I'm an engineer by training and love a little mental stimulation. This book is just what I needed to flex my creative brain muscles a little. It's a wonderful mix of logic puzzles, mathematical calculations, interesting anecdotes, and physical modeling activities. I love it!
Author(s): Ian Stewart
Publisher: Basic Books
Year: 2009
Language: English
Pages: 321
Contents......Page 6
Start Here......Page 12
Alien Encounter......Page 15
Tap-an-Animal......Page 16
Triangle of Cards......Page 17
Pop-up Dodecahedron......Page 18
Sliced Fingers......Page 19
Turnip for the Books......Page 20
The Four-Colour Theorem......Page 21
Shaggy Dog Story......Page 27
Rabbits in the Hat......Page 29
More Curious Calculations......Page 31
Extracting the Cherry......Page 33
What is pi?......Page 34
Legislating the Value of pi......Page 35
If They Had Passed It …......Page 36
Empty glasses......Page 37
Three Quickies......Page 38
Knight's Tours......Page 39
Much Undo About Knotting......Page 40
White-Tailed Cats......Page 42
To Find Fake Coin......Page 43
Mathematical Jokes 1......Page 46
Deceptive Dice......Page 47
Why Does Minus Times Minus Make Plus?......Page 48
Heron Suit......Page 49
How to Remember a Round Number......Page 50
The Bridges of Königsberg......Page 52
How to do Lots of Mathematics......Page 54
Ouroborean Rings......Page 55
The Ourotorus......Page 56
Who Was Pythagoras?......Page 57
Proofs of Pythagoras......Page 58
A Constant Bore......Page 60
Fermat's Last Theorem......Page 61
Pythagorean Triples......Page 69
Prime Factoids......Page 70
A Little-Known Pythagorean Curiosity......Page 72
Squaring the Square......Page 73
Magic Squares......Page 75
Squares of Squares......Page 77
Ring a-Ring a-Ringroad......Page 78
Magic Hexagon......Page 79
Pentalpha......Page 80
Wallpaper Patterns......Page 81
How Old Was Diophantus?......Page 82
The Sphinx is a Reptile......Page 83
Six Degrees of Separation......Page 84
Trisectors Beware!......Page 87
Langford's Cubes......Page 89
Duplicating the Cube......Page 90
Magic Stars......Page 91
Connecting Cables......Page 92
The Stolen Car......Page 93
Space-Filling Curves......Page 94
The Square Wheel......Page 95
Why Can't I Divide by Zero?......Page 96
River Crossing 2 - Marital Mistrust......Page 97
Wherefore Art Thou Borromeo?......Page 98
Percentage Play......Page 99
The Sausage Conjecture......Page 100
Tom Fool's Knot......Page 101
New Merology......Page 103
Numerical Spell......Page 105
Expanding Universe......Page 106
What is the Golden Number?......Page 107
What are the Fibonacci Numbers?......Page 109
The Plastic Number......Page 114
Theorem: All Numbers are Interesting......Page 116
The Most Likely Digit......Page 117
Why Call It a Witch?......Page 120
Möbius and His Band......Page 122
Three More Quickies......Page 124
Miles of Tiles......Page 125
Chaos Theory......Page 128
Après-Le-Ski......Page 135
Pick's Theorem......Page 136
Mathematical Prizes......Page 137
Why No Nobel for Maths?......Page 139
Is There a Perfect Cuboid?......Page 140
Paradox Lost......Page 141
When Will My MP3 Player Repeat?......Page 142
Six Pens......Page 145
Patented Primes......Page 146
The Poincaré Conjecture......Page 147
Hippopotamian Logic......Page 151
Langton's Ant......Page 152
Pig on a Rope......Page 154
Antigravity Cone......Page 155
Mathematical Jokes 2......Page 156
Why Gauss Became a Mathematician......Page 157
Famous Mathematicians......Page 161
What is a Mersenne Prime?......Page 162
The Goldbach Conjecture......Page 165
Turtles All the Way Down......Page 166
Hilbert's Hotel......Page 168
Continuum Coaches......Page 171
A Puzzling Dissection......Page 172
A Really Puzzling Dissection......Page 174
Nothing Up My Sleeve …......Page 177
Two Perpendiculars......Page 178
Can You Hear the Shape of a Drum?......Page 179
What is e, and Why?......Page 183
May Husband and Ay …......Page 184
Many Knees, Many Seats......Page 185
Euler's Formula......Page 188
What Day is It?......Page 190
A Question of Breeding......Page 191
Fair Shares......Page 192
Weird Arithmetic......Page 193
McMahon's Squares......Page 194
What is the Square Root of Minus One?......Page 195
Why is Euler's Beautiful Formula True?......Page 197
Archimedes, You Old Fraud!......Page 199
Fractals - The Geometry of Nature......Page 200
Where There's a Wall, There's a Way......Page 207
Richard's Paradox......Page 208
Are Hard Problems Easy? or How to Win a Million Dollars by Proving the Obvious......Page 210
Don't Get the Goat......Page 213
All Triangles are Isosceles......Page 214
Square Year......Page 215
Gödel's Theorems......Page 216
If pi isn't a Fraction, How Can You Calculate It?......Page 219
Infinite Wealth......Page 222
How Many-......Page 223
Alien Abduction......Page 225
The Riemann Hypothesis......Page 226
Anti-Atheism......Page 231
Murder in the Park......Page 232
The Cube of Cheese......Page 233
The Game of Life......Page 234
Two-Horse Race......Page 239
Drawing an Ellipse - and More?......Page 241
The Kepler Problem......Page 242
The Milk Crate Problem......Page 246
Road Network......Page 247
Tautoverbs......Page 248
Complexity Science......Page 250
Dragon Curve......Page 255
Counterflip......Page 256
Mathematical Theology......Page 257
Professor Stewart's Cunning Crib Sheet......Page 262
