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INTRODUCTION: WHAT'S IT ALL ABOUT?

1. Samuel Boswell, The Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. (1791); Mary Karr, The Liars’ Club: A Memoir (Viking Penguin, 1995).

2. Stephen Jay Gould, “The Median Isn't the Message,” UMassAmherst, Information Technology, accessed June 4, 2015, http://people.umass.edu/biep540w/pdf/Stephen%20Jay%20Gould.pdf.

3. Anne Tyler, Back When We Were Grownups (Knopf, 2001).

4. Milan Kundera, Encounter: Essays (HarperCollins, 2010).

5. John Allen Paulos, Innumeracy: Mathematical Illiteracy and Its Consequences (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1989).

CHAPTER 1: BULLY TEACHER, CHILDHOOD MATH

1. John Allen Paulos, Innumeracy: Mathematical Illiteracy and Its Consequences (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1989).

2. Sheldon Ross, A First Course in Probability (Macmillan, 1994).

3. John Allen Paulos, “Imagining a Hit Thriller with the Number ‘e,’” ABCNews.com, accessed June 8, 2015, http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/WhosCounting/story?id=99501&page=1&singlePage=true.

4. Wikipedia, s.v. “Collatz conjecture,” last modified June 4, 2015, accessed June 6, 2015, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collatz_conjecture.

5. Robert Kanigel, The Man Who Knew Infinity: A Life of the Genius Ramanujan (Simon and Schuster, 1991).

6. Wikipedia, s.v. “Banach-Tarski paradox,” last modified May 29, 2015, accessed June 6, 2015, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banach%E2%80%93Tarski_paradox.

CHAPTER 2: BIAS, BIOGRAPHY, AND WHY WE'RE ALL A BIT FAR-OUT AND BIZARRE

1. “Majority of Parents Abuse Children, Children Report,” Onion, April 13, 2007, accessed June 9, 2015, http://www.theonion.com/article/majority-of-parents-abuse-children-children-report-2183.

2. Steven Wright quote, BrainyQuote, accessed June 9, 2015, http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/s/stevenwrig102563.html.

3. Norman Stuart Sutherland, Irrationality: The Enemy Within (Constable, 1992).

4. Ibid.

5. Edwin A. Abbott, Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions (Cambridge, MA: Perseus, 2002).

6. Wikipedia, s.v. “All models are wrong,” under heading “Quotations of George Box,” last modified January 18, 2015, accessed June 9, 2015, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_models_are_wrong#Quotations_of_George_Box.

7. Michael Chwe, Jane Austen, Game Theorist (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2013).

8. G. H. Hardy, A Mathematician's Apology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1940).

9. Steven L. Goldman, Science, Technology, and Social Progress, Google Books, accessed June 23, 2015, https://books.google.com/books?id=MuPbmJ_pzmcC&pg=PA150&lpg=PA150&dq=from+such+cloistered+clowning+the+world+sickens&source=bl&ots=LsfEuqF0Ah&sig=HpQSdvzpJWDtvnfDJ9Tehb9bums&hl=en&sa=X&ei=RFWJVfCTKNLpoATyub6oDw&ved=0CB8Q6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=from%20such%20cloistered%20clowning%20the%20world%20sickens&f=false.

CHAPTER 3: AMBITION VERSUS NIHILISM

1. Paul Halmos, Naïve Set Theory (Van Nostrand, 1960).

2. Ibid.

3. Ibid.

4. Laurence Sterne, The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy (Wordsworth Editions, 1996).

5. Tetyana Butler, “Paradox of Tristram Shandy,” Suitcase of Dreams, accessed June 9, 2015, http://www.suitcaseofdreams.net/Tristram_Shandy.htm.

6. John Allen Paulos, A Mathematician Reads the Newspaper (New York: Basic Books, 2013).

7. Thomas Nagel, “The Absurd,” Journal of Philosophy, University of Kentucky online, accessed June 9, 2015, https://philosophy.as.uky.edu/sites/default/files/The%20Absurd%20-%20Thomas%20Nagel.pdf.

8. Groucho Marx quote, Genius Quotes, accessed June 23, 2015, http://genius.com/2190673.

9. John Allen Paulos, Irreligion: Why the Arguments for God Just Don't Add Up (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2008).

10. Douglas Hofstadter, I Am a Strange Loop (New York: Basic Books, 2007).

11. Ibid.

12. Ibid.

13. Ibid., pp. 291–93.

14. Herman Melville quote from Moby Dick, Bibliographing, accessed June 9, 2015, http://www.bibliographing.com/2010/07/14/i-promise-nothing-complete-because-any-human-thing-supposed-to-be-complete-must-for-that-very-reason-infallibly-be-faulty/.

15. Robert Nozick, Anarchy, State, and Utopia (New York: Basic Books, 1974).

CHAPTER 4: LIFE'S SHIFTING SHAPES

1. George Lakoff and Rafael Nuñez, Where Mathematics Comes From: How the Embodied Mind Brings Mathematics into Being (New York: Basic Books, 2001).

2. Carl Japikse and Franklin Japikse, Fart Proudly: Writings of Benjamin Franklin You Never Read in School (Marble Hill, GA: Enthea Press, 1990).

3. Tolstoy quote from War and Peace, Mathematical Fiction, accessed June 10, 2015, http://kasmana.people.cofc.edu/MATHFICT/mfview.php?callnumber=mf117.

4. Ibid.

5. Thich Nhat Hanh, “Clouds in Each Paper,” Awakin.org, March 25, 2002, accessed June 10, 2015, http://www.awakin.org/read/view.php?tid=222.

6. Peter Dizikes, “When the Butterfly Effect Took Flight, MIT Technology Review, February 22, 2011, accessed June 10, 2015, http://www.technologyreview.com/article/422809/when-the-butterfly-effect-took-flight/.

7. John Allen Paulos, “We're Measuring Bacteria with a Yardstick,” Opinion, New York Times, November 22, 2000, accessed June 10, 2015, http://www.nytimes.com/2000/11/22/opinion/22PAUL.html?ex=1078549200&en=1bbd1e85c6ec0af5&ei=5070.

8. John Allen Paulos, “How Florida's Chief Judge Misquoted Me,” Philadelphia Daily News, December 11, 2000, accessed June 10, 2015, http://articles.philly.com/2000-12-11/news/25578951_1_al-gore-popular-vote-voter-news-service.

9. Ibid.

10. Jeff Greenfield, Oh, Waiter! One Order of Crow!: Inside the Strangest Presidential Election Finish in American History (Putnam Adult, 2001).

11. Jack Copeland, Turing: The Pioneer of the Information Age (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014).

CHAPTER 5: MOVING TOWARD THE UNEXPECTED MIDDLE

1. Heraclitus quote, YourDictionary, accessed June 11, 2015, http://quotes.yourdictionary.com/author/heraclitus/.

2. George Carlin quote, BrainyQuote, accessed June 11, 2015, http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/g/georgecarl391403.html.

3. Franz Kafka quote from The Zürau Aphorisms, Brilliant.Life.Quotes., accessed June 11, 2015, http://www.brilliantlifequotes.com/inspirational/franz-kafka-quotes-life-suffering-religion/.

4. John Allen Paulos, Once Upon a Number: The Hidden Mathematical Logic of Stories (New York: Basic Books, 1998).

5. John Allen Paulos, Mathematics and Humor: A Study of the Logics of Humor (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980).

6. Anne Tyler, Back When We Were Grownups (Ballantine Books, 2002).

7. Wikipedia, s.v. “Reminiscence bump,” last modified April 9, 2015, accessed June 11, 2015, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reminiscence_bump.

8. Daniel Kahneman, Thinking, Fast and Slow (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2011).

9. Benford's law, Math Pages, accessed June 11, 2015, http://www.mathpages.com/home/kmath302/kmath302.htm.

10. Daniel Schacter, The Seven Sins of Memory (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2001).

CHAPTER 6: PIVOTS—PAST TO PRESENT

1. Tzetzka Ilieva, “Sofia Kovalevskaya, Mathematician,” History's Women, accessed June 23, 2015, http://www.historyswomen.com/moregreatwomen/SofiaKovalevskaya.htm.

2. Alice Munro, Too Much Happiness (New York: Vintage, 2010).

3. Sofia Kovalevskaya, Nihilist Girl (New York: Modern Language Association of America, 2002).

4. Greg Chaitin, Algorithmic Information Theory (Cambridge Tracts in Theoretical Computer Science) (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988).

5. Claude Shannon, The Mathematical Theory of Communication (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1949).

6. George Johnson, Fire in the Mind (New York: Knopf, 1995).

7. Bertrand Russell, letter to the author, in Autobiography of Bertrand Russell (London: George Allen and Unwin version, 1975).

CHAPTER 7: ROMANCE AMONG THE TRANS-HUMANS AND US CIS-HUMANS

1. The 37 percent figure and the optimal way to find your best partner: Wikipedia, s.v. “Secretary problem,” last modified January 13, 2015, accessed June 14, 2015, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secretary_problem.

2. Alain de Botton, “On the Madness and Charm of Crushes,” Philosopher's Mail, accessed June 14, 2015, http://thephilosophersmail.com/relationships/on-the-madness-and-charm-of-crushes/.

3. John Allen Paulos, “The Advanced Metrics of Attraction,” New York Times, July 14, 2014, accessed June 14, 2015, http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/15/science/the-advanced-metrics-of-attraction.html?_r=0

4. Daniel Kahneman, Thinking, Fast and Slow (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2013).

5. Ibid.

6. Wikipedia, s.v. “Zeno's paradoxes,” last modified June 15, 2015, accessed June 23, 2015, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zeno's_paradoxes.

CHAPTER 8: CHANCES ARE THAT CHANCES ARE

1. Ecclesiastes “Time and chance happeneth to all.”

2. Sheldon Ross, A First Course in Probability (Macmillan, 1994).

3. Arthur C. Clarke, Rendezvous with Rama (New York: Bantam Books, 1973).

4. John Allen Paulos, Innumeracy: Mathematical Illiteracy and Its Consequences (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1989).

5. Douglas Hofstadter, Gödel, Escher, and Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid (New York: Basic Books, 1999).

6. John Allen Paulos, A Mathematician Reads the Newspaper (New York: Basic Books, 2013).

7. John Allen Paulos, I Think, Therefore I Laugh (New York: Columbia University Press, 1985).

8. John Allen Paulos, archive of “Who's Counting” columns, ABCNews, accessed June 15, 2015, http://abcnews.go.com/search?searchtext=%22John%20allen%20paulos%22#.

9. John Allen Paulos, Irreligion: A Mathematician Explains Why the Arguments for God Just Don't Add Up (Hill and Wang, 2009).

CHAPTER 9: LIVES IN THE ERA OF NUMBERS AND NETWORKS

1. Stephen Wolfram, A New Kind of Science (Wolfram Media, 2002).

2. Seth Stephens-Davidowitz, “Searching for Sex,” Sunday Review, New York Times, January 24, 2015, accessed June 20, 2015, http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/25/opinion/sunday/seth-stephens-davidowitz-searching-for-sex.html.

3. Wolfram, A New Kind of Science.

4. Ibid.

5. Bruce Goldman, “Mathematics or Memory: Study Charts Collision Course in Brain,” Stanford Medicine News Center, accessed June 16, 2015, http://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2012/09/mathematics-or-memory-study-charts-collision-course-in-brain.html.

6. Marcel Proust, In Search of Lost Time (Modern Library, 1981).

7. Pablo Picasso, “Statement to Marius de Zayas,” 1923, Columbia University Media Center for Art History, accessed June 20, 2015, http://www.learn.columbia.edu/monographs/picmon/pdf/art_hum_reading_49.pdf.

8. Wikiquote, s.v. “Blaise Pascal,” last modified May 31, 2015, accessed June 16, 2015, http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Blaise_Pascal.

9. John Allen Paulos, Twitter account, http://www.twitter.com/johnallenpaulos.

10. For more on Erdős numbers, see Wikipedia, s.v. “Erdős number,” last modified May 30, 2015, accessed June 16, 2015, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erd%C5%91s_number.

11. David Foster Wallace, Everything and More: A Compact History of Infinity (Norton, 2003).

12. Wikipedia, s.v. “Friendship paradox,” last modified March 13, 2015, accessed June 16, 2015, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friendship_paradox; see also John Allen Paulos, “Why You're Probably Less Popular Than Your Friends, Scientific American, January 18, 2007, accessed June 16, 2015, http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-youre-probably-less-popular/.

13. Alexander Herzen, My Past and Thoughts (Oakland: University of California Press, 1982).

14. Louis Menand, “Everybody's an Expert,” New Yorker, December 5, 2005, accessed June 20, 2015, http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2005/12/05/everybodys-an-expert.

15. Wikipedia, s.v. “The Hedgehog and the Fox,” last modified February 3, 2015, accessed June 20, 2015, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hedgehog_and_the_Fox.

CHAPTER 10: MY STOCK LOSS, HYPOCRISY, AND A CARD TRICK

1. Wikipedia, s.v. “Bernie Ebbers,” last modified May 14, 2015, accessed June 17, 2015, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernard_Ebbers.

2. John Allen Paulos, “My Lowest Ebb(ers),” College of Science and Technology, Temple University, March 1, 2005, https://math.temple.edu/~paulos/ebbers.html.

3. Wikipedia, s.v. “Bernie Ebbers.”

4. John Allen Paulos, A Mathematician Plays the Stock Market (New York: Basic Books, 2003).

5. John Allen Paulos, Innumeracy: Mathematical Illiteracy and Its Consequences (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1989).

6. Wikipedia, s.v. “Gettier problem,” last modified June 15, 2015, accessed June 17, 2015, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gettier_problem.

7. Definition of hypocrisy, Free Dictionary, accessed June 17, 2015, http://www.thefreedictionary.com/hypocrisy.

8. Wikipedia, s.v. “Church–Turing thesis,” last modified June 4, 2015, accessed June 17, 2015, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church%E2%80%93Turing_thesis.

9. Wikipedia, s.v. “Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz,” last modified June 14, 2015, accessed June 17, 2015, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gottfried_Wilhelm_Leibniz.

10. Wikipedia, s.v. “Boolean satisfiability problem,” last modified May 15, 2015, accessed June 17, 2015, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boolean_satisfiability_problem.

11. Wikipedia, s.v. “Felix Klein,” last modified May 25, 2015, accessed June 17, 2015, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Felix_Klein.

12. “The Kruskal Count,” Mathematical Card Tricks, American Mathematical Society, accessed June 17, 2015, http://www.ams.org/samplings/feature-column/fcarc-mulcahy6.

13. John Allen Paulos, Once Upon a Number: The Hidden Mathematical Logic of Stories (New York: Basic Books, 1998).

14. Wikipedia, s.v., “Markov chain,” last modified June 16, 2015, accessed June 17, 2015, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Markov_chain.

CHAPTER 11: BIOGRAPHIES: VERSTEHEN OR SUPERFICIAL

1. Garrison Keillor, “Mark Twain's Riverboat Ramblings,” Sunday Book Review, New York Times, December 16, 2010, accessed June 20, 2015, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/19/books/review/Keillor-t.html?pagewanted=all.

2. Paul Auster quote, goodreads, accessed June 20, 2015, https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/41926-every-life-is-inexplicable-i-kept-telling-myself-no-matter.

3. Rebecca West quote, Quotes.net, accessed June 20, 2015, http://www.quotes.net/quote/18882.

4. Wikipedia, s.v. Verstehen, last modified October 18, 2014, accessed June 20, 2015, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Verstehen.

5. Donald E. Knuth, “The Complexity of Songs,” fivedots.coe.psu.ac.th, accessed June 20, 2015, http://fivedots.coe.psu.ac.th/Software.coe/242-535_ADA/Background/Readings/knuth_song_complexity.pdf.

6. KC and the Sunshine Band, “That's the Way (I Like It),” MetroLyrics, accessed June 20, 2015, http://www.metrolyrics.com/thats-the-way-i-like-it-lyrics-kc-and-the-sunshine-band.html.

7. “Berry Paradox,” WolframMathWorld, accessed June 20, 2015, http://mathworld.wolfram.com/BerryParadox.html.

8. “The Repugnant Conclusion,” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, September 9, 2010, accessed June 20, 2015, http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/repugnant-conclusion/.

9. Thomas Nagel, “What Is It Like to be a Bat?” Philosophical Review 83, no. 4 (October 1974): 435–50, accessed June 20, 2015, http://organizations.utep.edu/portals/1475/nagel_bat.pdf.

10. Ibid.

11. Ibid.

12. Ibid.

13. Wikiquote, s.v. “Robert Frost,” last modified February 6, 2015, accessed June 20, 2015, https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Robert_Frost.

14. Brian Skinner on Gompertz, “Your Body Wasn't Built to Last: A Lesson from Human Mortality Rates, Gravity and Levity, July 8, 2009, accessed June 20, 2015, https://gravityandlevity.wordpress.com/2009/07/08/your-body-wasnt-built-to-last-a-lesson-from-human-mortality-rates/.

15. Robert Krulwich, “Am I Going to Die This Year? A Mathematical Puzzle,” Krulwich Wonders, NPR, January 8, 2014, accessed June 20, 2015, http://www.npr.org/sections/krulwich/2014/01/08/260463710/am-i-going-to-die-this-year-a-mathematical-puzzle.

16. David Quammen, “Lives of the Cells,” Sunday Book Review, New York Times, September 6, 2013, accessed June 20, 2015, http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/08/books/review/george-johnsons-cancer-chronicles.html.

17. Ibid.

CHAPTER 12: TRIPS, MEMORIES, AND BECOMING JADED

1. John Allen Paulos, Beyond Numeracy (Knopf, 1991).

2. William Chinn and N. E. Steenrod, First Concepts of Topology: The Geometry of Mappings of Segments, Curves, Circles, and Disks (Mathematical Association of America, 1966).

3. Francis Su et al., “Borsuk–Ulam Theorem,” Math Fun Facts, accessed June 20, 2015, https://www.math.hmc.edu/funfacts/ffiles/20003.7.shtml.

4. Wikipedia, s.v. “Horseshoe map,” last modified May 28, 2014, accessed June 20, 2015, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horseshoe_map.

5. Daniel Kahneman, Thinking, Fast and Slow (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2013).

6. Ibid.

7. Ibid.

8. Picasso quote, Milestone birthday quotations, write-out-loud.com, accessed June 20, 2015, http://www.write-out-loud.com/milestone-birthday-quotations.html.

9. Wikipedia, s.v. “Euler's identity,” last modified June 2, 2015, accessed June 20, 2015, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euler%27s_identity.

10. Wikipedia, s.v. “Bob Buhl,” last modified February 1, 2015, accessed June 20, 2015, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_Buhl.

11. Leo Tolstoy, “How Much Earth Does a Man Need?” Literature Network, accessed June 20, 2015, http://www.online-literature.com/tolstoy/2738/.

12. Beckett quote, Notable Quotes, accessed June 20, 2015, http://www.notable-quotes.com/b/beckett_samuel.html.