Humble Pi Book Review - ScottJohnsonAuthor.com

Humble Pi Book Summary

In Humble Pi: When Math Goes Wrong in the Real World, mathematician and stand-up comedian Matt Parker dives into the often overlooked, yet highly consequential, errors that arise when math goes awry. Parker highlights real-world cases where mathematical mistakes have led to unexpected, and occasionally disastrous, outcomes. Think of crashed spacecraft, collapsing bridges, and internet outages caused by small but crucial mathematical goofs.

Through his entertaining and accessible writing style, Parker illustrates how these errors happen, from rounding mistakes to complex miscalculations. He explains why even small numerical oversights can lead to big problems. His exploration is both funny and cautionary, emphasizing how vital math is in daily life and the systems we rely on. Parker’s approach makes the book enjoyable for math enthusiasts and those who may find math a bit intimidating (which is most of humanity.)

The book isn’t just about disasters, though. Parker celebrates the quirks and creativity of math, showing how mistakes often reveal unexpected insights and solutions. Humble Pi is both a love letter to mathematics and a reminder of its power AND its potential pitfalls when misapplied.

The book was published in January 2020. Just before COVID. I bet a 2nd edition could include several chapters on pandemic math going off the rails!

Who is Matt Parker?

Wikipedia introduces Matt Parker as a “recreational mathematician”. I’m sorry, what kind of mathematician?

Matt Parker is an Australian-born mathematician, author, and stand-up comedian known for his unique talent for making math accessible, engaging, and funny. He’s a self-described “stand-up mathematician,” blending his love of numbers with humor to reach audiences who might not typically care about the world of mathematics. Parker studied mathematics and physics at the University of Western Australia and initially worked as a math teacher before turning his focus to “recreational math” (communicating math in unconventional ways, to those who might not like math. A.K.A. most of humanity.)

Parker is best known for his work in popularizing math through books, live shows, and YouTube videos, where he explores fascinating aspects of mathematics with a comedic twist. His books include Humble Pi: When Math Goes Wrong in the Real World (the one you’re reading about) and Things to Make and Do in the Fourth Dimension, a playful exploration of mathematical concepts for a general audience.

Parker co-founded the YouTube channel “Stand-up Maths” to share educational and entertaining videos that highlight the surprising, useful, and often hilarious sides of math. Through his work, Parker has gained a reputation as a dynamic and engaging math communicator, beloved by audiences who enjoy learning with a laugh.

Parker’s website is titled…get this… StandUpMaths.com. He also has a similarly named YouTube channel: “Stand-up Maths” that shares educational and entertaining videos that highlight the useful yet hilarious sides of math.

What’s your favorite comedy routine about spreadsheets? Here’s mine from Matt Parker:

Matt Parker has Excel-ed himself

My Favorite Funny Sayings About Math: (A.K.A Funny Math Jokes)

What do mathematicians do after it snows? They make snow angles!
Why was six afraid of seven? Because seven, eight, nine! (perhaps THE classic math joke of all time)
Why can’t your nose grow to be 12 inches long? Because then it would be a foot.
If you’re cold, go to the corner of the room. It’s always 90 degrees there!
Which tree is the math teacher’s favorite? Geometry!
Parallel lines have so much in common. It’s a shame they’ll never meet.
Why shouldn’t you ever argue with a 90 degree angle? They’re always right!
Why should you never talk to pi? Because it will go on and on forever.
What do you call a man who spent all summer at the beach? A tangent. (That one’s deep, right?)
And my all time favorite math joke: There are 10 types of people in the world — those who understand binary and those who don’t

Now onto the rating! Humble Pi book review:

My innovative system for rating humor books is explained here

Wholesomeness Score: 4.5/5

Unless you are offended by math, this book should seem very clean and wholesome to you. You’re offended by math, aren’t you. Yeah, I thought so. This book WOULD appeal to a wide audience if it weren’t for math. Even if there was extremely gruesome, offensive material in this book, most children and easily triggered adults won’t read past the first page due to its overwhelming mathy-ness. A.K.A. it’s pretty clean and wholesome.

Hilarity Score: 2.5/5

Hear me out. The funniest parts of this book are the section title headings. That’s not knock on the book’s humor value. I really mean the section titles are pretty funny. If you like puns (and math puns in particular), you’ll enjoy the section headings. Examples from the first few chapters (I’d cite more, but I already checked the book back into the library, and I didn’t document my favorites throughout the book):

Resonators Gonna Resonate
Bridges over Troubled Math
When You Really F-22 It Up
The Audacity of Pope
Calen-Duh

I realize these won’t make sense out of context. But know that Matt Parker enjoys inserting creative math wordplay whenever possible to describes extremely complex concepts. My favorite out-of-context pun?

Yipee-Kiyah Number Cruncher

That doesn’t even need explanation. It’s just fun/funny to say.

Overall Book Awesomeness Score: 3/5

The book was a fun dive into how the inaccuracy of math can have enormous, sometimes catastrophic impacts. This was probably my favorite math book ever (yes, a low bar.) It wasn’t the most spectacularly entertaining read by itself. However, the individual concepts and anecdotes were captivating enough to make me want to seek out more content from the author, Matt Parker. And I discovered that 15-minute intervals of mathematical comedy are hilarious (like bits about spreadsheets.) However, consuming an entire humorous book about math in one sitting was a bit overwhelming.

Things I liked:

math puns
nerding along with Matt Parker’s mathematical tangents
learning about real-life problems caused by math errors. Fascinating and simultaneously terrifying

Things I didn’t like:

Too. Much. Math. Sorry, I know this is what the book was about. Perhaps consuming via audiobook exacerbated the impacts of excessive number crunching. It was just so many numbers. Like ALL the numbers. Every number was read to me. Many times. Example of what to expect:

I mean, that’s a lot of math, right? Too much math?

Conclusion: Final Thoughts on Humble PI: When Math Goes Wrong in the Real World

This was a fun dive into very technical and specific examples of math errors throughout the course of history. I wouldn’t consider this an “easy read”. It did explain complex math topics in a digestible way for a wide audience. But I felt I need to take a nap after hearing all the specific numbers and very technical examples. Individually, the stories were fascinating and illuminating. And a bit terrifying. It made me realize we are sometimes a decimal point or unit conversion error away from catastrophe!

This book was written for a specific purpose of highlighting the impacts of math errors. And it certainly delivered on that goal.

Check it out on Amazon

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