My first Economics professor was a classic snob academic. But he said something in those foggy 8 am classes that stuck with me, precisely because of the snobbiness:

There are really only two kinds of people: People who understand numbers and people who are abused by them.

Well before that, I’d hear claims of rather, shall we say, specious validity but didn’t have much more than a gut feeling to refute them with. This basic tension has plagued me for as long as I can remember. I don’t mind people choosing something after consideration. I do mind people choosing something and then deluding themselves into thinking they made a smart choice. To put it another way, I don’t as much care if they end up being wrong, I care about how they got to be wrong.

Which is why I’ve been LOVING How Not to Be Wrong by Jordan Ellenberg. This book is to mathematics what Freakonomics was to economics. It’s a good field manual to decision making but even better to punching holes in other people’s flawed thinking, which is actually my favorite thing.

The book is very enjoyable to read (provided you aren’t intimidated by math in the first place), and takes an encyclopedic breadth to illustrate the ideas.

Two other things that this book has that I look for in books generally but non-fiction in particular: it has high rereadability and it generates a lot of additional books to add to the Anti-Library.

I should finish this book (for the first time) before thanksgiving, and I’ll spend thanksgiving week finishing Order of the Phoenix. I’ll close out the year with Jennfier Egan’s Manhattan Beach *and possibly try *Lincoln in the Bardo again.