How Not To Be Wrong - Jordan Ellenberg

What a delightful read! How Not To Be Wrong is a deeply mathematical and philosophical book, traipsing a non-mathematical person's introduction to mathematics. I found it thoroughly enjoyable and witty, though I suspect that people without a STEM background won't be audibly laughing nearly as often as I did while reading this book. That said, this book contains a near even mix of accessible and muddy concepts, so the uninitiated is likely to find at least half of the book readable. My advice, give it a whirl and just skip the sections that don't make much sense. It was also really fun learning a bit about the history involved in a lot of math, and Ellenberg did a good job of weaving together a cohesive backstory in that regard.

Some favorite quotes:

On comparing yourself and on genius:

"What you learn after a long time in math--and I think the lesson applies much more broadly--is that there's always somebody ahead of you, whether they're right there in class with you or not. ... Nobody ever looks in the mirror and says, 'Let's face it, I'm smarter than Gauss.' And yet, in the last hundred years, the joined effort of all these dummies-compared-to-Gauss has produced the greatest flowering of mathematical knowledge the world has ever seen. ... Genius is a thing that happens, not a kind of person. ... One doesn't call [all the players on the football team, the coaching staff, and assistants] geniuses. But they create the conditions under which genius can take place."

"Improbable things happen a lot."

"If gambling is exciting, you're doing it wrong."

" 'God is, or He is not.' But to which side shall we incline? Reason can decide nothing here."

I also enjoyed the examples of:

The St. Petersburg Paradox, The counsel to miss more planes, The laffer curve, The Baltimore Stockbroker, and the healthy mistrust for published p-values.