Michael Blastland

Why does one smoker die of lung cancer but another live to 100? The answer is The Hidden Half - those random, unknowable variables that mess up our attempts to comprehend the world. We humans are very clever creatures - but we're idiots about how clever we really are. In this entertaining and ingenious book, Blastland reveals how in our...

Mathematics scares and depresses most of us, but politicians, journalists, and everyone in power use numbers all the time to bamboozle us. Most maths is really simple—as easy as 2+2, in fact. Better still, it can be understood without any jargon, formulas, and not even many numbers. Most of it is commonsense, and by using a few really simple principles,...

Why thinking in pictures? Short answer: because the words seem to need help. If you sample the many big ideas books to hit the shelves recently, they all promise a smarter, more rational you. But if the books are that good, why are there so many? Using illustrations and photographs, Michael Blastland shows how pictures can help put ideas to...

Meet Norm. He's 31, 5'9", just over 13 stone, and works a 39-hour week. He likes a drink, doesn't do enough exercise, and occasionally treats himself to a bar of chocolate (milk). He's a pretty average kind of guy. In fact, he is the average guy in this clever and unusual take on statistical risk, chance, and how these two...