A MATHEMATICIAN READS THE NEWSPAPER by...

A MATHEMATICIAN READS THE NEWSPAPER by John Allen Paulos (Anchor: $11; 212 pp.). In this new collection of columns, the author of “Innumeracy” attempts “to leave the reader with a greater appreciation of the role of mathematics in understanding social issues and with a keener skepticism of its uses, nonuses and abuses in the daily paper.” His topics range from the fallacy of listing the calories and fat in a vaguely defined portion of a meal to the absurd but generally unchallenged figures cited by Khalid Abdul Muhammad in speeches about slavery. Paulos’ clever, nontechnical prose offers a much needed grain of salt to take with the statistics in the news media.