Why did Brian love this book?
Possibly the best popular science book I’ve ever read.
Palmer explores the nature of mathematically chaotic systems and shows how we can deal better with the uncertainty they embody.
Many real-world systems, from something as complex as the weather to something as simple as a jointed pendulum, are chaotic, meaning that they are hard to predict as very small changes in the way they are set up produce vast differences in outcome.
Palmer covers a whole series of different topics, in several cases giving the best explanation I’ve ever seen. It’s not that this is an easy read. I had to go back over a couple of sections to really take them in – but it was very rewarding.
1 author picked The Primacy of Doubt as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.
“Quite possibly the best popular science book I’ve ever read” (Popular Science) shows how the tools that enabled us to overcome the uncertainty of the weather will enable us to find new answers to modern science's most pressing questions
Why does your weather app say “There’s a 10% chance of rain” instead of “It will be sunny tomorrow”? In large part this is due to the insight of Tim Palmer, who made uncertainty essential to the study of weather and climate. Now he wants to apply it to how we study everything else.
In The Primacy of Doubt, Palmer argues…