"I want to yell at people, at length, about how great math is."

The best type of pop math book: covers a wide gamut of ideas in an understandable enough way to read without stopping every page to ponder – but giving enough context to fuel unlimited pondering when the reader steps away.

The content itself is nothing new to someone with a math background, but – besides just being super fun to read – I think the book is super valuable for that audience as well. It serves a great example of translating complex, profound ideas to a lay audience without relying on incorrect analogies.

A book that discusses the mathematical intricacies on a variety of topics under the sun, be it the bullet hole damages in an aircraft, the paradoxes present in the electoral systems, the "boring" aspects of gambling and so on. This is that kind of book you wish you had as a textbook.

The only gripe is that it was a hundred or so pages longer than it should've been IMHO but I enjoyed reading it.

I'm not sure that there's much of a central thread to this book, and if there is it certainly isn't the "this is why math is useful" business offered in the first chapter. As for not being wrong, Ellenberg explains statistical math's claims to underpin the scientific method well enough to put its flaws and vulnerabilities in sharp relief. But that's OK, he's an engaging writer with lots of interesting things to say about the mathematics of statistics and probability and its application to everything up to and including theology. And who wouldn't be interested in that?

I did well in math when I was at school, but I cannot say math is my strength, since I do not think I am good at applying math concepts into real world. And this book is a door opening to this. To be honest, I do not understand 100% of the content in this book, but I tried my best to understand their existence. If this book has taught me to use another way to problem solving or even another perspective to understand world, then that's enough for now.

Loved it and learned a lot, even though some parts were really hard to grasp. Took me a while but made me look at math differently.

It's a good book. Despite I've put only three stars, it still a good book.
The main theme of a book is statistics and probabilities, with small bits from other fields, but I expected something different or broad.