What is the book for? Discovering and understanding the math that permeates our everyday lives.

Who is it for? High school students and basically anyone who is curious about math and would like to learn more about it.

Math is all around us and yet many people still find it complicated and beyond them. That's why mathematician Jean-Marie De Koninck and journalist Jean-François Cliche decided to write this little gem on the history of mathematics, probability, and coding and de-coding in simple, down-to-earth, and humorous language. It gets into such fascinating things as how herders counted their goats 7,000 years ago, where the "Arabic numerals" we use each day come from, how Internet bank transactions are kept secure, and why it is that in any group of 23 people there is a 50 % chance that two of them will share the same birthday.


Authors

Jean-François Cliche is a journalist with the daily newspaper Le Soleil. Among other things, he answers readers' questions about everyday scientific puzzles in his weekly column La science au quotidien.

Jean-Marie De Koninck is a mathematician and professor at Université Laval. He shares his love of math and makes it accessible to everyone through hands-on type activities. For instance, he directs the Université Laval Science and Mathematics in Action program (SMAC), which led him to create ShowMath, a show combining humour, mathematics, and multimedia that he has been staging in high schools in Québec, Ontario, and New Brunswick since 2005.