This was one of the more challenging books I have read in the past 5 years. The book is dense and struggles at time to move on from one story or example to another. On the other hand I do feel like I have a bit more of an appreciation for mathematics and for how mathematics works in the real world. Some of the stories are funny and interesting while other stories are easily forgettable.

I am not sure if there is much more for me to say about this book besides you will need a strong will to finish unless you are a true lover of math.

Considering that everybody is already mentioning how educating this book is, I must only add that this is also the most hilarious book I've read this year! (In a good way, and I swear I'm not being sarcastic).

Meh. He wants to be the Malcolm Gladwell of math, but the chapters are a little too dry and heavy on the math to keep me interested.

The author puts forth a book in leisurely Mathematics (and plenty of Statistics too).

The book is broadly divided up into five sections (annotations mine):
1. Linearity: how to interpret graphs, and make sense of linear extrapolation
2. Inference: all about Statistical significance
3. Expectation: Probability
4. Regression: why big numbers average out in the long run
5. Existence: this is where the author lost me. This section pretty uch blurs out the line between Mathematics and Philosophy and I guess it was too much for me to handle.

Why I gave it 3/5: The book starts off solidly, with a nice little WWII story. The first few chapters read smooth, even for a layman like me.
But somewhere down the road, the tone suddenly changes. The writer tends to repeat himself far too many times, overuses footnotes and goes deep into the history of mathematical thought and philosophy (Interesting as that itself may be, wait - the title was hidden maths of everyday life right?).

The Positives:
I had always wondered about the Buffon's Needle Problem. This book does a fine job explaining it. And I was surprised to note that the author was a consultant for the TV show Numb3rs.

5 star - Perfect
4 star - i would recommend
3 star - good
2 star - struggled to complete
1 star - could not finish

I thought I would be better. I was so excited to read this, the chapters about the lottery and prime numbers were amazing, but i wasn't feeling the rest of the reading.

This was really, really good, but if I'd tried to read it before my graduate-level stats classes, I probably would have given up. It's written to be very accessible to the layperson, but the problem is the subject matter. Unless you work with statistics a lot, or you have recently had a statistics class, some of it will be over your head. In fact, some of the content in this book helped clarify what I just learned in class.

It's packed with interesting material, and the author has a great sense of humor, and there are plenty of illustrations to help explain his points. I'm really happy I stumbled across this book.