Much mathematics, little life and death

If it were a mathematical law that the number of encomiums from colleagues and critics on book covers is inversely proportional to the quality of the contents, that would be an – almost ironic – ill omen for a popular mathematics book such as The Math of Life & Death by Kit Yates. There are already two on the cover itself, three more on the back, and the first two pages of the book are devoted to them as well.

To say, in keeping with that supposed law, that Yates’s book is rubbish would be going far too far, but it is a fact that it demands a certain perseverance. The first few dozen pages, with their unsurprising insights and mediocre anecdotes, are likely to put off many a reader. Yates introduces himself in a slightly too pedestrian introduction as a mathematical biologist, working as an associate professor at the University of Bath (UK), and explains why he approached his field from the mathematical side: ‘In school, I enjoyed science but wasn’t interested in cutting up dead things.’

Seven chapters follow, each devoted to one of his ‘mathematical principles that shape our lives’, as the subtitle promises. The first chapter addresses our inability to grasp the phenomenon of exponential growth — old hat for molecular scientists. After that it quickly becomes more engaging, though one is still left wondering about the rationale behind the choice of those seven principles; it seems more as though Yates simply wanted to touch on a handful of themes. A pleasing recurring motif is that of chance — and, once again, our inability to recognise it as such — though Leonard Mlodinow handled it more adeptly in The Drunkard’s Walk.

Kit Yates explains, amongst other things, which quantities of McNuggets you cannot make using the portion sizes sold by McDonald’s

The book regularly demonstrates in an original manner that mathematics underpins everything around us; just as we chemists say ‘chemistry is everywhere’, Yates shows that the same is certainly true of mathematics. But within its genre, the book does not rise above the mediocre — if only because the title is a curious choice. For anyone expecting a book about ‘the mathematics of life and death’ from The Math of Life & Death will be sorely disappointed: Yates covers everything from nuclear reactions and crime statistics to pyramid schemes and the muddle of time zones. And which quantities of McNuggets you cannot make using the portion sizes sold by McDonald’s.

A pleasant enough book, but descriptions such as ‘exquisitely interesting’ (Ian McEwan) and ‘dizzying and dazzling’ (Nature) are rather overstated.