What’s the Use?: The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics

Description

Many people think mathematics is useless. Professor Ian Stewart knows that their wrong. Mathematical sciences (pure and applied mathematics, statistics, and computer science) contributed $37 trillion to the US economy in the first decade of the twenty-first century. In the UK, the 2.8 million people employed in mathematical science occupations contributed GBP208 billion to the economy in a single year — that’s 10 per cent of the workforce contributing 16 per cent of the economy. In What’s the Use?, Professor Stewart asks why there is such a vast gulf between public perceptions of mathematics and the reality, and looks for ways of bridging that gap. Mathematics is broader and more advanced than most of us imagine. Most of its uses are hidden from public view. This book aims to clarify all the ways that mathematics contributes to our lives.