the way the world thinks about math.We all know math is important: we live in the age of big data, our lives are increasingly governed by algorithms, and were constantly faced with a barrage of statistics about everything from politics to our health. But what might be less obvious is how math factors into your daily life, and what memorizing all of those formulae in school had to do with it. Math prodigy Stefan Buijsman is beginning to change that through his pioneering research into the way we learn math. Plusses and Minuses is based in the countless ways that math is engrained in our daily lives, and shows readers how math can actually be used to make problems easier to solve. Taking readers on a journey around the world to visit societies that have developed without the use of math, and back into history to learn how and why various disciples of mathematics were invented, Buijsman shows the vital importance of math, and how a better understanding of mathematics will give us a better understanding of the world as a whole. Stefan Buijsman has become one of the most sought-after experts in math education after he completed his PhD at age 20. In Plusses and Minuses, he puts his research into practice to help anyone gain a better grasp of mathematics than they have ever had.