Jordan Ellenberg

A Room of One's Own is excited to welcome UW-Madison professor and author Jordan Ellenberg for a reading and signing from his acclaimed book How not to be wrong!

The math we learn in school can seem like a dull set of rules, laid down by the ancients and not to be questioned. In How not to be wrong, Jordan Ellenberg shows us how wrong this view is: Math touches everything we do, allowing us to see the hidden structures beneath the messy and chaotic surface of our daily lives. It’s a science of not being wrong, worked out through centuries of hard work and argument.

Jordan Ellenberg grew up in Potomac, MD, the child of two statisticians. He went to college at Harvard, got a master’s degree in fiction writing from Johns Hopkins, and then returned to Harvard for his Ph.D. in math. After graduate school, he was a postdoc at Princeton. In 2004, he joined the faculty of the University of Wisconsin at Madison, where he is now the Vilas Distinguished Achievement Professor of Mathematics.

Ellenberg’s research centers on the fields of number theory and algebraic geometry, the parts of mathematics which address fundamental questions about algebraic equations and their solutions in whole numbers. Ellenberg’s research has uncovered new and unexpected connections between these subjects and algebraic topology, the study of abstract high-dimensional shapes and the relations between them.

Ellenberg has been writing for a general audience about math for more than fifteen years; his work has appeared in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, Wired, The Believer, and the Boston Globe, and he is the author of the “Do the Math” column in Slate.

He lives in Madison, WI, with his wife, Tanya Schlam, and their two children. Learn more about him at his website.

Location: Street: 315 W. Gorham St. City: Madison, Province: Wisconsin Postal Code: 53703-2218 Country: United States (afegit de IndieBound)… (més)

Credit: Mats Rudels

Jordan Ellenberg

Monday, June 16, 7:30 p.m.

How not to be wrong: The Power of Mathematical Thinking

How not to be wrong presents surprising revelations using the mathematician’s method of analyzing life and exposing the hard-won insights of the academic community to the layman—minus the jargon.

Ellenberg chases mathematical threads through a vast range of time and space, from the everyday to the cosmic, encountering, among other things, baseball, Reaganomics, daring lottery schemes, Voltaire, the replicability crisis in psychology, Italian Renaissance painting, artificial languages, the development of non-Euclidean geometry, the coming obesity apocalypse, Antonin Scalia’s views on crime and punishment, the psychology of slime molds, what Facebook can and can’t figure out about you, and the existence of God.

Ellenberg pulls from history as well as from the latest theoretical developments to provide those not trained in math with the knowledge they need. Math, as Ellenberg says, is “an atomic-powered prosthesis that you attach to your common sense, vastly multiplying its reach and strength.”.

Jordan Ellenberg is the Vilas Distinguished Achievement Professor of Mathematics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He has lectured around the world on his research in number theory and delivered one of the plenary addresses at the 2013 Joint Mathematics Meetings, the largest math conference in the world. His writing has appeared in Wired, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, The Boston Globe, and The Believer, and he has been featured on the Today show and NPR’s All Things Considered. He writes a popular column called “Do the Math” for Slate.

Location: Street: 1010 El Camino Real City: Menlo Park, Province: California Postal Code: 94025-4349 Country: United States (afegit de IndieBound)… (més)

Survive the robot uprising, learn about the science of booze, discover How not to be wrong, and delve into literary awesomeness in the latest installment of the most unstoppable reading series!

When: Saturday, June 14, from 7:30 PM to 9:30 PM, doors open 6:30 PM What: WRITERS WITH DRINKS! Who: Daniel H. Wilson, Adam Rogers, Jordan Ellenberg, Mimi Lipson and Kendra DeColo! How much: $5 to $10, all proceeds benefit the CSC Where: The Make Out Room, 3225 22nd. St., San Francisco

About the readers/performers:

Daniel H. Wilson's latest novel is Robogenesis. He's also the author of the New York Times bestselling Robopocalypse and seven other books, including How to Survive a Robot Uprising, A Boy and His Bot, and Amped. In 2008, he hosted The Works on the History Channel. He earned a PhD in Robotics from Carnegie Mellon University, as well as Masters degrees in Artificial Intelligence and Robotics. His novel Robopocalypse was purchased by DreamWorks and is currently being adapted for film by Steven Spielberg.

Adam Rogers is the author of Proof: The Science of Booze. He's the articles editor at Wired, where his feature story “The Angels’ Share” won the 2011 AAAS Kavli Science Journalism Award. Before coming to Wired, he was a Knight Science Journalism Fellow at MIT and a writer covering science and technology for Newsweek.

Jordan Ellenberg's new book is How not to be wrong: The Power of Mathematical Thinking. Ellenberg has held an NSF-CAREER grant and an Alfred P. Sloan Fellowship, and in 2013 he was named one of the inaugural class of Fellows of the American Mathematical Society. His work has appeared in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, Wired, The Believer, and the Boston Globe, and he is the author of the “Do the Math” column in Slate. His Wired feature story on compressed sensing appeared in the Best Writing on Mathematics 2011 anthology.

Mimi Lipson's first book The Cloud Of Unknowing. Her stories have appeared in BOMB, Harvard Review, Joyland, Witness, Brooklyn Rail, and elsewhere.

Kendra DeColo is the author of Thieves in the Afterlife (Saturnalia Books, 2014), selected by Yusef Komunyakaa for the 2013 Saturnalia Books Poetry Prize. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Southern Indiana Review, The Collagist, CALYX, Muzzle Magazine, and elsewhere. She is the recipient of an Individual Artist Fellowship from the Tennessee Arts Commission, a work-study scholarship from the Bread Loaf Writer’s Conference, and residencies from the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts and the Millay Colony. The founding poetry editor of Nashville Review and a Book Review Editor at Muzzle Magazine, she lives in Nashville, Tennessee.

About Writers With Drinks:

Writers With Drinks has won numerous "Best ofs" from local newspapers, and has been mentioned in 7x7, Spin Magazine and one of Armistead Maupin's Tales of the City novels. The spoken word "variety show" mixes genres to raise money for local causes. The award-winning show includes poetry, stand-up comedy, science fiction, fantasy, romance, mystery, literary fiction, erotica, memoir, zines and blogs in a freewheeling format. Click here to RSVP!

Location: Make-Out Room Street: 3225 22nd St City: San Francisco, Province: California Country: United States (afegit de IndieBound)… (més)