Shape: The Hidden Geometry of Information, Biology, Strategy, Democracy, and Everything Else

From the New York Times-bestselling author of How Not to Be Wrong-himself a world-class geometer-a far-ranging exploration of the power of geometry, which turns out to help us think better about practically everythingHow should a democracy choose its representatives? How can you stop a pandemic from sweeping the world? How do computers learn to play Go, and why is learning Go so much easier for them than learning to read a sentence? Can ancient Greek proportions predict the stock market? (Sorry, no.) What should your kids learn in school if they really want to learn to think? All these are questions about geometry. For real.If you're like most people, geometry is a sterile and dimly remembered exercise you gladly left behind in the dust of ninth grade, along with your braces and active romantic interest in pop singers. If you recall any of it, 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. Geometry asks: Where are things? Which things are near each other? How can you get from one thing to another thing? Those are important questions. The word "geometry," from the Greek for "measuring the world." If anything, that's an undersell. Geometry doesn't just measure the world-it explains it. Shape shows us how.

FOLLOW-UP TO MASSIVELY POPULAR HOW NOT TO BE WRONG: The hundreds of thousands of readers of Ellenberg's first book will be thrilled to see a new book from him on a similar topicEVERGREEN SELF-IMPROVEMENT ANGLE: The surprisingly universal applicability of geometry and the many anecdotes in the book will lend themselves to media coverage regardless of news cycleMUCH MORE THAN MATH: To quote the top Amazon review of How Not to Be Wrong on the appeal of Ellenberg's writing, "Start with plotting a line, and end with the reason you get up in the morning."