elstaffe’s Reviews > Humble Pi: When Math Goes Wrong in the Real World > Status Update

"The curved glass front of the hotel focused sunlight and burned the skin of hotel guests lounging by the pool.
Can we reasonably expect the architect of 20 Fenchurch Street to have known about a hotel out in Las Vegas? Well, the Vdara Hotel was also designed by Rafael Viñoly, so we could probably expect some information flow between the two projects." (280)

"There was an easy enough fix, though: a sunshade was attached to the building to block the sun's rays before they could focus on anyone else's lemon. And it's not as if this freak alignment of reflective surfaces could have been predicted in advance. It had never happened to a building before. At least, not since the same thing happened at the Vdara Hotel in Las Vegas in 2010." (280)

"The building at 20 Fenchurch Street in London was nearing completion in 2013 when a major design flaw became apparent. It had nothing to do with the structural integrity of the building; it was completed in 2014 and is a perfectly functioning building to this day, ... By all measures, it's a successful building. Except, during the summer of 2013, it started setting things on fire." (281)

"Several stories in Humble Pi involve a computer system that counts backward, then crashes when it hits zero and 'rolls over.' There also are several math mistakes from the stories in the book that have been deliberately incorporated into the book itself. This is why the page numbers are in reverse order. Please don't take it back for a refund." (315)

"Dedicated to my relentlessly supportive wife, Lucie.
Yes, I appreciate that dedicating a book about mistakes to your wife is itself a bit of a mistake." (317)