Hand argues that extraordinarily rare events are anything but. In fact, they’re commonplace. Not only that, we should all expect to experience a miracle roughly once every month.     But Hand is no believer in superstitions, prophecies, or the paranormal. His definition of “miracle” is thoroughly rational. No mystical or supernatural explanation is necessary to understand why someone is lucky enough to win the lottery twice, or is destined to be hit by lightning three times and still survive. All we need, Hand argues, is a firm grounding in a powerful set of laws: the laws of inevitability, of truly large numbers, of selection, of the probability lever, and of near enough.     Together, these constitute Hand’s groundbreaking Improbability Principle. And together, they explain why we should not be so surprised to bump into a friend in a foreign country, or to come across the same unfamiliar word four times in one day. Hand wrestles with seemingly less explicable questions as well: what the Bible and Shakespeare have in common, why financial crashes are par for the course, and why lightning does strike the same place (and the same person) twice. Along the way, he teaches us how to use the Improbability Principle in our own lives—including how to cash in at a casino and how to recognize when a medicine is truly effective.     An irresistible adventure into the laws behind “chance” moments and a trusty guide for understanding the world and universe we live in, The Improbability Principle will transform how you think about serendipity and luck, whether it’s in the world of business and finance or you’re merely sitting in your backyard, tossing a ball into the air and wondering where it will land.

    In this fascinating book, Mario Livio tells the tale of a number at the heart of that mystery: phi, or 1.6180339887...This curious mathematical relationship, widely known as "The Golden Ratio," was discovered by Euclid more than two thousand years ago because of its crucial role in the construction of the pentagram, to which magical properties had been attributed. Since then it has shown a propensity to appear in the most astonishing variety of places, from mollusk shells, sunflower florets, and rose petals to the shape of the galaxy. Psychological studies have investigated whether the Golden Ratio is the most aesthetically pleasing proportion extant, and it has been asserted that the creators of the Pyramids and the Parthenon employed it. It is believed to feature in works of art from Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa to Salvador Dali's The Sacrament of the Last Supper, and poets and composers have used it in their works. It has even been found to be connected to the behavior of the stock market!The Golden Ratio is a captivating journey through art and architecture, botany and biology, physics and mathematics. It tells the human story of numerous phi-fixated individuals, including the followers of Pythagoras who believed that this proportion revealed the hand of God; astronomer Johannes Kepler, who saw phi as the greatest treasure of geometry; such Renaissance thinkers as mathematician Leonardo Fibonacci of Pisa; and such masters of the modern world as Goethe, Cezanne, Bartok, and physicist Roger Penrose. Wherever his quest for the meaning of phi takes him, Mario Livio reveals the world as a place where order, beauty, and eternal mystery will always coexist.From the Hardcover edition.

    How To is a guide to the third kind of approach. It's full of highly impractical advice for everything from landing a plane to digging a hole.Bestselling author and cartoonist Randall Munroe explains how to predict the weather by analyzing the pixels of your Facebook photos. He teaches you how to tell if you're a baby boomer or a 90's kid by measuring the radioactivity of your teeth. He offers tips for taking a selfie with a telescope, crossing a river by boiling it, and powering your house by destroying the fabric of space-time. And if you want to get rid of the book once you're done with it, he walks you through your options for proper disposal, including dissolving it in the ocean, converting it to a vapor, using tectonic plates to subduct it into the Earth's mantle, or launching it into the Sun.By exploring the most complicated ways to do simple tasks, Munroe doesn't just make things difficult for himself and his readers. As he did so brilliantly in What If?, Munroe invites us to explore the most absurd reaches of the possible. Full of clever infographics and amusing illustrations, How To is a delightfully mind-bending way to better understand the science and technology underlying the things we do every day.

    Aimed at accountants or readers of other career paths, this book helps them build their decision making skills and understand how to use accounting information to make quality business decisions.

    But eliminating sugar from your diet can be tricky if you don't know where sugar is hiding. We all know there's sugar in candy and chocolate - but did you know there's heaps of the stuff hiding out in foods you probably thought were safe to eat? This book is a no-nonsense guide to the sugar content in all the popular foods we eat every day. It's a great place to discover just how much sugar is lurking in your favorite foods. Use this guide to check out what you can eat, and what you can't eat when you're trying to kick the sugar habit.

    In this guide, he provides trekkers of all standards with up-to-date and reliable information on the region, including health and safety advice, notes on eco-tourism and detailed route descriptions.

    With the appearance of one little extra line on a pregnancy test, you're thrown into a world of covering up leaks on shirts and taking a pacifier away from a two-year-old who has the grip of a pit bull.In this funny, smart, and honest book, Jane Buckingham cuts through the clutter to give you simple information and practical advice for navigating the different stages of motherhood. From how to get your child to sleep and how to wean, to how to get him off the pacifier and how to stop his tantrums, this book will help moms feel in the know and in control! Some of Buckingham's favorite tips:If your baby has a hard time feeding because of a stuffy nose, turn on the shower to steam up the bathroom and feed her there.Put your children's paints in an empty egg carton -- it's the perfect size, and there's no mess to clean up when you're done. Use an old raincoat with the arms cut off as a smock.You should buy a new car seat, rather than borrowing a friend's old car seat, as there are constant safety upgrades. Also, be sure you are the person registered to that car seat (send in that registration card!) so that you'll be notified in case of a recall.Keep the three-day rule in mind: Almost any bad habit can be broken in three days. Granted, they may be tough, torturous days, but you can do it!The Modern Girl's Guide to Motherhood helps modern moms do it all with love, style, and flair!

    From man's first act of counting to higher mathematics, from the smallest living creature to the dazzling reaches of outer space, Asimov is a master at "explaining complex material better than any other living person." (The New York Times) You'll learn: HOW to make a trillion seem small; WHY imaginary numbers are real; THE real size of the universe - in photons; WHY the zero isn't "good for nothing;" AND many other marvelous discoveries, in ASIMOV ON NUMBERS.

    Employing an irresistible cast of dragon-riding Vikings, lizard-throwing giants, and feuding aliens, the renowned illustrator Grady Klein and the award-winning statistician Alan Dabney teach you how to collect reliable data, make confident statements based on limited information, and judge the usefulness of polls and the other numbers that you're bombarded with every day. If you want to go beyond the basics, they've created the ultimate resource: "The Math Cave," where they reveal the more advanced formulas and concepts.Timely, authoritative, and hilarious, The Cartoon Introduction to Statistics is an essential guide for anyone who wants to better navigate our data-driven world.

    His illuminating explanation is addressed to the person who wants to understand the place of mathematics in modern civilization but who has been intimidated by its supposed difficulty. Mathematics is the language of size, shape, and order—a language Hogben shows one can both master and enjoy.

    Just about everyone has at least heard of Albert Einstein's formulation of 1905, which came into the world as something of an afterthought. But far fewer can explain his insightful linkage of energy to mass. David Bodanis offers an easily grasped gloss on the equation. Mass, he writes, "is simply the ultimate type of condensed or concentrated energy," whereas energy "is what billows out as an alternate form of mass under the right circumstances." Just what those circumstances are occupies much of Bodanis's book, which pays homage to Einstein and, just as important, to predecessors such as Maxwell, Faraday, and Lavoisier, who are not as well known as Einstein today. Balancing writerly energy and scholarly weight, Bodanis offers a primer in modern physics and cosmology, explaining that the universe today is an expression of mass that will, in some vastly distant future, one day slide back to the energy side of the equation, replacing the "dominion of matter" with "a great stillness"--a vision that is at once lovely and profoundly frightening. Without sliding into easy psychobiography, Bodanis explores other circumstances as well; namely, Einstein's background and character, which combined with a sterling intelligence to afford him an idiosyncratic view of the way things work--a view that would change the world. --Gregory McNamee