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Six Maths Essentials
How to Model the World
Brief Description
The 'Mozart of mathematics' (New York Times) takes us on a tour of the core ideas of mathematical thinking. In Six Maths Essentials, the renowned mathematician Terence Tao shows how mathematics has evolved from counting and geometry into a flexible set of tools for understanding an...
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Description
The 'Mozart of mathematics' (New York Times) takes us on a tour of the core ideas of mathematical thinking.
In Six Maths Essentials, the renowned mathematician Terence Tao shows how mathematics has evolved from counting and geometry into a flexible set of tools for understanding an increasingly complex world. He moves effortlessly from children discovering infinity through play to the numbers that underpin our online lives; from Johannes Kepler using algebra to price a barrel of wine to curved geometries that explain why GPS works and planes don't fly in straight lines on a map. Along the way, dice games, insurance policies and financial crises illuminate probability's promise - and its limits - while deceptively simple rules give rise to chaos, pattern and life itself.
Six Maths Essentials, Tao's first popular maths book, provides a glimpse into the workings of his incomparable mind and how he thinks about the creativity and interconnectedness of the mathematical enterprise. Contrary to popular perception, mathematics, he insists, isn't magic. It's a powerful way of thinking from first principles and of modelling the world that anyone can learn.
Book Details
INFORMATION
ISBN: 9780241829486
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Format: Hardback
Date Published: 27 October 2026
Country: United Kingdom
Imprint: Pelican
Audience: General / adult, Tertiary education, Professional and scholarly
DIMENSIONS
Spine width: 25.0mm
Width: 138.0mm
Height: 222.0mm
Weight: 400g
Pages: 160
About the Author
Terence Tao is an Australian American professor of mathematics based at UCLA. The recipient of a Fields Medal, a MacArthur Genius Grant and a Breakthrough Prize in Mathematics, among many other accolades, he is one of the most decorated and prolific mathematicians working today.
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