Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

The first indication I had that this isn't a book about how to analyze things objectively through mathematics was when I read the inside flap and it raised the question about who really won Florida in the 2000 election. I skipped ahead to that part of the book, hoping to see a sterile mathematical analysis. But there wasn't one. There was a lot of totally subjective talk about why Scalia and the other justices ruled the way they did in Bush vs. Gore, with thinly veiled criticism of Scalia. This included the suggestion that Scalia doesn't care about finding the truth in a murder case, based on the author's superficial, sound-bite reference to a case that Scalia once ruled on. Then he said that the overall count would have been more accurate if the court had allowed a recount in the counties that Gore asked for. This is totally false. The overall count would not have been more accurate if the recount - which could result in more votes being tallied - was only in counties deliberately chosen because they were likely to have more votes for one particular candidate. If you chose a few counties at random for a more thorough recount it would theoretically make the overall count more accurate, but not when you add the bias of choosing counties favorable to one candidate. A math expert should know this. And, astonishingly, he disregarded the post-election recount sponsored by the New York Times and other media outlets. How can one do a mathematical analysis of the election without using this recount? Well, he didn't do a mathematical analysis. He just concluded with conjecture about why he thinks the justices ruled the way they did - something that he has no way of knowing, and that isn't a mathematical analysis - with the implication that the result of the election would have been different had they not ruled that way. And, again, he gave NO math no support this. From what I could see, the rest of the book wasn't any better. It's a political book, not a math book. Math can be a powerful tool to challenge conventional wisdom when used with an open mind. But this guy starts with the wisdom, conventional in academia, and works backwards in a lame attempt to prove it. He's just another sniveling, politically oriented academic. And he tries to make his political points under the pretense of being an objective mathematician, applying his trade in a non-partisan way. It's phony and it doesn't work. I returned it. First thing I ever returned on Amazon.