Here is a splendid collection of 99 puzzles, some adapted and some original with the author, and all built around some form of the chessboard, generally the well-known 8 x 8 version.
In this book you ll find a rich selection of arithmetical and probability problems, chessboard recreations, geometrical puzzles, mathematical amusements and games, and more. In many cases, the author has modified standard problems with new, interesting twists. To solve these puzzles, you don t have to be a chess player. All you need to know are the rules of the games, and in some cases, not even...

Mathematics was only one area of interest for Gerolamo Cardano the sixteenth-century astrologer, philosopher, and physician was also a prolific author and inveterate gambler. Gambling led Cardano to the study of probability, and he was the first writer to recognize that random events are governed by mathematical laws.
Published posthumously in 1663, Cardano's "Liber de ludo aleae" (Book on Games of Chance) is often considered the major starting point of the study of mathematical probability. The Italian scholar formulated some of the field's basic ideas more than a century before the...