Rave pre-pub quotes for Maths on Trial
23 Jan 2013

Maths on Trial by mother-daughter writing team Coralie Colmez and Leila Schneps and published by Basic on 28th March is already attracting rave reviews including:

“[A]n entertaining tour of courtroom calculations gone wrong…. The cases they describe are independently interesting, and the mathematical overlay makes them doubly so…. [A]s the problems are unraveled and the correct analyses explained, readers will enjoy a satisfying sense of discovery. Schneps and Colmez write with lucidity and an infectious enthusiasm, making this an engaging and unique blend of true crime and mathematics.” Publishers Weekly

“Schneps and Colmez are a mother-daughter pair sophisticated in the ways of probability…. The authors…fill out the volume with wonderful accounts of frauds and forgeries…. [T]he authors’ analysis of the recent Amanda Knox case [is] particularly chilling. Required reading for aspiring lawyers, but also intrinsically fascinating in its depiction of the frailty of human judgments.” —Kirkus Reviews

“The originator of sociology, Auguste Comte, said that applying probability to moral questions was the scandal of mathematics. Math On Trial charts the ambivalent—occasionally disastrous—role that math has played in several classic and some recent legal cases. It vividly shows how the desire for ‘scientific’ certainty can lead even well-meaning courts to commit grave injustice. There ought to be a copy in every jury room.” —Michael Kaplan and Ellen Kaplan, authors of Chances Are…: Adventures in Probability and Bozo Sapiens: Why to Err Is Human

“Taut and gripping, Math on Trial just might establish a new genre, in which true crime story meets the best of popular science. Utterly absorbing from start to finish.” —Steven Strogatz, Professor of Mathematics, Cornell University, and author of The Joy of x