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Review: ‘For anyone addicted to Sudoku-like puzzles and beginning to wonder what might lie beyond.’
-Spectator
‘Maths contaminated with wit, wisdom, and wonder’
-New Scientist
Description: Ian Stewart, author of the bestselling Professor Stewart’s Cabinet of mathematical Curiosities, presents another magical mix of games, puzzles, paradoxes, brainteasers and riddles, mingled with forays into ancient and modern mathematical thought, appalling jokes and enquiries into the great mathematical challenges of the past and present.
Amid a host of astonishing facts we find out:
• How codes are made and how to break them
• How matter balances anti-matter
• How falling cats land on their feet
• How to turn a sphere inside out (without creasing it)
Mind-stretching, enlightening and endlessly amusing, Professor Stewart’s new entertainment will tease, tantalise and delight – and keep you on your toes.
Contents: Second Drawer Down • Calculator Curiosity • Year Turned Upside Down • Luckless Lovelorn Lilavati • Sixteen Matches • Swallowing Elephants • Magic Circle • Dodgem • Press-the-Digit-ation • Secrets of the Abacus • Redbeard"s Treasure • Hexaflexagons • Who Invented the Equals Sign? • Stars and Snips • By the Numbers of Babylon • Magic Hexagons • The Collatz-Syracuse-Ulam Problem • The Jeweller"s Dilemma • What Seamus Didn"t Know • Why Toast Always Falls Buttered-Side Down • The Buttered Cat Paradox • Lincoln"s Dog • Whodunni"s Dice • A Flexible Polyhedron • But What About Concertinas? • The Bellows Conjecture • Digital Cubes • Nothing Which Appeals Much to a Mathematician • What Is the Area of an Ostrich Egg? • Order into Chaos • Big Numbers • The Drowning Mathematician • Mathematical Pirates • The Hairy Ball Theorem • Cups and Downs • Secret Codes • When 2 + 2 = 0 • Secret Codes That Can Be Made Public • Calendar Magic • Mathematical Cats • The Rule of Eleven • Digital Multiplication • Common Knowledge • Pickled Onion Puzzle • Guess the Card • And Now with a Complete Pack • Halloween = Christmas • Egyptian Fractions • The Greedy Algorithm • How to Move a Table • Rectangling the Square • Newton, by Byron • X Marks the Spot • Whatever"s the Antimatter? • How to See Inside Things • Mathematicians Musing About Mathematics • Wittgenstein"s Sheep • Leaning Tower of Pizza • PieThagoras"s World-Famous Mince Pi • Diamond Frame • Pour Relations • Alexander"s Horned Sphere • The Sacred Principle of Mat • Perfectly Abundantly Amicably Deficient • Target Practice • Just a Phase I"m Going Through • Proof Techniques • Second Thoughts • How Dudeney Cooked Loyd • Cooking with Water • Celestial Resonance • Calculator Curiosity • Which is Bigger? • Sums That Go On For Ever • The Most Outrageous Proof • Colorado Smith and the Solar Temple • Why Can"t I Add Fractions Like I Multiply Them? • Farey, Farey, Quite Contrary • Pooling Resources • Welcome to the Rep-Tile House • Cooking on a Torus • The Catalan Conjecture • The Origin of the Square Root Symbol • Please Bear with Me • The Ham Sandwich Theorem • Cricket on Grumpius • The Man Who Loved Only Numbers • The Missing Piece • The Other Coconut • What Does Zeno? • Pieces of Five • Pi in the Sky • The Curious Incident of the Dog • Mathematics Made Difficult • A Weird Fact about Egyptian Fractions • A Four Colour Theorem • Serpent of Perpetual Darkness • What Are the Odds? • A Potted History of Mathematics • The Shortest Mathematical Joke Ever • Global Warming Swindle • Name the Cards • What Is Point Nine Recurring? • Ghost of a Departed Quantity • Nice Little Earner • A Puzzle for Leonardo • Congruent Numbers • Present-Minded Somewhere Else • It"s About Time • Do I Avoid Kangaroos? • The Klein Bottle • Accounting the Digits • Multiplying with Sticks • As Long as I Gaze on Laplacian Sunrise • Another Take on Mathematical Cats • Bordered Prime Magic Square • The Green- Tao Theorem • Peaucellier"s Linkage • A Better Approximation to Pi • Strictly for Calculus Buffs • The Statue of Pallas Athene • Calculator Curiosity • Completing the Square • The Look and Say Sequence • Non-Mathematicians Musing About Mathematics • Euler"s Conjecture • The Millionth Digit • Piratical Pathways • Trains That Pass in the Siding • Please Make Yourself Clear • Squares, Lists and Digital Sums • Hilbert"s Hit-List • Match Trick • Which Hospital Should Close? • How to Turn a Sphere Inside Out • A Piece of String Walked into a Bar ... • Slicing the Cake • The Origin of the Symbol for Pi • Hall of Mirrors • Greek and Trojan Asteroids • Sliding Coins • Beat That! • Euclid"s Puzzle • The Infinite Monkey Theorem • Monkeys Against Evolution • Universal Letter of Reference • Snakes and Adders • Powerful Crossnumber • Magic Handkerchiefs • A Bluffer"s Guide to Symmetry • Digital Century Revisited • An Infinity of Primes • A Century in Fractions • Ah, That Explains It ... • Life, Recursion and Everything • False, Not Stated, Not Proved • Proof That 2 + 2 = 4 • Slicing the Doughnut • The Kissing Number • Tippe Top Twister • When Is a Knot Not Knotted? • The Origin of the Factorial Symbol • Juniper Green • Mathematical Metajoke • Beyond the Fourth Dimension Slade"s Braid • Avoiding the Neighbours • Career Move • A Rolling Wheel Gathers No Speed • Point Placement Problem • Chess in Flatland • The Infinite Lottery • Ships That Pass... • The Largest Number is Forty-Two • A Future History of Mathematics • Professor Stewart"s Superlative Storehouse of Sneaky Solutions and Stimulating Supplements.ISBN - 9781846683466
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Pages : 352
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