All things being equal, a lot of us try to avoid doing math. We all know math is important: we live in the age of big data, our lives are governed by an ever-multiplying array of algorithms, and we're faced with a daily barrage of statistics about the divisions in our society. But what might be less obvious is how math factors into our daily lives, and why we had to memorize all of those formulas in school. Math prodigy Stefan Buijsman is beginning to change our awareness through his pioneering research into the way we learn math. Taking readers on a journey around the world to visit societies that have developed entirely different conceptions of math, and through history to learn the unexpected origins of the different disciplines of mathematics, Buijsman shows the vital importance of math, and how a better understanding of mathematics will give us an exponentially better understanding of the world as a whole. Book jacket.