The Joy of X

Award-winning Steven Strogatz, one of the foremost popularisers of maths, has written a witty and fascinating account of maths' most compelling ideas and how, so often, they are an integral part of everyday life.
Maths is everywhere, often where we don't even realise. Award-winning professor Steven Strogatz acts as our guide as he takes us on a tour of numbers that - unbeknownst to the unitiated - connect pop culture, literature, art, philosophy, current affairs, business and even every day life. In The Joy of X, Strogatz explains the great ideas of maths - from negative numbers to calculus, fat tails to infinity - with clarity, wit and insight. He is the maths teacher you never had and this book is perfect for the smart and curious, the expert and the beginner.

Steven Strogatz is the professor of applied mathematics at Cornell University. A renowned teacher, and one of the world's most highly-cited mathematicians, he received MIT's E.M. Baker Award, the only institute-wide teaching prize selected solely by students. He is the author of several textbooks, as well as the bestseller Sync and The Calculus of Friendship. He lives in Ithaca, New York, with his wife Carole and their two daughters.