Those
mainstreams of math books are thick, tattered and dull school textbook
containing numerous problems and boring exercises. With very tedious books,
many people tend to oversee the beauty of mathematics. But when you read Prof. Ian’s
Stewart’s “Cabinet of Mathematical Curiosities”, you’ll change your mind and
might even want to be more inquisitive of mathematics than you’ll ever imagine.
The
book offers many mathematical problems and curiosities from all areas of math,
some are famous while others are not so. I find those puzzles really
complicated, as it took me time to completely understand them and eventually
appreciate the solution. Let me just emphasize that this book is not the one
you’ll easily read in just one sitting. It is more suited to be read in
intervals, that is if you’re bored or have nothing else to do. You might as
well read this while eating so that you’ll not be hungry when thinking. Or you can
just browse a single curiosity for seconds but you’ll spend half an hour
solving one or two puzzles, and even longer than that for your brain to absorb
the Banach-Tarski Paradox, Riemann Hypothesis, Four Colour
Theorem, the P=NP? Problem, Poincare Conjecture, and Fibonacci Numbers. If you
have heard any of these before, however they don’t make any sense to you, keep
calm because the author would make you understand their relative importance.
Given
the pros for this book, I would also review for the cons. There are several
errors that can be found in the solutions guide, but they are easy to spot on.
Some of the explanations to the solutions were brief because they’re obvious.
Yet, at least, there are complete links provided to further information for the
curious minds.
With
a lot of math history, mind-boggling puzzles and brainteasers, dorky humor and
mathematical trivia, this book is a great collection for people that would
choose to read math for fun.
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