Ian Stewart Delivers... again

I’ve read 4 popular math books already this year and they’ve all been great… though all very different. What a quick start to the new year!

Ian Stewart volumes are consistently good, but with that said there’s also a certain “sameness” to his prolific work — popular topics treated with clarity and wisdom, but not necessarily terribly new, inspiring, or original; just clear basic elucidation. So I was hesitant to read his latest volume (out in 2019, but more readily available in the U.S. now) with a title, “Do Dice Play God?” (a play off an Einstein quote, and also off an earlier book he wrote), which I found a little too ‘cutesy.’ and not all that informative of the content. 

However, I not only thoroughly enjoyed this volume, but consider it one of his best, and most important yet… not because it’s any more original or otherwise outstanding than Stewart's other writing, but because he is covering some of the most currently important topics for the lay public: statistics, probability, uncertainty (and how they relate to critical thinking) — indeed this is likely the best volume I’ve seen for presenting these crucial subjects to a general audience, and Stewart isn’t even a statistician by profession (and professional statisticians may find technical flaws in his text). The range of topics and examples, even though well-worn, is great and lucidly presented. I think many will be surprised at just how good (and relevant) it is! Not sure, but I suspect this Stewart effort may have been partly overshadowed in 2019 by the release of David Spiegelhalter's also-excellent (and somewhat more technical) volume, "The Art of Statistics."

If you’re already ensconced in the nuances and debates involving statistics these days you won’t find much new or original in this volume, but for the mass public this is a fantastic introduction (and there are many good ones) to these important concerns — Stewart offers just enough detail without diving too deep into the weeds to leave readers behind (although admittedly, some numeracy is required). Moreover, at various points he also moves the discussion away from abstraction and theory, to stress how prediction, probability, and uncertainty are especially pertinent to our daily lives and current societal issues.

One interesting sidenote to me: toward the end of the book Stewart ambles off into a number of more complex theoretical physics topics, and this is a trend I’ve been seeing in a number of math books… focusing more-than-usual, at some point, on physics. Perhaps just my imagination, but it seems as if the linkages between math and physics (always strong of course) are becoming even more central to both fields as time goes on. Physics has always recognized the foundational basis of mathematics, but more and more the linkages between the two fields seem to be feeding back-and-forth off of one another in pursuit of new insights (just my impression).

Anyway, if you’ve been wanting a primer on what all the fuss is about in statistics these days (or you know someone who needs such), read this book (or buy it for a friend).
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...I'll soon be posting a review of Matt Cook's highly-entertaining "Sleight of Mind" (with an end-of-March publication date), but the next volume in my reading queue looks to be another fascinating 2019 read, a biography of James Simon, "The Man Who Solved the Market."