Kategoria BISAC: Mathematics >> Recreations & Games

Take a grand tour of the best of modern math, its most elegant solutions, most clever discoveries, most mind-bending propositions, and most impressive personalities. Writing with a light touch while showing the real mathematics, author Peter Schumer introduces you to the history of mathematics, number theory, combinatorics, geometry, graph theory, and "recreational mathematics." Requiring only high school math and a healthy curiosity, Mathematical Journeys helps you explore all those aspects of math that...

Why do your chances of winning the lottery increase if you buy your ticket on Friday? Why do traffic lights always seem to be red when you?re in a hurry? Is bad luck just chance, or can it be explained?

The intriguing answers to these and other questions about the curiosities of everyday life can be found in this delightfully irreverent and highly informative book. Why Do Buses Come in Threes? explains how math and the laws of probability...

- What do prehistoric bone markings and modern computer science have in common?
- What is the mystery of pi that stumped generations of ancient mathematicians?
- What are the ancient puzzle origins of popular games such as tic-tac-toe and chess?
- Can you solve the puzzles posed to emperor Charlemagne by Alcuin of York?
- What's the secret lore behind magic squares that captured the imagination of Chinese...

Ornaments and icons, symbols of complexity or evil, aesthetically appealing and endlessly useful in everyday ways, knots are also the object of mathematical theory, used to unravel ideas about the topological nature of space. In recent years knot theory has been brought to bear on the study of equations describing weather systems, mathematical models used in physics, and even, with the realization that DNA sometimes is knotted, molecular biology.

This book, written by a mathematician known for his own work on knot theory, is a clear, concise, and engaging introduction to this...

What is so special about the number 30? How many colors are needed to color a map? Do the prime numbers go on forever? Are there more whole numbers than even numbers? These and other mathematical puzzles are explored in this delightful book by two eminent mathematicians. Requiring no more background than plane geometry and elementary algebra, this book leads the reader into some of the most fundamental ideas of mathematics, the ideas that make the subject exciting and interesting. Explaining clearly how each problem has arisen and, in some cases, resolved, Hans Rademacher and Otto...

Humanity's love affair with mathematics and mysticism reached a critical juncture, legend has it, on the back of a turtle in ancient China. As Clifford Pickover briefly recounts in this enthralling book, the most comprehensive in decades on magic squares, Emperor Yu was supposedly strolling along the Yellow River one day around 2200 B.C. when he spotted the creature: its shell had a series of dots within squares. To Yu's amazement, each row of squares contained fifteen dots, as did the columns and diagonals. When he added any two cells opposite along a line through the center square, like...

All the puzzles in this book take the form of number sequences and always some of the terms are missing. Sometimes the missing terms are at the end and the puzzle is to work out how the sequence continues. Sometimes there are gaps to fill within it. Logical thinking is needed to discover the hidden rules and the book systematically explains how to set about solving this intriguing type of puzzle.

Anyone looking for number puzzles to stretch and intrigue will be delighted with the contents of this original book. The demanding challenges explore the properties of numbers and the patterns and hidden relationships which exist between them. Many of the challenges are presented in a visual or diagrammatic way with tables or charts to complete or fill in.

Sixteen varied and well worked out whole class activities form the heart and the purpose of this collection. The aim is to encourage everyone's active participation with the teacher directing from the front. For some of the activities the pupils have to respond verbally, for others they have to hold up coloured cards with the words 'true' or 'false' or the choices 'A', 'B', 'C' or 'D' printed on them. Photocopy masters are provided for each of these cards and also of the various forms and charts needed to respond or react to the the situations being set up. Anyone looking for a way of...