约翰·艾伦·保罗斯

约翰·艾伦·保罗斯（英语：John Allen Paulos，1945年7月4日—），美国数学家和科普作家，现为天普大学教授。

生平

1945年出生于科罗拉多州丹佛，在威斯康辛州密尔沃基读高中，后在威斯康星大学获得数学本科学位（1967年），在华盛顿大学获得硕士学位（1968年），在威斯康星大学麦迪逊分校获得博士学位（1974年）。

作品

有《数学家读报》（A Mathematician Reads the Newspaper）、《数学家妙谈股市》（A Mathematician Plays the Stock Market）、《我思故我笑：哲学的幽默一面》（I Think Therefore I Laugh: The Flip Side of Philosophy）、《从前有个数：故事中的数学逻辑》（Once Upon a Number: The Hidden Mathematical Logic of Stories）等。

John Allen Paulos (born July 4, 1945) is an American professor of mathematics at Temple University in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, a writer and speaker on mathematics and the importance of mathematical literacy. He writes about the dangers of mathematical innumeracy, ie the layperson's misconceptions about numbers, probability, and logic.

Early life

Paulos was born in Denver, Colorado and grew up in Chicago, Illinois and Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where he attended high school. After his Bachelor of Mathematics at University of Wisconsin (1967) and his Master of Science at University of Washington (1968), he received his PhD in mathematics from the University of Wisconsin–Madison (1974). In an interview he described himself as lifelong skeptic. He volunteered for the Peace Corps in the seventies.

Career

His academic work is mainly in mathematical logic and probability theory.

His book Innumeracy: Mathematical Illiteracy and its Consequences (1988) was a bestseller and A Mathematician Reads the Newspaper (1995) extended the critique. In his books Paulos discusses innumeracy with quirky anecdotes, scenarios and facts, encouraging readers in the end to look at their world in a more quantitative way.

He has also written on other subjects often "combining disparate disciplines", such as the mathematical and philosophical basis of humor in Mathematics and Humor and I Think, Therefore I Laugh, the stock market in A Mathematician Plays the Stock Market, quantitative aspects of narrative in Once Upon a Number, the arguments for God in Irreligion, and most recently "bringing mathematics to bear on...biography" in A Numerate Life.

Paulos also wrote a mathematics-tinged column for the UK newspaper The Guardian and is a Committee for Skeptical Inquiry fellow.

Paulos has appeared frequently on radio and television, including a four-part BBC adaptation of A Mathematician Reads the Newspaper and appearances on the Lehrer News Hour, 20/20, Larry King, and David Letterman.

In 2001 Paulos taught a course on quantitative literacy for journalists at the Columbia University School of Journalism. The course stimulated further programs at Columbia and elsewhere in precision and data-driven journalism.

His long-running "ABCNews.com" monthly column Who's Counting deals with mathematical aspects of stories in the news. All the columns over a 10- year period are archived here.

Private life

He is married, father of two, grandfather of four.

Awards

2013: JPBM (Joint Policy Board for Mathematics) Award for communicating mathematics on a sustained basis to large audiences

2003: AAAS (American Association for the Advancement of Science) Award for promoting the public understanding of science and technology

2002: University Creativity Award at Temple University

1994: Folio Award for the article Counting on Dyscalculia which appeared in Discover Magazine in 1994

Works

Mathematics & Humor: A Study of the Logic of Humor. University Of Chicago. 1980. ISBN 978-0-226-65024-1.

I Think Therefore I Laugh: The Flip Side of Philosophy. Columbia University Press. 1985. ISBN 978-0-231-06031-8.

Innumeracy: Mathematical Illiteracy and its Consequences. Hill and Wang. 1988. ISBN 978-0-670-83008-4.

Beyond Numeracy: Ruminations of a Numbers Man. Knopf. 1991. ISBN 978-0-394-58640-3.

A Mathematician Reads the Newspaper. Basic Books. 1995. ISBN 978-0-465-04362-0.

Once Upon a Number: The Hidden Mathematical Logic of Stories. Basic Books. 1998. ISBN 978-0-465-05158-8.

A Mathematician Plays the Stock Market. Basic Books. 2003. ISBN 978-0-465-05480-0. (British edition titled A Mathematician Plays the Market)

Irreligion: A Mathematician Explains Why the Arguments for God Just Don't Add Up. Hill and Wang. 2007. ISBN 978-0-8090-5919-5.

A Numerate Life - A Mathematician Explores the Vagaries of Life, His Own and probably Yours. Prometheus Books. 2015. ISBN 978-1-63388-118-1.

Potpourri of Writings

"He Conquered the Conjecture", essay by Paulos on Grigory Perelman from The New York Review of Books

Metric Mania

Measuring Bacteria With a Yardstick