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This encyclopedia contains trigonometric identity proofs for some three hundred identities. The book is presented in the form of mathematical games for the reader s enjoyment and includes a concordance of trigonometric identities, enabling easy reference.
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$39.00 |
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Every mathematician (beginner, amateur, and professional alike) thrills to find simple, elegant solutions to seemingly difficult problems. Such happy resolutions are called ``aha! solutions,'' a phrase popularized by mathematics and science writer Martin Gardner. Aha! solutions are surprising, stunning, and scintillating: they reveal the beauty of mathematics. This book is a collection of problems with aha! solutions. The problems are at the level of the college mathematics student, but there should be something of interest for the high school student, the teacher of mathematics, the ``math fan,'' and anyone else who loves mathematical challenges. This collection includes one hundred problems in the areas of arithmetic, geometry, algebra, calculus, probability, number theory, and combinatorics. The problems start out easy and generally get more difficult as you progress through the book. A few solutions require the use of a computer. An important feature of the book is the bonus discussion of related mathematics that follows the solution of each problem. This material is there to entertain and inform you or point you to new questions. If you don't remember a mathematical definition or concept, there is a Toolkit in the back of the book that will help.
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$50.82 |
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 (3.5 / 5.0) 1000 PLAYTHINKS is the most compulsive, head-scratching, and-at 5.08 pounds-gargantuan puzzle book ever. An obsessive collection of 1,000 challenges, puzzles, riddles, illusions-both original as well as must-do classics. Jam-packed on the page and illustrated throughout in full-color, with a visual for each entry, the book, opened anywhere, is like a call to action. And once started it's hard to stop, because at the end of every successfully completed game the puzzle-solver feels smart, successful, and at one with the beauty of mathematics.
Created by Ivan Moscovich, PLAYTHINKS is the first and only book where science, math, and art puzzles all come together. Broken down by chapter, PLAYTHINKS challenges with 12 basic categories, including games of Geometry; Patterns; Numbers; Logic and Probability; and Perception. A special Bonus Round is included for die-hard puzzlers who, after all that, still haven't had enough. An easy-to-read key at the top of each game ranks its difficulty on a scale of 1 to 10. The lie-flat spiral binding makes the hefty book completely reader-friendly. So do the answers in the back.
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$22.77 |
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 (4.0 / 5.0) truly challenging conundrums for the expert puzzlist. Algebraic amusements, geometric exercises, diophantine diversions, problems in logic and deduction, probability posers, insight puzzles and assorted number theory problems. 130 woodcut illustrations by Ed Kysar.
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$3.90 |
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(3.5 / 5.0)
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$19.95 |
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 (3.0 / 5.0) If you haven’t already discovered the number puzzle that The New York Post calls “diabolically addictive,” you’ll soon discover that playing sudoku is like eating potato chips: you can’t stop with just one! Here you’ll find 150 puzzles—presented by New York Times crossword editor and bestselling author Will Shortz—to whet your appetite, boggle your brain, and improve your playing skills at any level. The object is to fill the puzzle grid with numbers so that every row, column, and three-by-three square contains the digits 1 through 9, without repeating. Once you get the hang of it, playing sudoku can be downright hypnotic as you work the numbers around the grid. And experts can enjoy the trying to solve the puzzles faster and faster!
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$0.96 |
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(3.0 / 5.0) Many of us remember playing the game Dots-and-Boxes as children. It is a familiar paper-and-pencil game for two players who start from a square or rectangular array of dots and take turns in joining two horizontally or vertically adjacent dots. If a player completes the fourth side of a square (box), he initials that box and must then draw another line. When all the boxes have been completed, the game ends and whoever has initialed more boxes is declared the winner. Dots-and-Boxes is, like other good games, remarkable in that it can be played on several different levels of sophistication. This deceptively simple game, however, is more than just child's play. Dots-and-Boxes strategy serves as an introduction to mathematical game theory, a subject that has earned the prominent mathematician John Nash a Nobel Prize in Economics. This book is an essential guide to the game of Dots-and-Boxes and its mathematical underpinnings. Chapters on strategy are interspersed with 100 sample problems and their strategic solutions. The book will appeal to a diverse range of readers, from casual players seeking to improve their play to mathematicians interested in the more sophisticated strategy techniques.
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$22.44 |
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(4.0 / 5.0) Robert Kaplan's The Nothing That Is: A Natural History of Zero was an international best-seller, translated into ten languages. The Times called it "elegant, discursive, and littered with quotes and allusions from Aquinas via Gershwin to Woolf" and The Philadelphia Inquirer praised it as "absolutely scintillating." In this delightful new book, Robert Kaplan, writing together with his wife Ellen Kaplan, once again takes us on a witty, literate, and accessible tour of the world of mathematics. Where The Nothing That Is looked at math through the lens of zero, The Art of the Infinite takes infinity, in its countless guises, as a touchstone for understanding mathematical thinking. Tracing a path from Pythagoras, whose great Theorem led inexorably to a discovery that his followers tried in vain to keep secret (the existence of irrational numbers); through Descartes and Leibniz; to the brilliant, haunted Georg Cantor, who proved that infinity can come in different sizes, the Kaplans show how the attempt to grasp the ungraspable embodies the essence of mathematics. The Kaplans guide us through the "Republic of Numbers," where we meet both its upstanding citizens and more shadowy dwellers; and we travel across the plane of geometry into the unlikely realm where parallel lines meet. Along the way, deft character studies of great mathematicians (and equally colorful lesser ones) illustrate the opposed yet intertwined modes of mathematical thinking: the intutionist notion that we discover mathematical truth as it exists, and the formalist belief that math is true because we invent consistent rules for it. "Less than All," wrote William Blake, "cannot satisfy Man." The Art of the Infinite shows us some of the ways that Man has grappled with All, and reveals mathematics as one of the most exhilarating expressions of the human imagination.
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$7.00 |
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(4.0 / 5.0) When Archimedes, while bathing, suddenly hit upon the principle of buoyancy, he ran wildly through the streets of Syracuse, stark naked, crying "eureka!" In The Moment of Proof, Donald Benson attempts to convey to general readers the feeling of eureka--the joy of discovery--that mathematicians feel when they first encounter an elegant proof.
This is not an introduction to mathematics so much as an introduction to the pleasures of mathematical thinking. And indeed the delights of this book are many and varied. The book is packed with intriguing conundrums--Loyd's Fifteen Puzzle, the Petersburg Paradox, the Chaos Game, the Monty Hall Problem, the Prisoners' Dilemma--as well as many mathematical curiosities. We learn how to perform the arithmetical proof called "casting out nines" and are introduced to Russian peasant multiplication, a bizarre way to multiply numbers that actually works. The book shows us how to calculate the number of ways a chef can combine ten or fewer spices to flavor his soup (1,024) and how many people we would have to gather in a room to have a 50-50 chance of two having the same birthday (23 people). But most important, Benson takes us step by step through these many mathematical wonders, so that we arrive at the solution much the way a working scientist would--and with much the same feeling of surprise. Every fan of mathematical puzzles will be enthralled by The Moment of Proof. Indeed, anyone interested in mathematics or in scientific discovery in general will want to own this book.
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$11.94 |
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(4.0 / 5.0) Do a little armchair time-travel, rub elbows with a four-dimensional intelligent life form, or stretch your mind to the furthest corner of an uncharted universe. With this astonishing guidebook, Surfing Through Hyperspace, you need not be a mathematician or an astrophysicist to explore the all-but-unfathomable concepts of hyperspace and higher-dimensional geometry.
No subject in mathematics has intrigued both children and adults as much as the idea of a fourth dimension. Philosophers and parapsychologists have meditated on this mysterious space that no one can point to but may be all around us. Yet this extra dimension has a very real, practical value to mathematicians and physicists who use it every day in their calculations. In the tradtion of Flatland, and with an infectious enthusiasm, Clifford Pickover tackles the problems inherent in our 3-D brains trying to visualize a 4-D world, muses on the religious implications of the existence of higher-dimensional consciousness, and urges all curious readers to venture into "the unexplored territory lying beyond the prison of the obvious." Pickover alternates sections that explain the science of hyperspace with sections that dramatize mind-expanding concepts through a fictional dialogue between two futuristic FBI agents who dabble in the fourth dimension as a matter of national security. This highly accessible and entertaining approach turns an intimidating subject into a scientific game open to all dreamers. Surfing Through Hyperspace concludes with a number of puzzles, computer experiments and formulas for further exploration, inviting readers to extend their minds across this inexhaustibly intriguing scientific terrain.
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$3.47 |