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The Dark Arts of Mathematical Deception
Viking Adult
October 2010
On Sale: September 23, 2010
304 pages
ISBN: 0670022160
EAN: 9780670022168
Hardcover
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Non-Fiction
According to MSNBC, having a child makes you stupid. You
actually lose IQ points. Good Morning America has announced
that natural blondes will be extinct within two hundred
years. Pundits estimated that there were more than a million
demonstrators at a tea party rally in Washington, D.C., even
though roughly sixty thousand were there. Numbers have
peculiar powers-they can disarm skeptics, befuddle
journalists, and hoodwink the public into believing almost
anything. "Proofiness," as Charles Seife explains in this eye-opening
book, is the art of using pure mathematics for impure ends,
and he reminds readers that bad mathematics has a dark side.
It is used to bring down beloved government officials and to
appoint undeserving ones (both Democratic and Republican),
to convict the innocent and acquit the guilty, to ruin our
economy, and to fix the outcomes of future elections. This
penetrating look at the intersection of math and society
will appeal to readers of Freakonomics and the books of
Malcolm Gladwell.
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