Marcus Sautoy
Thinking Better is a celebration of the art of the shortcut – and an encouragement to all of us, in our lives and maybe particularly in our business lives, to realise that thinking better is often more successful than working faster.
How do you remember more and forget less?
How can you earn more and become more creative just by moving house?
And how do you pack a car boot most efficiently?
This is your shortcut to the art of the shortcut.
Mathematics is full of better ways of thinking and, with over 2,000 years of knowledge to draw on, Oxford mathematician Marcus du Sautoy interrogates his passion for shortcuts in this fresh and fascinating guide. After all, shortcuts have enabled so much of human progress, whether in constructing the first cities round the Euphrates 5,000 years ago, using calculus to determine the scale of the universe or today’s algorithms that help find a new life partner.
As well as looking at their most effective uses in history (such as measuring the circumference of the earth in 240 BC to diagrams that illustrate how modern GPS works) Marcus also looks at how you can use shortcuts in investing or how to learn a musical instrument to memory techniques. He talks to, among many, the writer Robert MacFarlane, cellist Naomi Clein and the psychologist Suzie Orbach, asking whether shortcuts are always the best idea and, if so, when they use them.
With engaging puzzles and conundrums throughout to illustrate the shortcut’s ability to find solutions with speed, Thinking Better offers many clever strategies for daily complex problems.
Reviews of Thinking Better: The Art of the Shortcut
-
- Praise for The Creativity Code:
- ‘What a wonderful, brilliant, joyous read! Marcus makes it seem so easy, and such fun, to begin to understand that which appears complex, frightening and beautiful, and the magic of being human’ Philippe Sands
- ‘The Creativity Code is only partly a book about AI art. It is as much about how AI thinks and how it does mathematics — du Sautoy’s own special subject. And on these topics, he is thoughtful and illuminating’ The Times ‘Du Sautoy is […] the light-bearer, illuminating not only the work of coders and creators, but the mathematics of chaos that underpin art and our emotional responses to it’ Hans Ulrich Obrist
- ‘Why could a machine one day not create a truly original work of art, write a moving poem, compose an opera or even discover a mathematical theorem? The answers, in this compelling and thought-provoking book by mathematician and musician, Marcus du Sautoy, can be found by breaking down what it actually means to be creative’ Jim Al-Khalili
- ‘Fact-packed and funny, questioning what we mean by creative and unsettling the script about what it means to be human, The Creativity Code is a brilliant travel guide to the coming world of AI’ Jeanette Winterson
More from Marcus Sautoy
-
Thinking Better: The Art of the Shortcut
Other -
Thinking Better: The Art of the Shortcut
Hardback -
The Creativity Code: How AI is learning to write, paint and think
Paperback -
The Number Mysteries: A Mathematical Odyssey through Everyday Life
Other -
The Creativity Code: How AI is learning to write, paint and think
Other -
The Creativity Code: How AI is learning to write, paint and think
Other -
The Creativity Code: How AI is learning to write, paint and think
Hardback -
What We Cannot Know: From consciousness to the cosmos, the cutting edge of science explained
Paperback -
What We Cannot Know: Explorations at the Edge of Knowledge
Other -
What We Cannot Know: Explorations at the Edge of Knowledge
Hardback -
What We Cannot Know: Explorations at the Edge of Knowledge
Other -
What We Cannot Know
Paperback -
What We Cannot Know
Paperback -
The Number Mysteries: A Mathmatical Odyssey through Everyday Life
Hardback -
Finding Moonshine: A Mathematician’s Journey Through Symmetry
Hardback -
The Music of the Primes: Why an unsolved problem in mathematics matters
Hardback -
Finding Moonshine
Paperback -
The Number Mysteries: A Mathematical Odyssey through Everyday Life
Paperback -
The Number Mysteries: A Mathematical Odyssey through Everyday Life
Other -
The Music of the Primes: Why an unsolved problem in mathematics matters (Text Only)
Other -
Finding Moonshine: A Mathematician’s Journey Through Symmetry (Text Only)
Other -
The Number Mysteries
Other -
The Music of the Primes
Paperback