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They've Got Your Number...
They've Got Your Number...
Sep 22, 2024 9:33 AM

Author:Stephen Baker

They've Got Your Number...

In a world teeming with data, we ourselves become the maths gurus' most prized specimens.

In They've Got Your Number..., Stephen Baker takes us on a guided tour (no maths required) through an unprecedented new era. Much in the same way as neuroscientists are mapping our brains, mathematicians are mapping our behaviour - what we do, who we are, how we work, chat, play and shop - everything that makes us individuals. In doing so, they will change every aspect of our lives.

They've Got Your Number... examines one of the great undertakings of the twenty-first century - the mathematical modelling of humanity. It's a world that otherwise might seem remote or disconnected, but one which is absolutely relevant to our everyday lives.

Reviews

Baker puts his finger on perhaps the most important cultural trend today: the explosion of data about every aspect of our world and the rise of applied math gurus who know how to use it. Baker's smart, readable style makes this a pleasure... it's a must read for anyone who wants to understand life and business in the Google Age

—— Chris Anderson, author of The Long Tail

Baker knows his stuff and he knows his subjects

—— Sunday Times

Strikingly well-argued

—— Daily Telegraph

Baker is telling us about a phenomenon that is important and often overlooked... urgent and exciting...This book won't make you an expert on how the mathematicians do their tricks, but it will make you more aware of the implications

—— Marcus du Sautoy , Observer

A creepy and revelatory examination of the secret pressures on our lives and psyches, and how we are unwitting accomplices to this process

—— Colin Waters , Sunday Herald

Even the self-confessed innumerate can enjoy this book, if enjoy is the word, for it left me more anxious than ever about the grip computers can have not only on what we are buying but on pretty well everything we are doing

—— Nicholas Bagnall , Sunday Telegraph Seven Magazine

Delightful, succinct, elegant.

—— Roger Penrose

Johnson's mix of the personal, the erudite and crystalline prose is -- like the pull of gravity (see beautiful experiment number 1) -- an irresistible force.

—— Scientific American

As a science journalist, Mr. Johnson is a seasoned translator of technical jargon. He also has a sharp eye for human plot, both in and out of the laboratory . . . a certain spirit of wonder breathes through Mr. Johnson's chapters.

—— New York Sun

A delightful read that will stimulate the scientist inside everyone

—— Bluesci

This slender, elegantly written memoir by a female surgeon, Gabriel Weston, is a fascinating, no holds barred account of life in the operating theatre

—— Independent

Through this insightful book, Weston succeeds superbly in communicating the fascinating brutal reality of a surgeon's life

—— Ian Critchley , Daily Telegraph

Gabriel Weston's story succeeds better than any I have known...more riveting and thought-provoking than any fiction

—— The Lady, Susan Hill

Glinting like a tray of instruments, her prose is satisfyingly precise

—— Victoria Segal , The Guardian

A curiously thrilling read, written with an elegance heightened by its clarity and economy

—— Elizabeth Day , Observer

A valuable and unflinching account, since it so clearly tells the truth

—— Christopher Hart , The Sunday Times

This book is mesmerising

—— William Leith , Scotsman

Her description of the struggle to remain individual and hence moral is her real achievement. This, to me, is what female writing has to do, and she does it with style and humour and beauty

—— Rachel Cusk

Richard Dawkin's new book... gives the fact-rejecters their just deserts

—— Daily Telegraph

The book is full of evidence, some familiar and some new. Its case is presented in a manner succinct, clear and sometimes vivid

—— Daily Telegraph

No other book currently available approaches Dawkin's comprehensive yet accessible treatment of the extraordinarily diverse and massive body of data that drives ineluctably to the same conclusion

—— National Center for Science Education

The Greatest Show on Earth is a lucid, thorough and often exciting survey of evolution and takes in rats' teeth, dogs, bacteria, the so-called missing link, crustaceans, giraffe anatomy, hummingbirds, chimpanzees, enzymes - you name it. It is informed in nearly every paragraph by Mr. Dawkins's irrepressible enthusiasm

—— Sarah Lyall , New York Times

The Greatest Show on Earth... is essential reading. I would currently rate it... as the best overall book on the evidence for Evolution

—— Marc E. Miquel , SCOPE

This is a magnificent book of wonderstanding: Richard Dawkins combines an artist's wonder at the virtuosity of nature with a scientist's understanding of how it comes to be

—— Matt Ridley, author of "Nature via Nurture"
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