By Michael Allingham

This was an unlikely thing for me to read. I’m quite a rational person, and have done tonnes of studies involving mathematics and probabilities, so there was nothing in here that was new to me.

Not a problem: I casually read a book on introductory economics last year, four years after attaining my MSc in the subject, and I bought a book on elementary Italian recently, bene che io abbia già cominciato a apprendere italiano qualche anno fa.

So what’s the difference? Why was I fine with those books, but not with this one?

I think it comes down to a simple point. The economics stuff was just narrative. The Italian was straightforward and required no thinking on my part. It was just read and acknowledge.

This one was different, in that there were lots of examples that I had to purposefully go over in my head. In that respect, it was dull. I already know what’s going on, but have to calculate to see the results that lead to the conclusion.

Probably OK for people with no experience in the field, this was one book that I didn’t want to consecrate time on and read as fast as I could skim over the content.

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