John Allen Paulos - Miscellaneous Writings
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Miscellaneous Writings
These more or less random selections will be supplemented from time to time whenever the recurrent byte shortages that plague the Philadelphia area allow. (All writings copyrighted by John Allen Paulos)

IRRELIGION - A MATHEMATICIAN EXPLAINS WHY THE ARGUMENTS FOR GOD JUST DON'T ADD UP

ARCHIVE of my ABC News columns, WHO'S COUNTING.
TABLE OF CONTENTS, A Mathematician Plays the Stock Market (June, 2003).
A MARKET PARADOX, WALL STREET JOURNAL, also adapted from AMPTSM
AMERICAN SUCKER, LOS ANGELES TIMES
[Paulos'] uncommonly cogent text does not promote a secret investment method for attaining riches. Rather it lucidly clarifies many of the mathematical and statistical influences of the stock market. With accustomed humor and apt examples, Paulos tackles complex computations that are vaguely understood and frequently misapplied by Wall Street pros. Investors would do well to heed his entertaining, frequently counterintuitive, always useful bean-counting methodology. A first-rate exploration into the math of the market: heuristic numeracy at its best. -- Kirkus reviews
GROUCHO MEETS RUSSELL, I Think, Therefore I Laugh
WE'RE MEASURING BACTERIA WITH A YARDSTICK, New York Times
A SELF-REFERENTIAL PARABLE, Once Upon a Number
AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL EXCERPT, A Mathematician Reads the Newspaper
It would be great to have John Allen Paulos living next door. Every morning when you read the paper and came across some story that didn't seem quite right - that had the faint odor of illogic hovering about it - you could just lean out the window and shout, "Jack! Get the hell over here!"..... Paulos, who wrote the bestseller Innumeracy (the mathematical equivalent of illiteracy), has now written a fun, spunky, wise little book that would be helpful to both the consumers of the news and its purveyors. -- Joel Achenbach, Washington Post
REVIEW OF ERDOS, NASH BIOGRAPHIES, Los Angeles Times
WHERE MATHEMATICS COMES FROM, The American Scholar
RANDOM ACTS OF FINANCE, The Nation
FRACTAL NATURE OF HUMAN CONSCIOUSNESS, Beyond Numeracy
"His brief essays are arranged alphabetically by topic, and as with one of its precursors, Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary, it makes for an often jolly little book. ... The lore has it that when Pythagoras discovered his great theorem on right triangles, he was so transported that he sacrificed 100 head of oxen to the gods as a token of gratitude. On this scale, Mr. Paulos's book is surely worth an ox or two." -- Jim Holt, Wall Street Journal
A STOCK MARKET SCAM, Innumeracy
REVIEW OF QUANTIFICATION OF WESTERN SOCIETY, Los Angeles Times
O.J. SIMPSON - MURDER HE WROTE, Philadelphia Inquirer
A NEW BIBLICAL HOAX, Once Upon a Number
"Paulos' goal is nothing less than lofty. He hopes to reconcile the personal aspect of human life, which refers to the stories we tell and live by, and the impersonal, which is essentially mathematical, statistical and scientific. ... Both delightful and wise, this little book cries out to be kept close at hand, to be looked into from time to time, to be treasured as an old friend." -- Anthony Day, Los Angeles Times
MATHEMATICS AND THE UNABOMBER, New York Times
REVIEW OF STEPHEN GOULD'S FULL HOUSE, Washington Post
REMEMBRANCE OF INNUMERACIES PAST, Innumeracy
"To combat [innumeracy] John Allen Paulos has concocted the perfect vaccine: this book, which is in many ways better than an entire high school math eductation! Our society would be unimaginably different if the average person truly understood the ideas in this marvelous and important book. It is probably hopelessly optimistic to dream this way, but I hope that Innumeracy might help launch a revolution in math education that would do for innumeracy what Sabin and Salk did for polio." - Douglas Hofstadter, author of Godel, Escher, and Bach
REVIEW OF ARTHUR CLARKE'S 3001, New York Times
MATH MORON MYTHS, New York Times
COMPUTATION VERSUS UNDERSTANDING?, Forbes Magazine
CODES IN U.S. CONSTITUTION, Once Upon a Number
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