Status
Available
Call number
Series
Collection
Publication
New York : Knopf, 1979.
Description
The twenty chapters of this book are nicely balanced between all sorts of stimulating ideas, suggested by down-to-earth objects like match sticks and dollar bills as well as by faraway objects like planets and infinite random walks. We learn about ancient devices for arithmetic and about modern explanations of artificial intelligence. There are feasts here for the eyes and hands as well as for the brain.
User reviews
LibraryThing member paradoxosalpha
Mathematical Circus is one of many recreational mathematics books assembled from the Scientific American columns of Martin Gardner. It lives up to its title in a variety of ways: several chapters detail magic tricks, there are games included, and there is even material on natural wonders such as
This book is more designedly for entertainment than my usual math reads, but there were points where the mathematical sophistication was every bit as challenging. Of special interest to me were the chapters on hyperspheres, Boolean algebra, and palindromes. The "Solar System Oddities" chapter is surprisingly unencumbered by antiquated references to Pluto, and has a really fascinating digest of solar system paradigms from Pythagoras to Einstein. Chess material is confined to one item each in the two smorgasbord chapters.
A full bibliography indicates Gardner's sources.
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optical illusions and the structure of the solar system. The content is frequently dated (1979 to be precise) by subsequent advances in information science and natural observation, but none of it is so obsolete as to be useless, and a few chapters are explicitly concerned with more nostalgic forms of math, such Mascheroni constructions and abacus operations.This book is more designedly for entertainment than my usual math reads, but there were points where the mathematical sophistication was every bit as challenging. Of special interest to me were the chapters on hyperspheres, Boolean algebra, and palindromes. The "Solar System Oddities" chapter is surprisingly unencumbered by antiquated references to Pluto, and has a really fascinating digest of solar system paradigms from Pythagoras to Einstein. Chess material is confined to one item each in the two smorgasbord chapters.
A full bibliography indicates Gardner's sources.
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LibraryThing member adrius42
O so enjoyed Martin Gargner, I think of have most of his output!
LibraryThing member Razinha
Wonderful book. Boole and Turing, abacus math, optical illusions, palindromes, compass geometry, rotations, triangles, randomness, lots of numbers and other problems. And I confess to never having thought about hyperspheres before reading this book.
One of his better collections.
One of his better collections.
Subjects
Language
Physical description
xiii, 272 p.; 22 cm
ISBN
0394502078 / 9780394502076