I mean, theres never been a culture or civilization without not anymore than without music or drawing. But you know, in many ways, we are still wrestling with the question that are confusing the ancient greeks and sumerians and egyptians. We have expanded a circle of knowledge to a large extent but there is much more we dont know. What is an example of that . What do we know you . An example in the news lately, weve known for thousands of years that theres infinite melonie numbers like 215 and seven in 13 that cant be factored. Basically items if you like. But here is the thing we dont know. I mentioned five and seven, only to a park right to each other. We dont know if there is infinitely numbers that are two apart. Whether these twin prizes go on and on forever or eventually stop. People have wondered for hundreds of years and we get closer and closer and a couple of years ago we still dont know. We might find out tomorrow. We magnify now for out for 50 years. We may never find out. Host what does it matter for no apparent numbers are . Do they serve a purpose . Guest that is a great question. Heres what we know about math. It seems to describe the basic structure of the way things are. Any individual mathematical facts come into my know why we need to know that . Is that going to cure cancer tomorrow . Publicly not good that was not the actually allowed to tell you is that where. The history has shown us somehow advances in math always ring with them knowledge of all kinds of things. We are constantly saying things developed by mathematicians purely for the sake of understanding. About the way things are. Yet the practical applications. Host first of all, where did you come out with the title how not to be wrong . Guest i had that title before i knew it the book would be about. It is to some extent an old monty python sketch on how not to be seen about how to hide and if you didnt hide, it exploded a bomb, typical british humor. But in some sense comes from not. The real reason for that title is because i want people to think about mathematics not as sterile. Exercise is, should be quite honest for many will is their interaction in school. Every object, every euro was created to solve a problem. People were confused about some teen in one of the less confused. One thing i try to do in the book is take these mathematical things and talk about what problems they were originally for it to go back in history to win the people not understand this and what was that like in the process of figuring it out. Host what was the part 00 pythagorean theorem solve . Just goes to pythagorean theorem was practical from the start. It tells you if you have a right triangle or one of the angles, in a square angle like this and you know how long this site is, you want to know if you are physically building a structure and when you build a building, its pretty cool for your ability not to be slanted and stand up straight. Across you do need to know how much would you need. So that is much less theoretical than most of the stuff i work on in my day job. Host you tell a story in your book, professor about abraham wald. Who was it . This is an amazing joy. Walt was a guy, let me tell you he grows up in hungary and is working in austria and in the 30s they say youve got to leave. He ends up in the United States working in an economics institute. And during world war ii he is working as a topsecret math and statistics lab. I have no idea until i was researching us that there was such a thing, the manhattan project. Obviously the statistician in the story i tell in the book is a group of generals comes to this group. They say well, the planes that are coming back from flying missions over germany, theres more bullet holes in some part than others. They are getting hit more than the fuselage and lessen the engine. We want to know how much more armor we should put on the places where they get paid more. How much heavily should we be armoring . You dont want too much armor on them or it wont fly. We dont want to though because it wont be safe. Maybe theres some kind of mathematical quotient if you give us for how we should be put the price of the planes getting hit more. And walt says you guys have it completely wrong. You have to put the armor where there are no bullet holes. Kind of weird to put yourself in the position of the general. Walt points out to them that its not that the germans cant get their planes on the engine. Is that the planes on the engines are the ones not coming back from germany. The plant that they see content to stay or seen the ones that didnt get shot in the engine and didnt get shot down. Thats interesting about this is that didnt actually give them the answer they were in. He didnt give them a formula or a spreadsheet. Nonetheless, what he did was deeply mathematical. Not just about numbers. Its about understanding and taking a question and asking what assumptions underlie the question. Is that correct . Given the answers to questions is pretty easy. But asking the right question is what mathematical thinking is all about. Host in your book, you talk about the laffer curve. First of all, what is it and is it mathematically defensible . Guest yeah, i defended actually. The story probably not a true story, the too good not to tell anyway. It was drawn on a map can by Arthur Laffer who is a wellknown conservative economist and thinker during the reagan administration. The curve is meant to depict the following. What should the tax rate be . Theres two extremes. If your tax rate is zero from your government will not get any tax money. Lets say the tax rate was 100 . Every single penny is taken in taxes. And nobodys going to work. They find ways to hide it from the government. The government also get no revenue. Its a 0 tax rate in no government revenue. 1 tax rate and no government revenue. Somewhere in between have to go up and then down. A curve that is down here has to have a maximum somewhere in between. Some optimal rate. What laffer believed, the virtual black board here if we were on the side of the curve for increasing taxes would actually bring government revenue down. Thats what economists and 2015 pretty universally date. He was wrong about where we were on the laffer curve, but he was right about the general picture, that there is some way that increasing a further paradoxically reduces the amount of taxes the government get. Hes often got that and to some degree and fairly. Alice at the Steven Pinker pinker comes up in your book . Hes an interesting guy who comes up a social scientist and his enough not clean flicks is. I was really struck by the most recent book, which is very quantitative in nature. He writes about the fact that in many ways for all the terrible things we see in the newspaper every day, i have to hide it from a kit that i want to ask a lot of questions. He argues that the world is actually much safer in our pleasant and quiet in more peaceful now than it ever has been in human history. One part of the argument is while we have the horrible events on a global scale come to think that world war ii which goes to remind people, its much bigger now so in terms of the percentage of the world people who are killed or injured by some calamity, very things that happened a long time ago proportionately became quite a bit worse. I think this is a very interesting question, which is to use ink that a calamity that killed 10,000 people in the World Population of the day 100 million is the same thing as a calamity that killed lets say 100,000 people in a population 10 times the day, a billion. Theres one more serve better. This is an interesting question because it mixes both math and just your general moral sentiment. Its not by enough alone. There is no math formula. On the other hand, you also can answer the question without a part about what you are doing to measure the scale with a Natural Disaster or war. Host i think Steven Pinker appears in your chapter. What is that chapter about . Guest backchat or refers to the very common consequence, it is a foreign place. People try to convey the sense of it. They say the island has a population of 20,000 Climate Change displays a thousand of them in the lowlying region people who say. How many displaced americans. What american noggins take something that happens far away. What is the equivalent to a . Host 10 palestinians are killed. Guest thats the same as 500 americans or Something Like that. So when i say in the book, this is a great example of you can set up a map to give you that he and their. To a certain question. The question is is that the right question . Released in me, you get into quite morally dicey territory when you say 10 israeli lives means the same as 500 american lives. You can sort of do that, but when you actually listen to the words coming out of your mouth, is that really what i want to say . Its a great example at the mathematical thinking that goes handinhand with the other parts of cognition like your moral mind, aesthetic, general common sense. Host we used that statistic quite a bit. I know thats the point of your boat. How much line is they are the statistics . Guest when you talk about lying from you think about intentional malfeasance. Someone is really trained as a prelude pulled the wool over your eyes. Let me tell you if youre at the breakfast table with me, and youll hear a a story about something every day country and every day. Most of the time, the large majority of the time that not somebody intentionally been on intentionally been on a spirit that is something they want to say and what to believe and they find a way to enlist some kind of numerical data to their cause. Its not because theyre intentionally trying to cheat you. It is an offense shooting themselves. Host professor jordan ellenberg, talked about political issues of income inequality. How do you look at that as a mathematician . Guest i mean, an interesting question is how do you measure income inequality . How do i get two different societies and say it is more unequal than not want our haughty look at the same society at different periods of time and say how inequality changed . Here at least to the best of my knowledge, if you compare the United States today with United States i grew up in, i dont think theres any dispute that our society is more economically unequal now. Basically any measure you want and that is the story that is pretty clear. Host somebody sits down at the blackjack table, should they play for two hours or 10 hours . Guest boy, i have say i have been to a blackjack table once in my life. I lost money but i think it took me about four seconds. I dont think i have enough capital to sit there for two hours or 10 hours. Host you talk about gambling in your boat. Guest i do, gambling is such a case because people have moral feelings about it. They have mathematical feelings about it. I think Everybody Knows that for most people in most circumstances, gambling is not a wise investment. If you have money that you want to do something when it, probably playing blackjack with it is not the most revenue enhancing choice you could make. This place actually, when i read in the book especially one of the most popular kinds of gambling is playing the lottery. Not quite as glamorous as going to las vegas and then the blackjack table, but its incredibly popular throughout the country. Almost everyone will tell you. Why do so many people do it . Either have a crazy story i read about a lottery massachusetts with the court that actually allowed several groups of people with quite a lot of money over many years. Thats a very unusual situation. Most people are going to lose on average most of the time. I think the conclusion most people with bad if people actually enjoy playing the lottery. Partly they play because they hope to win, but sometimes theres an argument you get a certain amount of money worth of entertainment out of each ticket you buy. That is a big part of peoples motivation. I think it depends who you ask. It is obviously very dangerous territory to talk about being quantified enjoyment and quantify how much fun you are having and say how many dollars as that word . On one and you can see it is a hard problem. People trade dollars all the time. Ill go to the movie at all costs 12 that no one ago or 5 i will go. Whether or not it can be made mathematically, people are certainly making these judgments all the time. Certainly lots of economists say thats absolutely a mathematical question. Different kinds of the utility of entertainment, utility and safety. Some people dislike gambling because they dont like that feeling of being unsafe or feeling like they are at risk. And negative utility of playing the lottery. I think it assigns numerical values. Host professor jordan ellenberg, the baltimore stock worker. Where did you come up with that . The baltimore stock broker is a figure of mathematical folklore. Ill explain how it works. Heres what happens. You get bad a newsletter, this particular stock is going to go up next week. I dont know exactly how old it is. You assume it is a scam. And you see that indeed thats acted go out. Interesting. The next week you get another letter in the mail. Soandsos stock is going to go down. You read the business section in the baltimore. Broker predicted the stock has gone down. What you get another tip. 10 weeks in a row. At that point you are ready to give this guy a lifesaving. They know whats going on. What dont you know about this story . What you dont know if im the first day the baltimore stock worker sends out a thousand newsletters. Is that it would go up, 500 that it would go down. What happens to the 500 people . The next week 250 people get a tip that he will go down. The same stock is going to go out. That is covering all his races. 10 weeks later its down to just you. You are the lucky one whose completely come and. All you need is one on the line. You dont have to have a thousand. One is enough. And so, mathematically you cant do was make a good imprint from the information in front of you. Sometimes you need to know not only what you observe, but also what you did not serve. He did not answer about the chances this guy had. How could somebody get 10 stocks in a row . A thousand as you could do that. A lot of crazier stuff could happen if you give enough chances to get it right. Host finally, professor, big data in mathematics. Mr. Was a word of the day, year, decade. I love it. I think about this stuff a lot. Its not so much that it big. We could do another hour. Its not so much that its big. If i were to have a chili number, not not clear that no more difficult than adding up to numbers. Same operation on a larger scale. The fact that we have a social network and Internet Usage in an essay from god knows where. Its not just that its big, but a structure. The structures of networks of people, geographic structures, time structures. Mathematicians i would go so far as to say how to invest in a new kind of statistics. They are just not suitable for other kinds that controlled trials one at a time. That is when i got the fire hose trying to figure out how to do it. Its an incredibly exciting time trying to figure out how do you make sense of the spreadsheet of a trillion by a trillion. That is not what is built to do. We have to figure out how to interpret those numbers and we dont know yet. Its not magic. A lot of people have an interest in how you understand how to do with the data. I hope we will. Host weve been talking at the end for mathematics as their jordan ellenberg. How not to be wrong as the name of the boat. This is booktv on location in madison on cspan2. His chief desire was to put the seat of government on the banks of the potomac. Washington was given that task is fighting it in 100 miles of the potomac and was actually given up to us the constitution said up to 10mile square. He created a diamond district if you will, diamond shaped district. You can see the top going up to maryland as they do as im sure youre all familiar. But they went down across the potomac to alexandria. That is an important thing to consider. He was taking both sides of the potomac. In the residence at, which allowed the president , directed the president to place the seat of government on the potomac and all of that gave him not 1 penny to carry out the job. So it was rather a trendsetting of congress at the time to vote for some thing and not give it any money. Washington had to contend with that and well talk a little bit briefly about that. They had to contend with Thomas Jefferson on the one hand you have a vision of the city, which is airy different. It wasnt a city at all. It was a federal town. And this is it right here. This is rob creek coming in here. You see the town about to be 15 acres 1500 acres, excuse me. 1200 divided into quarter acre lot and the remaining 300 acres would do just fine for public building. Jeffersons capital would take in about 20 good dwellinghouse is for those who belong to the government and a half dozen taverns, which im not sure with enough at the time. Then, washington didnt think that way. We have to remember washington and baghdad to come up with a plan. The plan he came up with the missus by the way the plan done by Andrew Ellicott was for a city of about 750,000 people. At the time, the largest city in the United States was 40,000 people in 1790. It is adapted. What font used words like empire. He is worried and now is important, it do. He thought not of the united state that that was, but as the United States would be incurred the. Jefferson had designed by tom on washington of course went with what font. [inaudible conversations] caught back ladies and gentlemen, happy birthday. And this is no ordinary bill of rights. On december 15th, 1791, the bill of rights was ratified and made part of the constitution this day and this moment is in fact the 225th anniversary of the ratification of the bill of rights. Amount of applause for the bill of rights. [applause] and jeffrey rosen, president of this wonderful institution, the National Constitution center, which is the only jewish in america chartered by congress to disseminate information about the u. S. Constitution on a nonpartisan basis. And we have a thread in bill of rights. Weve got a block buster show up for marvelous books about the bill of rights. Do it here about the origins of magna carta, about madison note and as absurd to change his own role in the drafting of the constitution. You hear about the value dissent and a great book trying to channel the writers of the federalist papers and imagine what they would think about and