Ars Technica: “Galileo once famously described the universe as a great book “written in mathematical language and its characters are triangles, circles, and other geometrical figures.” Unfortunately, it’s a language that many people outside of math and science simply do not speak, largely because they are flummoxed and/or intimidated by the sheer density of all that strange symbolic notation. Math teacher extraordinaire Ben Orlin is here to help with his latest book: Math for English Majors: A Human Take on the Universal Language. And just like Orlin’s previous outings, it’s filled with the author’s trademark bad drawings. Bonus: Orlin created a fun personality quiz, which you can take here to find out your mathematical style. Orlin’s first book, Math with Bad Drawings, after his blog of the same name, was published in 2018. It included such highlights as placing a discussion of the correlation coefficient and “Anscombe’s Quartet” into the world of Harry Potter and arguing that building the Death Star in the shape of a sphere may not have been the Galactic Empire’s wisest move. We declared it “a great, entertaining read for neophytes and math fans alike, because Orlin excels at finding novel ways to connect the math to real-world problems—or in the case of the Death Star, to problems in fictional worlds.” In 2019, Orlin took on the challenge of conveying the usefulness and beauty of calculus with tall tales, witty asides, and even more bad drawings in Change Is the Only Constant: The Wisdom of Calculus in a Madcap World. That book is a colorful collection of 28 mathematical tales connecting concepts in calculus to art, literature, and all manner of things human beings grapple with on a daily basis. Orlin’s most recent book was 2022’s Math Games with Bad Drawings—less a book one reads cover to cover and more a chance for readers to browse randomly at their leisure to find the games best suited to their particular tastes and skills, such as Jotto, a logic-oriented word game invented in 1955 that is similar to Wordle. There were five different categories of games: spatial games, number games, combination games, games of risk and reward, and information games. All could be played with just a few common household items: pencil and paper, coins, colored pens, standard dice, Goldfish crackers, paper clips, your hands, and occasionally an Internet connection. (You can try your hand at a game of Quantum Go Fish here.)