A Numerate Life

In this talk, John Allen Paulos speaks about his memoir A Numerate Life – A Mathematician Explores the Vagaries of Life, His Own and Probably Yours. Moving back and forth seamlessly between personal vignettes and mathematics, Paulos offers up a path-breaking way to look at our lives and, not so incidentally, impart some deep mathematical understanding. This is a more personal human endeavor – the telling of our life stories. Paulos will ask: How does a mathematical sensibility change our attitudes toward memoirs and biographies and lead us to reevaluate our own lives?

John Allen Paulos is an extensively kudized author, popular public speaker, and has written many celebrated books as well as numerous columns for the New York Times, ABCNews.com, The Scientific American, The Guardian, and other publications. Professor of mathematics at Temple University in Philadelphia, he earned his Ph.D. in the subject from the University of Wisconsin. In 2003 he received the American Association for the Advancement of Science award for promoting public understanding of science and in 2013 the Mathematics Communication Award from the Joint Policy Board for Mathematics.