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Product Description
A collection of the author's recreational mathematics columns from "Pour la Science".
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
15 of 15 people found the following review helpful
Format:Mass Market Paperback
This book gives the reader a chance to experience a wide variety of quite advanced mathematics, and interact with these topics through puzzles set for the reader. These topics are presented in a very reader friendly way, interwining the mathematics into quite humourous and entertaining stories. The book hides very interesting mathematics behind these stories, which also prompt the reader to think further. An excellent, well-crafted book.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Game, Set & Math is a collection of pieces that Ian Stewart wrote for Pour la Science, the French edition of Scientific American. If you are familiar with his Mathematical Curiosities or his Hoard of Mathematical Treasures, then you already know the engaging style with which he makes even difficult mathematics accessible for a broad readership. Game, Set & Math has however substantially fewer topics ("only" twelve) than the other two books, but they are discussed much more deeply. It can be regarded as a predecessor to his Math Hysteria and How to Cut a Cake. I particularly liked the chapter on the random walk with absorbing boundaries called The Drunken Tennis-Player. It shows why a tennis-player that is only slightly better than his opponent almost always wins their matches. The bridges of Köningsberg, Fermat's last theorem, the Sierpinski gasket, the Möbius band, and the Klein bottle will be familiar to many readers, but the book shows surprising links with other areas of mathematics. Most chapters have exercises or suggestions to explore the topic of the chapter in more depth. Each chapter has also a list of references for further reading. This is an excellent book if you are interested in recreational mathematics and like to do some work in it yourself.
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2 reviews
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful
Wading through puns to learn mathematics
16 Nov 2002
Format:Mass Market Paperback
Like the man who replaced Babe Ruth in the Yankee outfield, Ian Stewart is replacing a legend. When Martin Gardner "retired" as the editor of the Mathematical Games column of Scientific American it was eventually taken over by A. K. Dewdney and became Computer Recreations. Now written by Ian Stewart and called Mathematical Recreations, it is proving a worthy successor to the master. This book is a collection of twelve essays that explain serious mathematics using an unserious approach.
Set in a format that is best described as a chatty fable with puns included, the essays are certainly easy to read. However, as is usual with material containing a lot of puns, they do at times distract from the point of the essay. And those points are very good. The topology of a warm blanket, the odds of beating a tennis player that is better than you, logic and the construction of viruses are some of the topics covered in this book. All are presented as mathematical recreations with a minimum of computer involvement.
No one could possibly replace Martin Gardner. The best that can be done is to carve a successful, distinctive niche, which is what Ian Stewart has done.
Set in a format that is best described as a chatty fable with puns included, the essays are certainly easy to read. However, as is usual with material containing a lot of puns, they do at times distract from the point of the essay. And those points are very good. The topology of a warm blanket, the odds of beating a tennis player that is better than you, logic and the construction of viruses are some of the topics covered in this book. All are presented as mathematical recreations with a minimum of computer involvement.
No one could possibly replace Martin Gardner. The best that can be done is to carve a successful, distinctive niche, which is what Ian Stewart has done.
Published in Journal of Recreational Mathematics, reprinted with permission.
3 of 4 people found the following review helpful
Interesting but difficult
13 Jun 2000
Format:Mass Market Paperback
The book is a set of puzzles for the reader to solve, often involving a family of worms that have to split a blanket, cut a cheese, or some other commonplace task that nonetheless can take mathematics to solve in the required way. The author originally wrote the puzzles for the French edition of Scientific American. Some of the mathematics involved is the standard (but interesting) pop-math like games with infinity, but others get into topology and higher mathematics. While many of the puzzles are quite interesting, a few will lose the casual reader (even the well-informed casual reader.) Nevertheless, the pleasure of sticking it out for the good ones repays the pain.
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