Why Do Buses Come in Threes? The Hidden Mathematics of Everyday Life
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“Deals in a very entertaining way with problems in normal life related to mathematics, luck, coincidence, gambling.” ? The Independent (London)
Why do your chances of winning the lottery increase if you buy your ticket on Friday? Why do traffic lights always seem to be red when you?re in a hurry? Is bad luck just chance, or can it be explained?
The intriguing answers to these and other questions about the curiosities of everyday life can be found in this delightfully irreverent and highly informative book. Why Do Buses Come in Threes? explains how math and the laws of probability are constantly at work in our lives, affecting everything we do, from getting a date to catching a bus to cooking dinner. With great humor and a genuine love for the subject, Rob Eastaway and Jeremy Wyndham present solutions to such conundrums as how fast one should run in the rain to stay dry and who was the greatest sportsman of all time.Discover the mathematical explanations for the strange coincidence of two.
Presidents dying on July 4, the uncanny “accuracy” of horoscopes, and other not-so-coincidental coincidences. Eastaway and Wyndham also reveal how television ratings work, which numbers are more likely to be big winners in the lottery, and why bad things, just like buses, always seem to happen in threes.
Whether you have a degree in astrophysics or haven?t touched a math problem since high school, this book sends you on a fascinating journey through the logic of life where Newton?s laws explain bar fights, exploding rabbit populations, and why showers always run either too hot or too cold. Why Do Buses Come in Threes? is a delightfully entertaining ride that reveals the relevance of math in absolutely everything we do.If you’ve ever bought a Lotto ticket and wondered about your bad luck afterward, you’ve had to deal with math. From timing to probability, it pervades our every waking moment, and even the most crippling math phobia can’t make it go away. Writers Rob Eastaway and Jeremy Wyndham throw up their hands in defeat and give in to the amusing, interesting, and practical aspects of math in Why Do Buses Come in Threes? Taking their title from the oft-noticed phenomenon of clumping in mass transit, they explain in clear, commonsense language why this must be so. At the end of their description, you might be left with the uneasy sense that you just learned some math, and on quick review, you’ll find that the authors have in fact snuck some in under your radar. In chapter after chapter, Eastaway and Wyndham successfully navigate statistics, codes, coincidences, and many other parts of our lives, peeling away the surface to show what’s really going on to make things so weird and wonderful. Diagrams and drawings help to make their points even clearer, and there are almost never any scary formulas to frighten the timid. If you’ve been waiting your whole life to learn the “Ham Sandwich Theorem,” or just want to put some old fears to rest, Why Do Buses Come in Threes? is the solution. –Rob Lightner
