Table of Contents
Preface xiii
1 Two's Company, Three's a Crowd 1
2 It's a Small World After All 4
3 Monkey Business 7
4 Independence Day 10
5 Rugby and Relativity 12
6 Wagons Roll 14
7 A Sense of Proportion 16
8 Why Does the Other Queue Always Move Faster? 19
9 Pylon of the Month 21
10 A Sense of Balance 24
11 Bridging That Gap 26
12 On the Cards 30
13 Tally Ho 34
14 Relationships 37
15 Racing Certainties 40
16 High Jumping 43
17 Superficiality 47
18 VAT in Eternity 50
19 Living in a Simulation 52
20 Emergence 56
21 How to Push a Car 59
22 Positive Feedback 62
23 The Drunkard's Walk 64
24 Faking It 66
25 The Flaw of Averages 69
26 The Origami of the Universe 71
27 Easy and Hard Problems 73
28 Is This a Record? 76
29 A Do-It-Yourself Lottery 79
30 I Do Not Believe It! 81
31 Flash Fires 83
32 The Secretary Problem 86
33 Fair Divorce Settlements: the Win-Win Solution 90
34 Many Happy Returns 93
35 Tilting at Windmills 96
36 Verbal Conjuring 99
37 Financial Investment with Time Travellers 101
38 A Thought for Your Pennies 104
39 Breaking the Law of Averages 107
40 How Long are Things Likely to Survive? 109
41 A President who Preferred the Triangle to the Pentagon 112
42 Secret Codes in Your Pocket 116
43 I've Got a Terrible Memory for Names 120
44 Calculus Makes You Live Longer 122
45 Getting in a Flap 124
46 Your Number's Up 127
47 Double Your Money 129
48 Some Reflections on Faces 131
49 The Most Infamous Mathematician 135
50 Roller Coasters and Motorway Junctions 139
51 A Taylor-made Explosion 143
52 Walk Please, Don't Run! 146
53 Mind-reading Tricks 148
54 The Planet of the Deceivers 150
55 How to Win the Lottery 152
56 A Truly Weird Football Match 155
57 An Arch Problem 157
58 Counting in Eights 159
59 Getting a Mandate 161
60 The Two-headed League 164
61 Creating Something out of Nothing 166
62 How to Rig an Election 169
63 The Swing of the Pendulum 172
64 A Bike with Square Wheels 174
65 How Many Guards Does an Art Gallery Need? 176
66 ...and What About a Prison? 181
67 A Snooker Trick Shot 183
68 Brothers and Sisters 186
69 Playing Fair with a Biased Coin 189
70 The Wonders of Tautology 191
71 What a Racket 193
72 Packing Your Stuff 197
73 Sent Packing Again 199
74 Crouching Tiger 204
75 How the Leopard Got His Spots 207
76 The Madness of Crowds 209
77 Diamond Geezer 212
78 The Three Laws of Robotics 216
79 Thinking Outside the Box 219
80 Googling in the Caribbean - The Power of the Matrix 222
81 Loss Aversion 226
82 The Lead in Your Pencil 228
83 Testing Spaghetti to Destruction 230
84 The Gherkin 232
85 Being Mean with the Price Index 235
86 Omniscience can be a Liability 238
87 Why People aren't Cleverer 240
88 The Man from Underground 242
89 There are No Uninteresting Numbers 244
90 Incognito 246
91 The Ice Skating Paradox 249
92 The Rule of Two 252
93 Segregation and Micromotives 254
94 Not Going with the Flow 256
95 Venn Vill They Ever Learn 258
96 Some Benefits of Irrationality 261
97 Strange Formulae 266
98 Chaos 270
99 All Aboard 273
100 The Global Village 276
Notes 279
