Math with Bad Drawings by Ben Orlin

A hilarious and bestselling reintroduction to mathematics, illustrating the ideas with stories, humor, and stick figures.

In Math with Bad Drawings, Ben Orlin reveals what math is all about. His tools are unorthodox: jokes, cartoons, strange-but-true stories, and beneath it all, the empathy of a veteran teacher who believes that math should belong to everyone. Orlin helps us to think like mathematicians by teaching a brand-new game of tic-tac-toe, profiling the ten people you meet in line for the lottery, and documenting the headaches that ensue when the Evil Empire attempts to build a spherical Death Star. Math with Bad Drawings will change the way you see the subject—and the world.

Ben Orlin is the author of Math with Bad Drawings (as well as the blog of the same name), Math Games with Bad Drawings and the companion game kit The Ultimate Game Collection, and Change Is the Only Constant. His writing on math and education has appeared in The Atlantic, the Chicago Tribune, the Los Angeles Times, Slate, Vox, and Popular Science. He has taught middle and high school mathematics and has spoken about math and education at colleges and universities across the United States. He lives with his family in St. Paul, Minnesota.