5.0 out of 5 stars
A wild and crazy math book, July 25, 2008
This date stands at about 17 years after the book was written, and some of the stuff is just a fresh and crazy as when he wrote it.
The research, pictures, and drawings in this book is amazing.
You get a sort of through the looking glass sideways look at puzzles, mazes and just strange people and drawings
that he has dug up. I just read an A. K. Dewdney and compared it with a much later John Casti book. Comparing Dr. Pickover's work in this book to theirs,
is like the Harvard quad to Time Square...or MIT to Berkeley.
Open your mind for fun... of a mathematical, graphic or computer sort
and read.
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5.0 out of 5 stars
It makes you run out of superlatives, November 13, 2002
One could burn a great deal of thesaurus time searching for the right superlatives to describe this book. The third element in a series that will hopefully never end, it is an exciting combination of computer science, philosophy, and playfulness. Dr. Pickover can rightfully be labeled the "philosopher king" of the computer world.
As was the case in previous books, the primary focus is on the computer generation of images, but in this work the author skips down other avenues of mental exploration. Computer generated mazes, fractal music, fractal ant farms (think about whether the ants or the farms or both are what is fractal), caging fleas in Hyperspace, virtual reality, and strange chess problems are just some of the items that are discussed. Short pieces describing strange forms of art creation appear at regular intervals.
The only place where this reviewer thinks that the book stumbles is in the short science fiction story. However, it is conceded that this may be an instance of personal prejudice. This reviewer is a longtime reader of the genre, with an emphasis on the so-called big three of Asimov, Clarke, and Heinlein. It may be unfair to compare anyone to those three.
The level of difficulty resembles a sine curve. Some passages require a good deal of knowledge in the area of math/computers, while others can be understood by anyone. All topics are well referenced, so anyone who wishes to explore further will have no trouble doing so. Questions designed to initiate further thought occur at the end of each essay.
Whatever your background and interests, you will find something of value in this book and both of the two previous ones, "Computers, Pattern, Chaos, and Beauty" and "Computers and the Imagination." To paraphrase an old advertising slogan, "no one can read just one."
Published in Journal of Recreational Mathematics, reprinted with permission.
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5.0 out of 5 stars
Infinitely enojyable, March 27, 2002
By A Customer
Pickover presents numerous brief chapters providing excursions into computer art, mathematics, physics, and whatever other topic happens to be tangentially related to anything he cares about. In the hands of a less astute person Mazes for the Mind would be meaningless drivel. But Pickover is like a wonderful uncle you see a few times a year for holidays; he is full of fascinating tales to share. Anyone who is interested in how math shows up in odd places, and who has some familiarity with relatively advanced topics like chaos theory, number theory, topology, etc. should find plenty to occupy their minds in this work. Though some of the sections are too brief, the quick tours through each topic are generally enjoyable.
I'm most interested to see what other Pickover works are available.
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