Geekspeak: Why Life + Mathematics = Happiness

Geekspeak: Why Life + Mathematics = Happiness
Graham Tattersall

The quirky offspring of ‘QI’ and ‘Freakonomics’, ‘Geekspeak’ melds ingenious statistical analysis with edifying trivia to explain away some curious facts of life.Curiosity is our human birthright, and destiny. As a species we are to prone to think, ruminate, reflect, cogitate, deliberate and philosophise. We do all these things, and why? To explain away the world around us, to find solace in knowledge, to answer all those seeming unanswerables: why are we here? Is there a God? Is there life after death? How many slaves on treadmills does it take to power my kettle?Yes, forget the Bible, ‘Geekspeak’ is the new oracle for 21st century living. Graham Tattersall, a confirmed and superior geek, has rescued maths from the prison of the classroom, imbued it with fresh new life, and put it to use in novel and unexpected ways. His ingenious, deceptively simple formula melds statistical analysis with personal experience and enlightening trivia to explain away some curious and oft-pondered mysteries of the world: how big is your vocabulary, how heavy is your house, do the dead outnumber the living, how powerful is a fly, how fast is a fart.With its recipe of sophisticated mathematical techniques, witty anecdotes and startling amount of learning, ‘Geekspeak’ is an essential tool for impressing friends, sounding intelligent and better understanding the fascinating world in which we live. Maths has a new champion, and the Geeks a new King.

GEEKSPEAK

GEEKSPEAK

How Life + Mathematics = Happiness

Dr Graham Tattersall

This book is written in memory of my father, who helped raise six children as well as quietly goingthrough life inventing, analysing, and mendinganything and everything.

CONTENTS

PHOTOGRAPH

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

All photos, unless stated, taken from Stock.XCHNG.com.

Introduction: Living with Numbers: #347053, Aleksander Milosevic, Belgrade, Serbia

1 Scrabbling for Words: #650192, Steve Woods/Pinpoint, Essex, UK

2 Pumping Iron: #313419, Josef Lluis Caldentey, Spain

3 Safe as Houses: Author

4 Well Connected: #368906, Cory McKenzie, Canada

5 Fatal Attraction: #696930, Marcos Santos, Brazil

6 Home Alone: #656412, Liv Crazy, Australia

7 Beam Me Up, Scotty: #757924, Artiom, Ukraine (StockExpert)

8 Hidden Death: #97469, Ken Kiser, US

9 It’s For You: #6926, Stephen Gibson/ BudgetStockPhoto.com, Australia

10 War Chest: #522105, Marcin Barlowski, Poland

11 When the Wind Blows: #739813, George Bosela, US

12 You’re Rubbish: #315128, Liton Ali, London, UK

13  Nappy Crap: #560650, Pascal Montsma, Netherlands

14 The Cunning Fox: #769992, Lynne Lancaster (weirdvis), UK

15 Fly Wheels: #735390, Asif Akbar, India

16 Bus Stop: #198141, Tomasz Kowalczyk, Poland

17 Stirring Airs: #442256, Steve Ford Elliot, Eire

18 Dream Flight: #748302, Martin Brooks, UK

19 Processing Power: #370098, Max Brown, Sydney, Australia

20 Soul Mates: #264203, Paul Preacher, London, UK

21 Idiot Calculus: #282161, Anka Draganski, London, UK

22 The Ghostly Present: #708887, Robert Rosmond, New Orleans, US

23 Bad Breath: #398156, Tudou Mao, Shijiazhuang, China

24 Wave Power: Author

25 Mechanical Neurosis: #242268, Philippe Ramakers, Belgium

26 The Final Judgement: #19734, alxm (StockExpert)

27 Heavenly Body: #707105, Wojtek Wozniak, Zabrze, Poland

28 Passing Water: #633517, Emin Ozkan, Zmin, Turkey

29 The Man in White: #700514, Joan Koele, Netherlands

GEEKSPEAK

INTRODUCTION

LIVING WITH

NUMBERS

How Much can you work out about your own world?

For as long as I can remember, I’ve been fascinated by how things work. There’s a whole world of cogs, circuit boards and equations behind familiar objects and events, or the figures and statistics we see in the media. I can pinpoint the exact moment when this fascination was born: it was as an eight-year-old child on a family trip to the Scottish Highlands. Frantically looking for a way to distract his squabbling children, my father announced that ‘The first person to tell me the weight of that mountain gets to sit in the front of the car.’ I took on the task, excitedly shouting out wrong answers.

This was power – working out a new number, a new piece of knowledge about the world that hadn’t existed ten seconds earlier. And, it happened in a person’s head. It was amazing.

And that was it: I became a Geek.

A family friend dropped by after our return. He was an amateur radio enthusiast, and his car was festooned with all sorts of antennas. ‘Watch this,’ he said through a large smile, and placed his finger at the bottom end of an antenna.