Christmas is fast approaching. As my family and friends know, there is nothing I love more as a present than a book which has something to do with mathematics or puzzles. Here are a few ideas for books which should appeal to financial modellers:
Hans Rosling’s Factfulness
Top of my recommendations this year is Hans Rosling’s Factfulness which aims to spread a fact-based world view. Rosling shows that a chimpanzee choosing random answers to simple questions about the world would generally outperform professionals including investment bankers, journalists, teachers and Nobel laureates. He urges a greater understanding of data and discusses the instincts which distort our perspective. I loved it and think it makes perfect reading for anyone interested in how numbers help us understand the world.
Hannah Fry’s Hello World
A fascinating discussion of artificial intelligence and how algorithms make decisions about our lives. I learnt here about a four-year class action lawsuit with four thousand plaintiffs in Idaho – all caused by errors in an Excel spreadsheet. As Fry says: “First, someone wrote this garbage spreadsheet, second others naively trusted it.” We so often trust computers without asking “how is this actually working?”. Why am I not surprised?
It’s not just about spreadsheets though: find out about the role of computers in medicine, justice, art and much more besides.
Mickaël Launay’s It All Adds Up
I am really hoping that somebody buys me this book for Christmas. It is a brief history of the mathematical ideas that have changed the world, from Aristotle to Ada Lovelace. Launay believes that maths should, like literature and music, be accessible to everybody.
GCHQ 2
And lastly, I suspect that at least one person will buy me GCHQ 2 this Christmas. I must admit that the GCHQ puzzle book which I recommended two years ago had many bizarre and frustrating puzzles in it. And I cannot believe that I stayed up until 1am solving semaphoring penguins. Addictive this book certainly was and I’m looking forward to the sequel.