Explain this
The Colossal Book of Short Puzzles and Problems
How the publisher describes it:
“For more than twenty-five years, Martin Gardner was Scientific American's renowned provocateur of popular mathematics. His yearly gatherings of short and inventive problems were easily his most anticipated maths columns. Loyal readers would savour the wit and elegance of his explorations in physics, probability, topology and chess, among others. Grouped by subject and arranged from easiest to hardest, the puzzles gathered here have been selected by Gardner for their illuminating - and often bewildering - solutions.”
Review by Jenny Murray
In brief:
This book should be in every school library and on the shelves of all mathematicians and maths teachers. It would make a wonderful present for those who like puzzles, both young and old. It will be prized possession for any fortunate enough to own it. It is superb - buy it!
“Intriguing, engrossing and truly delightful!”
This is a book, I now realise, I have always wanted. I never saw Martin Gardner’s puzzles in the Scientific American where they were first published, but during the early 1980’s I bought many of the collections of his problems and mathematical oddities published by Penguin. They were both diverting and useful. However they were unorganised and not indexed. I had to keep a bookmark in each volume with page numbers on it for problems to which I might want to refer. Amidst these there were also longish articles on various mathematical subjects, interesting, but not easy to use for the avid puzzle-doer.
This book rights everything! The puzzles have been edited by Dana Richards. She has done a truly great job. The problems, which are all short ones, leaving out the lengthy digressions, are beautifully organised. There are four main sections., “Combinational & Numerical Problems”, “Geometric Puzzles”, “Algorithmic Puzzles and Games” and “Other Puzzles”. Each of the four headings is also subdivided and there is a very good index, so everything is easy to find. There is also an appendix of new material headed “Twelve More Brain Teasers”. The answers are there at the end of each chapter, with the date of their first publication in the Scientific American.
This book is not ill named. The seventeen chapters plus the appendix add to nearly 500 pages. On these pages there are 333 problems and their answers. If that is not “colossal”, I don’t know what is! Looking through the problems, there are many I have met before. It is like meeting old friends in new, and more comfortable, surroundings. Some are familiar because the ideas have been used in “Points of Departure” and other ATM publications. There are many, many more that can be used, changed and adapted by today’s teachers, mathematicians and puzzle-setters. There is no need to worry about using someone else’s material. Martin Gardner’s original columns were seldom original. He collected and adapted them from many places.
There is one problem that I particularly like. It is typical of many of Martin Gardner’s puzzles. The maths needed to do it is trivial, but there is a neat trick, of the sort where the solution comes to you at an odd moment when doing something else, or like a non-mathematical friend of mine, comes straight away!
There is a desk calendar that has two cubes that show the date on the front faces. With these two cubes you can show any date from 01 to 31. The illustration shows the date as “25”. You can see 2 and 1 in the first cube and 5, 3 and 4 on the second one.
What are the figures on the sides of the two cubes you cannot see?
Some problems require more mathematical knowledge. But simple or more challenging, they are all intriguing, engrossing and truly delightful!
This book should be in every school library and on the shelves of all mathematicians and maths teachers. It would make a wonderful present for those who like puzzles, both young and old. It will be prized possession for any fortunate enough to own it. It is superb - buy it!
Jenny Murray • Independent Maths Consultant, Suffolk
Hardcover: 512 pages
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Co. (22 Nov 2005)
Language English
ISBN-10: 0393061140
ISBN-13: 978-0393061147
Product Dimensions: 24.9 x 17.9 x 3.2 cm
