The Arithmetic of Life - Hardcover

Shaffner, George

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0345426312 ISBN 13: 9780345426314

Publisher: Ballantine Books, 1999

Synopsis

Life can make sense. All it takes is an open mind,
a few good numbers, and some simple arithmetic.

In The Arithmetic of Life and Death, George Shaffner brings to life the great wisdom inherent in equations as elementary as 1 + 1 = 2. For in the Information Age, numbers are the bottom line. Though many of us live in a blissful state where the memory of high school math classes have long receded from our synapses, if you can't master simple math--from your raise to the rise of inflation, your weekly family budget to the yearly federal deficit, sales tax to income tax, peaks in the stock market to drops in your cholesterol levels--you may go down for the count.

But don't despair. Shaffner's math meditations can show you how to add, subtract, multiply, and divide your way to deeper understanding. His math philosophy gives you real life lessons on how to think about numbers--minus the pain. The Arithmetic of Life and Death applies the basic principles of mathematics to some of the most profound, troubling, and just plain puzzling questions of our time.

Each chapter explains a unique facet of life that can only be understood through the magic of numbers. Whether it's a daring rumination on why more things go wrong in life than right, how much it will cost you to smoke for a lifetime, why crime (accumulatively) doesn't pay, why the probability that you would turn out to be you is one in billions of trillions, why meetings were invented (now there's a mystery), or the likelihood of life after death, this illuminating and lucidly reasoned book will forever change the way you think about numbers.

It's a contemplative philosophy for the post-modern age. It's The Arithmetic of Life and Death.

About this title

About the Author

George Shaffner has worked in the computer industry for twenty years, most recently as CEO or COO of three international computer companies. He is the father of three children, who are all math refugees.

From the Inside Flap

e sense. All it takes is an open mind,
a few good numbers, and some simple arithmetic.

In The Arithmetic of Life and Death, George Shaffner brings to life the great wisdom inherent in equations as elementary as 1 + 1 = 2. For in the Information Age, numbers are the bottom line. Though many of us live in a blissful state where the memory of high school math classes have long receded from our synapses, if you can't master simple math--from your raise to the rise of inflation, your weekly family budget to the yearly federal deficit, sales tax to income tax, peaks in the stock market to drops in your cholesterol levels--you may go down for the count.

But don't despair. Shaffner's math meditations can show you how to add, subtract, multiply, and divide your way to deeper understanding. His math philosophy gives you real life lessons on how to think about numbers--minus the pain. The Arithmetic of Life and Death applies the basic principles of mathematics to some of the most

Reviews

Do business meetings save more time than they waste? Can some gamblers expect to win more than they lose? On average, will you save or lose time by speeding? And what are your niece's chances of becoming what she wants to be when she grows up? Shaffner shows readers how to find answers to these and other questions of statistics, probability, simple economics and applied mathematics in this set of 38 linked essays aimed at the innumerate potential readers Shaffner nicknames "Math Refugees." The author explains how the cumulative "chance of getting caught" makes crime a bad career choice. He also shows how an exceptionally talented worker can damage a business: his or her own work may raise total productivity, but disgruntled co-workers who quarrel and slack off can cause a net loss. Shaffner's writing is usually clever and clear: many chapters rely on anecdotes, most of which feature prudent Cecilia Sharpe, unwise Reginald DeNiall and their families. (Sixteen-year-old Billy Ray DeNiall can expect his new cigarette habit to cost him, over his lifetime, $340,000.) Shaffner perhaps exceeds his brief in a number of essays with ethical, political and metaphysical agendas. His applied math "proves," for example, that government deficits are immoral, that Earth has exceeded sustainable population levels and that life after death is more likely than not. Whatever one thinks of these propositions, it's odd to see them presented as if they were analytic truths like the law of averages. Most of Shaffner's book simply explains and applies math for laypeople, however, and it's highly probable that many readers will learn from it. Agent, Jane Dystel. (Sept.)
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

``Life can make sense,'' is the motto of this forthright little book, and all it takes is a little math. Shaffner, an executive in the computer industry, has taken a selection of the basic situations and decisions of day-to-day life and quantified them. The math is within the grasp of even the most number-shy: nothing more complex than percentages and division. Each short chapter addresses a basic question from everyday life: how much difference does staying in school make in a person's income? What are the odds of getting caught speeding (or robbing a bank)? How much does it really cost to smoke cigarettes? In each chapter, Shaffner takes some raw data (e.g., the cost of a given federally funded project), and performs a simple calculation (division by the number of taxpayers) to arrive at the per-taxpayer cost of a given project, and then multiplies by the number of congressional representatives to show what it would cost if each of them were allowed one ``pork barrel'' project a year. Similar calculations are applied to everyday economicsfor example to debunk the widely accepted principle that the top 20 percent of workers do 80 percent of the work or to show the necessity of middle management in large organizations (otherwise, top executives would have no time for their own jobs). Other chapters discuss fields where superficial logic often yields wrong results: simple calculation proves that even when 70 percent of the players at a ``fair'' gambling game are winners, the house still makes a tidy profit. Another shows how million-to-one ``coincidences'' can easily occur in a large enough sample. Written in lively style, with sly wit and plenty of examples from familiar areas of experience, the book offers an appealing mix of common sense and solid reasoning. Shines light into several interesting corners of everyday life, often with surprising resultsand the numbers don't lie. -- Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

The Probability That You Would Be You

"What is the odds so long as the fire of soul is kindled ..."
--CHARLES DICKENS

Since some six billion people now occupy planet Earth, one could conclude that human life is as common as dirt in Denmark. There is, however, some evidence to the contrary. Gwendolyn Sharpe, anthropology student, and daughter of a prominent Northwestern personality, is a good example.

Like every human being, Gwendolyn is a construction of forty-six chromosomes. Twenty-three came from her mother, Cecilia, and the other twenty-three came from her estranged father. Each of her parents had forty-six chromosomes from which to choose, nicely organized in twenty-three pairs. Through the miracle of natural selection, either one of each chromosome pair from each of her parents could have been chosen for production. The resulting twenty-three chromosomes from each parent were then paired to make Gwendolyn's forty-six.

The odds that Gwen would get the exact twenty-three chromosomes that she received from her mother were one-half times one-half times one-half times one-half, a total of twenty-three times, or .5 to the twenty-third power. That means that the probability that Cecilia would give Gwendolyn the twenty-three chromosomes she got was about one in ten million (10,000,000), which was less likely than winning the state lottery (about one in seven million in Washington, although the odds are longer in some states).

The odds that Gwen would get the twenty-three chromosomes she got from her father were also about one in ten million. So, the probability that Gwendolyn would be Gwendolyn was about one in 100 trillion (one in 100,000,000,000,000). On any given day, a win in the Washington state lottery would be around fourteen million times more likely than a Gwendolyn Sharpe.

But that assumes the existence, union, and productive sex lives of Gwen's mother and father. Gwendolyn's parents met at a small Pacific Northwest university with a student population of 1,000 men and 1,000 women. Like so many young women back then, Gwen's mother hoped to meet and marry the man of her dreams before leaving college with a degree in accounting. Like so many young men back then, Gwendolyn's father planned to practice a few of the more physical rituals of marriage throughout the six years it would take him to obtain an undergraduate degree in political science. Correctly assuming, however, that Gwendolyn's mother would inevitably prevail, the maximum probability of the productive union of her parents was a one-in-a-thousand long shot, which lengthened the odds of Gwendolyn's existence to about one in 100 quadrillion (1 in 100,000,000,000,000,000).

However, the odds of Gwendolyn's mother's being her mother were at least one in 100 quadrillion, too. The probability that her father would be her father was the same. So the odds of Gwendolyn's being Gwendolyn were closer to one in 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000. But that figure excludes consideration that either parent might have been infertile, that either might have been killed before conception, or that they might have divorced before the moment of magic that produced Gwendolyn or any of her brothers. Nor has there been any inclusion of the extreme unlikelihood of the existence of Cecilia's parents, who were from Yakima and Chewelah, or her husband's parents, or their parents, or their parents, ad infinitum.

Netting all of this down to scientific terms, the odds that Gwendolyn would be Gwendolyn were less than one in a jillion gazillion. The same is true for each of us. Against such long odds, every life is a miracle of immeasurable proportion, courtesy of nature. Thus, the existence of so many billions of people is not evidence of the commonness of life but a testament to the infinite scale of nature's benevolence.

Acceptance of such an improbable gift is not without obligation. An annual donation to the National Wildlife Fund is sweet, but the gift of life requires payment in kind. In order to fairly compensate nature for her generosity, each of us must help others to enjoy the gift, we must never harm or take the gift from another, and we must each live our own life to its fullest extent, despite the inevitable bumps in the road.

Edition details

• Publisher: Ballantine Books
• Publication date: 1999
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0345426312
• ISBN 13: 9780345426314
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 224