Timothy Revell - Man vs Maths: Understanding the Curious Mathematics That Power Our World

Timothy Revell has a masters in mathematics and a PhD in computer science, but despite this he still struggles with long division. He has worked with BBC Horizon, The Naked Scientistsradio show one of the worlds most popular science shows, and writes for New Scientist. Timothy learnt his trade running an award-winning science communication group in Glasgow called theGIST, producing articles, videos and podcasts. He loves mathematics and thinks that everybody else should too.

Understanding the Curious
Mathematics that Power Our World

written by
Timothy Revell
illustrated by
Joe Lyward

First published in Great Britain

2016 by Aurum Press Ltd

7477 White Lion Street

Islington

London N1 9PF

www.aurumpress.co.uk

Text Copyright Timothy Revell 2016

Timothy Revell has asserted his moral right to be identified as the Author of this Work in accordance with the Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or utilised in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from Aurum Press Ltd.

Every effort has been made to trace the copyright holders of material quoted in this book. If application is made in writing to the publisher, any omissions will be included in future editions.

Images on by kind courtesy of Disney, Pixar. Disney.Pixar

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Digital edition: 978-1-78131-621-4

Softcover edition: 978-1-78131-558-3

United States Edition ISBN 978 1 78131 620 7

2020 2019 2018 2017 2016

Illustration and design by Joe Lyward

Mathematics can quickly get out of hand. Often you start with something as simple as thinking about shuffling a pack of cards and then all of a sudden youve worked out a conclusion that is just a little mind-blowing.

With fifty-two cards in a standard deck there are many different possible shuffles. In fact, there are so many different ways that any time you give a pack a decent mix its likely that it will end up in an arrangement that has never been seen before. Never.

After a shuffle there are fifty-two possible cards that could end up being at the top of the deck, all of which are equally likely. Once one has been chosen there are fifty-one possibilities for the second card in the deck, fifty for third position and so on. This means that the total number of different ways to shuffle a pack of cards is found by nothing more than a quick multiplication.

Which written out is, 8065817517094387857166063685640376 6975289505440883277824000000000000, but normally to save paper we write this as 52! and pronounce it fifty-two factorial. Using just a little bit of mathematics weve managed to work out the number of different possible shuffles, but comprehending just how many there are is another task altogether.

52! is so big that if every person who has ever lived had been shuffling a pack of cards once every second since the start of the universe, we still wouldnt expect to have seen any repeats yet. We wouldnt even be close.

In an attempt to really understand the monstrously big 52! data analyst Scott Czepiels decided to play a little game. He begins by starting a timer that counts down from 52! seconds all the way down to zero, with the aim of the game being to keep himself amused while he waits for the alarm to go off.