This book came highly recommended but the title was kind of an epistemological speed-bump. It took me a while to start reading and then took me about a month to finish (unusually long time for me.) Overall I think it was very good and most people would benefit from and enjoy reading it. I'm usually pretty insistent that the deficiency in most modern academic fields is a lack of philosophy. I'm sure Ellenberg would agree, but he also highlights a deficiency in mathematical thinking. Scientists get sloppy/lazy with it, journalists and pollsters warp and misuse data, and the average student is perfectly happy to answer a word problem with a non-nonsensical result.

One of my favorite distinctions/reminders came early as he distinguished between calculations and math. What most people consider to be "doing math" is actually just punching numbers into a formula (with or without a calculator), mathematical thinking is understanding the formula, knowing when to use it, what the results mean, and just as importantly, what the numbers don't mean.

There are some spots where he dives into the weeds a bit more than is interesting to me, but the writing was solid throughout. It is one that I will probably never give a full re-read to, but I made a lot of highlights and notes that I expect to return to in the future.