| ||||||||||||||||||
 Trade In this Item for up to £4.05
Trade in Archimedes' Revenge: The Joys and Perils of Mathematics for an Amazon.co.uk gift card of up to £4.05, which you can then spend on millions of items across the site. Trade-in values may vary (terms apply). Find more products eligible for trade-in.
|
Frequently Bought Together
Product details
|
More About the Author
Suggested Tags from Similar Products(What's this?)Be the first one to add a relevant tag (keyword that's strongly related to this product)
|
Sell a Digital Version of This Book in the Kindle Store
What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?
Customer Reviews
The last section, particularly Chapter 12 titled "Is Democracy Mathematically Unsound?" is particularly interesting. It presents some, probably counter-intuitive, results from game theory. One example from this Chapter may help give a flavor of the type of mathematics covered.
A simple game is discussed in which three contestants each have one balloon. They engage in a contest where each round a contestant is randomly selected in turn to throw a dart at one of the other contestant's balloons. The winner is the player whose balloon is still intact at the end of the game. The contestants have different skill levels at darts. It can be shown that the player with the least skill actually has the highest probably of winning. In fact, the probability of winning is in inverse relationship to the dart skill of each player (to many, perhaps most, reader's this will be counter-intuitive). This problem is quickly expanded to a variety of situations that lead quite directly into a discussion of competition in politics, business, etc. The book demonstrates that even the simplest mathematical problems often lead to quite broad and significant applications.
The excellent examples, easily accessible writing style, and broad variety of areas covered make this an easy book to recommended highly for mathematicians and scientists and, perhaps surprisingly, also to general readers, even those with math phobias.
With major focus on the actual problem which archimedes set as his revenge, the book also explores other interesting avenues in mathematics, such as number theory and code ciphering.
As a student awaiting university mathematics, I would particularly recommend this book to people in thissituation, as it hasopened my eyes to area of mathematics that i never knew existed.
Overall, this was very enjoyable indeed.
Moreover, for anyone who's wondered what use math is, Hoffman can answer that as well. Among the subjects covered are: cryptology (code making and code breaking), architecture, computer science, and political science.
The book is divided into a number of sections, ranging from number theory to topology to game theory. While these may sound like esoteric (and useless) concepts, Hoffman masterfully weaves in stories, such as the (in)famous Beale cipher, a secretly coded treasure map that has resisted all attempts to crack it for over 100 years.
I recommended to a colleague of mine that she buy this book for her teenage son, who is bright but a slacker. She reported that he raved about the book and was so eager to discuss it with her!
As an example of the sort of thing covered in this book, Hoffman describes a game where A, B, and C all have balloons and darts. A hits his target 80% of the time; B hits his target 60% of the time; and C hits his target 40% of the time. If each person attacks his strongest opponent, who wins most often? Surprisingly, the answer is C, because A and B concentrate their attacks on each other.
In summary, if you have math-phobia but would like to conquer it, this is a great place to start. There are no equations to speak of, just concepts explained in (relatively) plain English. It may take a couple of readings to understand it all, but it's definitely within grasp for those who progressed no farther than Algebra 2 in high school.
Of the four, the number theory section is the most interesting, but a more in-depth and charming analysis of this area of mathematics can be found in Simon Singh's two books: Fermat's Last Theorem and The Code Book.
The chapter on computing machines is weakened by the fact that the book was published first in 1989 and consequently is rather dated.
Overall I would describe this book as a page-turner but only in the sense that I skipped pages to swiftly conclude certain chapters.
intricacies of dot patterns, prime numbers, codes, geometric
shapes, conic forms, states and the Palindrom check-just to
mention a few of the topics treated. Math majors would find this
work a delight. It is perfect for a school math project.
You could also develop a thesis from some of the challenges
proposed in this book. It is worth the price for persons
interested in higher mathematics and the sciences. It could be
useful for computer scientists and machine language specialists.
Listmania!
Look for similar items by category
Look for similar items by subject
Feedback
- Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
- I am the Author, and I want to comment on my book.
- I am the Publisher, and I want to comment on this book.
|
