Jordan Geometry

If you're like most people, geometry is a dimly remembered exercise you gladly left behind in the dust of ninth grade. It's plodding through a series of miniscule steps only to prove some fact about triangles that was obvious to you in the first place. That's not geometry. Okay, it is geometry, but only a tiny part, which has as much to do with geometry in all its flush modern richness as conjugating a verb has to do with a great novel. Shape reveals the geometry underneath some of the most important scientific, political, and philosophical problems we face.

How should a democracy choose its representatives? How does disease spread? How do computers teach themselves chess and why is chess easier for them than analysing a sentence? All of these are questions about geometry. Jordan Ellenberg reveals the mathematics behind some of the most important scientific, political and philosophical conundrums we face. The word 'geometry', from the Greek, means 'measuring the world'. If anything, geometry doesn't just measure the world - it explains it. Shape shows us how.