The Arithmetic of Life

The design criteria for Arithmetic became: Use real-life examples, use actual words and numbers, keep it short, and exterminate all equations with unknown stuff in them.

Shaffner uses a light touch: most of his essays involve one or another member of two imagined Seattle families, the Sharpes and the DeNialls. Shaffner puts together an unusual but effective mix of humor, logic, statistics, and insight: he is probably correct that there would be less innumeracy if most math education was like this. --Mary Ellen Curtin