Professor Ellenberg set out to provide a survey of the history and application of mathematical concepts and methods that apply to everyday life.<br><br>So he covers a lot of probability and statistics, but avoids calculus, modern algebra, and most of the rest of mathematics.<br><br>Formulas crop up rarely, mostly I think to emphasize how complex a particular aspect of mathematics is to computer.<br><br>His illustrations are simple and hand-drawn (by him mostly), and thereby suggest that the gist of a concept is more important than computing and answer to N decimal digits.<br><br>He explored gambling, lotteries, public opinion and polling, voting, regression to the mean in nature, how mathematicians helped in WWII, and so much more.<br><br>Full disclosure: I'm a math nerd. I got my first book on cryptography when I was 9, I have the original RSA monograph from 1977, I have a math degree and two computer science degrees, and I was a professional software engineer. So I might have liked even more nerdy details in this book. But I was still carried along by the mixture of history, stories, applications, and I mostly breezed over the formulas.