Thinking in Numbers

  • Author Daniel Tammet
  • Narrator Daniel Tammet
  • Publisher Hodder & Stoughton
  • Run Time 9 hours and 18 minutes
  • Format Audio
  • Genre Science: general issues.
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What to expect

This is the book that Daniel Tammet, bestselling author and mathematical savant, was born to write. In Tammet's world, numbers are beautiful and mathematics illuminates our lives and minds. Using anecdotes and everyday examples, Tammet allows us to share his unique insights and delight in the way numbers, fractions and equations underpin all our lives.
Inspired by the complexity of snowflakes, Anne Boleyn's sixth finger or his mother's unpredictable behaviour, Tammet explores questions such as why time seems to speed up as we age, whether there is such a thing as an average person and how we can make sense of those we love.
Thinking in Numbers will change the way you think about maths and fire your imagination to see the world with fresh eyes.

(P)2013 Hodder & Stoughton

Critics Review

  • Thinking in Numbers is unprecedented: a pitch-perfect duet between mathematics and literature … Mathematics, Tammet says, is illimitable. It is a language through which the human imagination expresses itself. Presumably this means mathematics has, or deserves, a literature. In Tammet, it already has a laureate.

    New Scientist
  • A collection of essays on subjects as diverse as Shakespeare and Tolstoy, a rumination on snow and another on chess, as well as a fantastically nuanced piece about his mother. It is a collection which showcases Tammet’s extraordinary talent . . . a writer of unique capabilities.

    Scotsman Magazine
  • An interesting and often beautiful approach: Tammet writes well… and his love of numbers shines from the page… Tammet’s discussion of big numbers is fascinating.

    Daily Telegraph
  • Tammet’s choice of subjects is personal, and wonderfully eclectic… What lifts Tammet’s entertaining collection above the ordinary are the often surprising links that he sees, explores and explains.

    Sunday Telegraph
  • Explores the ‘what if’ of maths and links it with literature and life. He is an exhilarating thinker, an exciting writer, and looks at the world with an eclectic, quizzical eye.

    Saga Magazine
  • Tammet is an accomplished writer with a prose style akin to a warm embrace… scintillating … enlightens and entertains in (approximately) equal measure.

    Daily Express

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