FOR some they are irreplaceable guides to a complex world. For others they are a curse, a barrier to understanding and a fig leaf for the self-serving and plain lazy. But love them or loathe them, much of our world is governed by mathematical models, and as the Pilkeys argue in Useless Arithmetic, often the more we are forced to rely on these “modern-day oracles”, the less reliable they prove to be.
This is an easy and persuasive read. There is no maths, just plain argument. Take what was once the world’s most famous fishery, on Canada’s Grand Banks. If…
