August 2022 - Humble Pi

[Betsy, co-mod]

For August 2022, we will be reading Humble Pi: A Comedy of Maths Errors by Matt Parker.

Please use this thread to post questions, comments, and reviews, at any time.

[Nancy]

Somehow I wound up skipping July's book and am almost finished with Humble Pi ... What a treat! Yes, it's about math, but it features
goof-ups you wouldn't believe, including a jet aircraft crash that ends with the pilot being sucked out the window and the disabled airplane being landed amazingly by the copilot while the crews took turns holding on to the pilot's legs ... all due to a maintenance mistake that, I hate to say, could very easily been made be anybody!
The author is very funny, and I spend a lot of time laughing out loud. My TV loving husband is giving me very strange looks while I am laughing over math book.
Everyone will enjoy this one I think.

[Jim]

You've convinced me to get a copy, Nancy.

[Nancy]

Jim wrote: "You've convinced me to get a copy, Nancy."

I hope you enjoy it! (I'm a cheapskate, I got it from the library!)

[Jim]

Nancy wrote: "I hope you enjoy it! (I'm a cheapskate, I got it from the library!)"

Me, too.
:)

[Nancy]

Yeah, it's not so bad if it turns out to be a dud but then again you didn't have to pay $26.99 for it.....

[Andrea]

I concur! I read it a year ago or so, and thoroughly enjoyed it.

[Nancy]

I was telling my friend about it. He's an expert witness/investigator for mechanic and building issues and he was familiar with many of the outrageous cases in this book. We got to arguing about how hard the illogical imperial system is compared with the metric system. (I maintain lives could be saved by everyone going metric; he says well you just convert, and then goes on about the history of the standard mile vs the nautical mile vs some other unit, and I say that's all very interesting but as the book drives home, people make mistakes!)

[Nancy]

Heads up for anyone interested. Book Bub is advertising the ebook for $2.99 on Apple and Google. Usually Amazon offers the same deal with Kindle.

[Jim]

I got the audiobook from the library & started it today. Good narration & interesting content so far. Since I'm a computer guy, I got the jet problem immediately. Just got nailed with something similar because I used an integer variable in an Excel macro. After a couple of years, the incrementing number exceeded it. Easy to fix in my case by changing the type to a double.

[Nancy]

I don't know how you follow that mathy stuff on audiobook. Weird how math acts on a computer.

[Jim]

Nancy wrote: "I don't know how you follow that mathy stuff on audiobook. Weird how math acts on a computer."

I thought he did a great job explaining how math acts on a computer in the case of the jets & air traffic control system, but I skimmed over it in the ebook & see that's because of background knowledge that I assumed everyone knew. If you still don't really get it, perhaps this will help.

Programs require setting the size of a number variable before everything else. This sets up the memory space that variable can use. I don't think he said that, although it was implied. He did make it clear that if a number could be positive or negative then it could only be half the largest original number since one bit is used to set the sign, positive or negative.

The problem with the jets & air traffic control systems was the same thing as the Y2K bug, just with bigger numbers. There's no need to really worry about the exact numbers. It's just important to remember that they were limited by the size they were originally assigned.

Computers can handle some numbers far more easily (perhaps 'natively' is a better term) than others. If the bus size is 8 bits, then an 8 bit number is the largest number it can handle without adding a lot of extra programming, time, & memory space. The 2 or 4 billion he mentioned were the limits of a 32 bit system. Bus size has now increased to 64 bits which means much bigger numbers can be handled.

Setting the size of the variable to the smallest possible was really important years ago & it's hung on tenaciously even though the hardware limitations have disappeared incredibly fast. 30 years ago when I wrote a program using a "double" (16 bit number) ran fine on my 386 with 4 mb RAM, but wouldn't run on the 286 with 2 mb RAM that I had in class. I had to change it to an 8 bit number. The RAM has to hold parts of the operating system plus other programs & variables so there wasn't a lot of extra room for processing other stuff. Saving memory space was a top priority which became ingrained both in the programmers & the industry. It was a maxim: Always use the smallest size variable possible!

Older programs hang around & are just modified or overlaid with new features, but the base code is never updated, so the limitations persist even though the hardware can handle bigger numbers. This is why 2 digit dates were used which created the big problem of Y2K. Dates were simple until they rolled from 99 to 00. Programs weren't able to calculate a new month since 00 minus 99 doesn't compute into a real date. Add to that the oddity of skipping 29Feb due to the new millennium plus some others (For instance, Excel had a starting date of 1929 I think.) & it all added up to a mess that required a lot of additional programming with all the problems that go with a complex modification on top of an already complex program.

The more I think about it, the less surprised I am by bugs. Actually, I'm more surprised that computers work at all with all the underlying, limited code. For instance, I still use NET commands in the command window of Windows. These are what we used back in the DOS days to network Microsoft computers together. IIRC, it was a separate program (LANman?) that was eventually incorporated into Windows 3.1 to create Windows For Workgroups 3.11 which we used before Windows 95. That's coding that's over 30 years old which is still a basic part of the latest Windows operating system. It boggles my mind.

[Betsy, co-mod]

Jim, thanks for that explanation.

[Darrin]

Hello everyone, my membership info in this group states the following: You’ve been a member of this group since June 22, 2019 and have made 4 comments

I am sorry about that. I am, after this loooonnnngggg gap, joining you all in reading Humble Pi and perhaps I am eating some too. I am already a couple of pages in and I can tell it will be good.

Anyway, I hope to be joining in for future months too. I read a lot of science books regardless but I just haven't been following your schedule.

[Betsy, co-mod]

Darrin, it doesn't matter if you don't read on our schedule. We're still interested in what you are reading. You can post about your latest read in the thread titled "What is your most recently read science book? What did you think of it?"

[Darrin]

The other night I was telling my computer scientist son about this book and how good it is and he surprised me by letting me know Matt Parker has a YouTube page called Stand-up Maths. My son had been toying with the idea of getting this book himself because he enjoys Matt Parker's page so much. Do check it out if you get a chance. Right now the page features Matt Parker in Antarctica during a "reverse eclipse".

[David]

I read this book last year; it is marvelous! The author has a great sense of humor, and it's not overly technical. I also listened to the audiobook--it is read by the author, and he is very good! Here is my review.

[Jim]

His sense of humor is great & it comes through really well in audio, but I'm also finding a lot of interest. I've heard of half the material & I really appreciated how he set some of it straight like the Tacoma Narrows disaster. I recall that from a high school film. I'm disappointed that I learned it wrong then, so happy he made a special point of it.

Has anyone caught the errors he left in the book on purpose? I haven't. As Nancy pointed out, it's tough to remember most of the big ones. I just go with what he says for the most part so I'm not going to pick up any errors there.

[Jim]

I finally finished Humble Pi: A Comedy of Maths Errors by Matt Parker. He narrated it very well & it had a fair amount of humor. The contents weren't very new to me. It's probably best suited for those under 30 who aren't familiar with computer programming or historical engineering disasters. Still, I enjoyed it & found a lot to admire, so I gave it a 4 star review here:
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

[Darrin]

I finished it too and also gave it 4 stars. It was engaging and overall, interesting, and I was unfamiliar with some of the behind the scenes "errors" that can happen with applications I happen to use every day like Excel.

The only reason I gave it 4 stars rather than 5 is that somewhere around the midway point of the book I found myself a little bit bored of the somewhat repetitive anecdotes. Maybe it is just me or maybe I was distracted at the time I was reading but I felt it dragged in some chapters but picked up the pace in the latter part of the book.

Nonetheless, it was still an unexpectedly good read for me. While, I read a lot of science topics, math related books are not something I would normally pick up.

[Betsy, co-mod]

I just finished this, and enjoyed it, but not as much as I expected. Most of my laughter came in the early chapters, and some of the later ones seemed to drag. But I still recommend it. Here is my review.

[Matt]

Finished this last week. I don't have time to write a full review but I did enjoy this one. At some point I was a bit overwhelmed by the barrage of anecdotes, nevertheless it was highly entertaining and informative. I rated it 4 stars.

[KG]

I enjoyed this book and the author’s humor but it’s not a book that I came away from thinking, wow - I learned so much. Lots of interesting anecdotes but also some that felt like they dragged. Overall, I’m glad that I read it. I gave it three stars.

[Jessica]

I laughed right out loud while reading this so I must share the author's sense of humor. As an accountant myself, I especially liked the section on forensic accounting. This line from page 41 spoke to me, "there are only three things certain in life: death, taxes, and people trying to cheat on their taxes".

[Nancy]

Jessica wrote: "I laughed right out loud while reading this so I must share the author's sense of humor. As an accountant myself, I especially liked the section on forensic accounting. This line from page 41 spoke..."

Haha, I'm glad I'm not the only one who found this enormously LOL entertaining! I yes, that line is full of wisdom for sure.

[Juanmi]

I really enjoyed this one! I’m still catching up with the book club reads so I can just I agree with most folks! Matt’s sense of humor is a 10/10, I had to laugh out loud as well at times! I also found this Reddit thread on the intentional errors for those interested: https://www.reddit.com/r/MattParker/c...

[Jessica]

Juanmi wrote: "I really enjoyed this one! I’m still catching up with the book club reads so I can just I agree with most folks! Matt’s sense of humor is a 10/10, I had to laugh out loud as well at times! I also f..."

Thanks for the link. Seems like there are more than 3 errors in any book. That's the downside of being human I guess. It sure is a conversation starter though. I like one person's idea that Matt put that in there to get other people to carefully read the book so he could edit it for future editions.