Six Maths Essentials

The 'Mozart of mathematics' (New York Times) takes us on a tour of the core ideas of mathematical thinking

In Six Maths Essentials, the renowned mathematician Terence Tao shows how mathematics has evolved from counting and geometry into a flexible set of tools for understanding an increasingly complex world. He moves effortlessly from children discovering infinity through play to the numbers that underpin our online lives; from Johannes Kepler using algebra to price a barrel of wine to curved geometries that explain why GPS works and planes don't fly in straight lines on a map. Along the way, dice games, insurance policies and financial crises illuminate probability's promise - and its limits - while deceptively simple rules give rise to chaos, pattern and life itself.

Six Maths Essentials, Tao's first popular maths book, provides a glimpse into the workings of his incomparable mind and how he thinks about the creativity and interconnectedness of the mathematical enterprise. Contrary to popular perception, mathematics, he insists, isn't magic. It's a powerful way of thinking from first principles and of modelling the world that anyone can learn.