Introduction 1
How To Think Like A Mathematician
1. Ultimate Tic-Tac-Toe 7
2. What Does Math Look Like to Students? 20
3. What Does Math Look Like to Mathematicians? 22
4. How Science and Math See Each Other 30
5. Good Mathematician vs. Great Mathematician 38
II Design: The Geometry Of Stuff That Works
6. We Built This City on Triangles 52
7. Irrational Paper 65
8. The Square-Cube Fables 73
9. The Game of Dice 89
10. An Oral History of the Death Star 105
III Probability: The Mathematics Of Maybe
11. The 10 People You Meet in Line for the Lottery 123
12. Children of the Coin 141
13. What Does Probability Mean in Your Profession? 151
14. Weird Insurance 158
15. How to Break the Economy with a Single Pair of Dice 178
IV Statistics: The Fine Art of Honest Lying
16. Why Not to Trust Statistics 199
17. The Last .400 Hitter 218
18. Barbarians at the Gate of Science 231
19. The Scoreboard Wars 249
20. The Book Shredders 267
V On The CUSP: The Power of a Step
21. The Final Speck of Diamond Dust 286
22. Bracketology 299
23. One State, Two State, Red State, Blue State 314
24. The Chaos of History 329
Endnotes 346
Acknowledgments 368