Marcus du Sautoy

“A delightful global tour of how humans think and play, led by one of our finest mathematical storytellers.” —  Ben Orlin, author of Math Games with Bad Drawings Where should you move first in Connect 4? What is the best property in Monopoly? And how can pi help you win rock paper scissors? Spanning millennia, oceans and continents, countries and cultures, Around the World in Eighty Games gleefully explores how mathematics and games have always been deeply intertwined. Renowned mathematician Marcus du Sautoy investigates how games provided the first opportunities for deep mathematical insight into the world, how understanding math can help us play games better, and how both math and games are integral to human psychology and culture. For as long as there have been people, there have been games, and for nearly as long, we have been exploring and discovering mathematics. A grand adventure, Around the World in Eighty Games teaches us not just how games are won, but how they, and their math, shape who we are.    

Alone in a cube that's glowing in the darkness, X is content within its little universe of infinite thought. This solitude is disturbed by the appearance of Y, who insists on exposing X to the richness of the physical world. Each begins to long for what the other has, luring them into a strange loop.In this play for two variables, Marcus du Sautoy and Victoria Gould use mathematics and theatre to navigate the furthest reaches of our world. Through a series of surreal episodes, X and Y tackle some of life's greatest where did the universe come from, does time have an end, do we have free will?I is a Strange Loop was first performed by the authors at the Barbican Pit, London, in March 2019.' I is a Strange Loop is a play that plays... with ideas, concepts, abstractions and relationships that are, usually, hidden from the sight of ordinary mortals, articulating the ineffable, incarnating the incorporeal, revealing the inconceivable... it makes us feel we know a great deal more than we do.... and is also very funny, utterly compelling and marvellously human.' Simon McBurney

A Financial Times "Best Summer Books" Selection "Fascinating...If all the experiences, hopes, dreams, visions, lusts, loves and hatreds that shape the human imagination amount to nothing more than a 'code, ' then sooner or later a machine will crack it. Indeed, du Sautoy assembles an eclectic array of evidence to show how that's happening even now."--The Times "Thoughtful and illuminating."--Sunday Times "Fact-packed and funny, questioning what we mean by creative and unsettling the script about what it means to be human...a brilliant travel guide to the coming world of AI."--Jeanette Winterson Can a computer compose a symphony, write a prize-winning novel, or paint a masterpiece? And if so, would we be able to tell the difference? Does the future of creativity belong to AI? Mathematical genius and creative polymath Marcus du Sautoy plunges us into the mysterious world of creativity in this essential guide to how algorithms work. He introduces us to programs that are making drip paintings in the style of Jackson Pollock, composing pieces that have fooled Bach experts, and inventing plot twists that would have Harry Potter running scared. In a thrilling tour of the landscape of invention, he explores what it means to be creative--and how much of that is human.

A captivating journey to the outer reaches of human knowledgeEver since the dawn of civilization we have been driven by a desire to know--to understand the physical world and the laws of nature. But are there limits to human knowledge? Are some things beyond the predictive powers of science, or are those challenges simply the next big discovery waiting to happen?Marcus du Sautoy takes us into the minds of science's greatest innovators and reminds us that major breakthroughs were often ridiculed at the time of their discovery. Then he carries us on a whirlwind tour of seven "Edges" of knowledge - inviting us to consider the problems in quantum physics, cosmology, probability and neuroscience that continue to bedevil scientists who are at the front of their fields. He grounds his personal exploration of some of science's thorniest questions in simple concepts like the roll of dice, the notes of a cello, or how a clock measures time. Exhilarating, mind-bending, and compulsively readable, The Great Unknown challenges us to think in new ways about every aspect of the known world as it invites us to consider big questions - about who we are and the nature of God - that no one has yet managed to answer definitively.

Inthe tradition of Fermat’s Enigma and Pi , Marcus du Sautoy tells the illuminating, authoritative, and engagingstory of Bernhard Reimann and the ongoing quest tocapture the holy grail of mathematics—the formula to predict prime numbers.Oliver Sacks, author of The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat , calls TheMusic of the Primes “an amazing book. . . . I could not put it down once Ihad started.” Simon Winchester, author of The Professor and the Madman ,writes, “this fascinating account, decoding the inscrutable language of themathematical priesthood, is written like the purest poetry. Marcus du Sautoy's enthusiasm shines through every line of this hymnto the joy of high intelligence, illuminating as it does so even the darkestcorners of his most arcane universe.”

One of the world's great mathematicians shows why math is the ultimate timesaver—and how everyone can make their lives easier with a few simple shortcuts.We are often told that hard work is the key to success. But success isn’t about hard work – it’s about shortcuts. Shortcuts allow us to solve one problem quickly so that we can tackle an even bigger one. They make us capable of doing great things. And according to Marcus du Sautoy, math is the very art of the shortcut.Thinking Better is a celebration of how math lets us do more with less. Du Sautoy explores how diagramming revolutionized therapy, why calculus is the greatest shortcut ever invented, whether you must really practice for ten thousand hours to become a concert violinist, and why shortcuts give us an advantage over even the most powerful AI. Throughout, we meet artists, scientists, and entrepreneurs who use mathematical shortcuts to change the world.Delightful, illuminating, and above all practical, Thinking Better is for anyone who has wondered why you should waste time climbing the mountain when you could go around it much faster.