» My Best Mathematical and Logic Puzzles (Math & Logic Puzzles)

My Best Mathematical and Logic Puzzles (Math & Logic Puzzles) Reviews

Customer Rating:
Summary: Don't waste your money
Comment: While the puzzles are intriguing and thought-provoking, the solutions don't explain how the answers were reached. I was highly disappointed.

---

Customer Rating:
Summary: Great bathroom reading!
Comment: Very nice. I like the old-fashioned approach (I think the author has been writing books like this since the 1960s) and the problems are interesting and varied; most of them you can do in your head (hence an ideal "bathroom book") but some do make you break out the pencil and paper just to double-check. Highly recommended for interested people who studied Maths to around age 18 or beyond.

---

Customer Rating:
Summary: Good for warming up your brain.
Comment: Nice collection of puzzles with varying difficulties, which do not require any special knowledge of mathematics.

---

Customer Rating:
Summary: The best compilation from Martin Gardner's Scientific American mathematical games column
Comment: "My best mathematical and logic puzzles" presents 70 of the best of the brain teaser that Martin Gardner published over a period of 25 years in his Mathematical games column at Scientific American. It some cases references to new developments related with specific puzzles have been added.

Martin Gardner was always especially careful to present in his American Scientific column only new and unfamiliar puzzles that have not been included in classic collections before. Now you can challenge your solving skills and rattle your ego with a compilation of his best mind-benders.

Here is an example of what you can find inside this book (31. The absent-minded teller}:

"An absent-minded bank teller switched the dollars and cents when he cashed a check for Mr. Brown, giving him dollars instead of cents, and cents instead of dollars. After buying a five-cent newspaper, Mr. Brown discovered that he had left exactly twice as much as his original check. What was the amount of the check?"

One of the best things about Martin Gardner books is that a carefully explained solution follows each problem, this way you learn and add new abilities to your problem solving skills, that will sure be helpful in solving real life problems, while entertaining yourself with a good and challenging reading.

---

Customer Rating:
Summary: The best of one of the best
Comment: Martin Gardner is the grand old man of puzzles and recreational mathematics. I recommend this book for intermediary and advanced puzzle enthusiasts - beginners might find some of these too challenging.

Intermediary puzzlists will find the pleasures of often working at the upper edge of their skills. The solutions at the end of the book are complete enough so that even those who didn't get it right the first time will get aha insights.

The book is well worth its price even for puzzle enthusiasts. Even I knew many of the puzzles beforehand - classics indeed - but the notes in the solutions often add a twist, a clever solution or a human interest point of view.

The age recommendation of amazon.com - 4-8 years - is probably either an insider joke or a typo. I'd recommend this book to people between 14-80 years of age, and even over.

---

More Reviews for My Best Mathematical and Logic Puzzles (Math & Logic Puzzles)