The following is an excerpt from Thinking in Numbers: On Life, Love, Meaning, and Math, by Daniel Tammet, out now from Little, Brown. Ask an Icelander what comes after three and he will answer, “Three ...

I have no unifying theme this week, just a mix of things wafting through my head. I have been thinking about how writers like to use synonyms for numbers, as if the numbers themselves are too dull. I ...