An instant New York Times Bestseller! Unreasonably entertaining….reveals how geometric thinking
can allow for everything from fairer American elections to better pandemic planning. - The New
York Times 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 everything. How 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 geometrycomes
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.
