Professor Stewart's Cabinet of Mathematical Curiosities [Paperback]

'Stewart has served up the instructive equivalent of a Michelin-starred tasting menu, or perhaps a smorgasbord of appetisers. And of course, appetisers are designed to give you an appetite for more.' Tim Radford, Guardian --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

A book of mathematical oddities: games, puzzles, facts, numbers and delightful mathematical nibbles for the curious and adventurous mind.

School maths is not the interesting part. The real fun is elsewhere. Like a magpie, Ian Stewart has collected the most enlightening, entertaining and vexing 'curiosities' of maths over the years...Now, the private collection is displayed in his cabinet. There are some hidden gems of logic, geometry and probability - like how to extract a cherry from a cocktail glass (harder than you think), a pop up dodecahedron, the real reason why you can't divide anything by zero and some tips for making money by proving the obvious. Scattered among these are keys to unlocking the mysteries of Fermat's last theorem, the Poincaré Conjecture, chaos theory, and the P/NP problem for which a million dollar prize is on offer. There are beguiling secrets about familiar names like Pythagoras or prime numbers, as well as anecdotes about great mathematicians. Pull out the drawers of the Professor's cabinet and who knows what could happen...

'Stewart has served up the instructive equivalent of a Michelin-starred tasting menu' Tim Radford, Guardian When he was fourteen, Ian Stewart, one of the best known mathematicians alive, started a maths notebook. Like a magpie he collected every interesting thing he could find out about the maths that wasn't taught at school (all the fun and interesting stuff). His notebook became six, then spilled over into Professor Stewart's Cabinet of Mathematical Curiosities. Open its drawers and discover a fabulous lifetime collection of games, puzzles, stories, jokes and factoids, odd items of mathematical culture, card tricks, things to make and things to do. You'll find out why the M25 is shorter anti-clockwise than clockwise, and what the deal is with Fermat's last theorem, chaos theory, fractals and Penrose patterns, and the real reason you can't divide anything by zero. For seasoned aficionados and adventurous novices alike, nothing can compete with Professor Stewart's tasty assortment of numerical nibbles.

Ian Stewart is a Mathematics Professor at Warwick University. His many books include Mathematics of Life, Professor Stewart's Cabinet of Mathematical Curiosities, and The Science of Discworld trilogy with Terry Pratchett. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society, appears frequently on radio and television, and does research on pattern formation and network dynamics.