Numbercrunch equips readers with the mathematical tools and thinking to understand the myriad data all around us. It covers the exponential growth of viruses and social media filter-bubbles, share-price fluctuations and the growth of computing power, the datafication of our sports pages and the quantification of climate change. Not to mention those questions a bit closer to home, such as when is it statistically the right time to leave a party? What can we learn from millions of retweets about chicken nuggets? And how improbable is it for Aston Villa to have beaten Liverpool 7-2?

Regarded as ‘the perfect introduction to the power of mathematics – fluent, friendly and practical’ by Tom Harford, author of How to Make the World Add Up. David Spiegelhalter, author of The Art of Statistics also referred to it as ‘A fine and valuable read. Johnson applies careful analysis and great common sense to an extraordinary range of applications of mathematical ideas, from football to filter bubbles – explaining formal ideas with minimum technicalities, and weighing their relevance to the real world.'

Oliver Johnson is Professor of Information Theory and Director of the Institute for Statistical Science in the School of Mathematics. He has frequently appeared on Radio 4’s PM, has written for the Spectator, and been quoted in a variety of outlets including The Times, The Guardian, The Telegraph and The New York Times. Oliver is on Twitter as @BristOliver, where he has an engaged following of almost 45k followers and tweets about maths, music, and Aston Villa.

His recent article for The Observer provides a taster of what to expect from the book: https://www.theguardian.com/science/2023/mar/12/how-to-read-the-news-like-a-mathematician-from-the-budget-and-hs2-to-covid-and-sport

The book has been published with Heligo Books, the business and smart-thinking imprint from Bonnier Books UK. Numbercrunch is aimed at a general audience, and has been published as hardback, eBook and audiobook.