Professor Stewart's Cabinet of Mathematical Curiosities (Paperback)

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Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

For an exceptional reader, this book could mean a million dollars. For among the many doors that Stewart opens into the wonderland of mathematics, one offers a tantalizing perspective on the Riemann hypothesis, a conjecture so rich with implications that philanthropists have offered a million-dollar prize to anyone who can prove it. Of course, armchair mathematicians are not likely to find the path to that money. But they are certain to find pleasure in this cornucopia of puzzles, brainteasers, and digressions. Readers will delight, for instance, in testing their wits against Euclid’s theorems, in enlarging their understanding of geometry by constructing antigravity cones, and in allying themselves with an ancient genius by calculating just how much Archimedes could have moved the earth with his famous fulcrum. But besides inviting his readers to exercise their gray matter, Stewart initiates them into vertigo-inducing mysteries, including the wild dynamics of chaos and the unearthly beauty of logarithmic spirals. The ideal book for dispelling the supposed drudgery of mathematics with its real magic. --Bryce Christensen

Review

Booklist
“[Armchair mathematicians] are certain to find pleasure in this cornucopia of puzzles, brainteasers, and digressions…. The ideal book for dispelling the supposed drudgery of mathematics with its real magic.”

New Scientist
“Stewart has a genius for explanation that allows details of the Poincaré conjecture and Riemann hypothesis to sit happily alongside a quip about a chicken crossing a Möbius strip…. Mathematics doesn’t come more entertaining than this.”

Chicago Tribune
“The exciting side of math – puzzles, games and thrilling oddities.”

Science News
“What positive integer is equal to its own Scrabble score when spelled out in full? Stewart…offers this and a hodgepodge of other puzzles, paradoxes, brainteasers, tricks, facts and jokes, which he accurately calls ‘curiosities.’.”

IEEE Spectrum
“Open one of the 179 ‘drawers’ in Professor Stewart’s cabinet, and you might find just a one-liner…or a seven-page essay on Fermat’s last theorem…. The book can be devoured in one giant gulp or savored, one curiosity at a time.”

The College Mathematics Journal
“[A] high-speed, nonetheless in-depth romp through elementary and advanced mathematical topics, accessible to any interested reader willing to expend a little effort.”

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Product Details

• Paperback: 320 pages
• Publisher: Basic Books (January 5, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0465013023
• ISBN-13: 978-0465013029
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.4 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #17,082 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars It was a gift, March 24, 2009

By	H. Seager (MA United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I gave it to my husband for his birthday. He says, "Lots of interesting problems old and new, and good information about current developments in mathematics." He teaches mathematics with a problem-solving approach and is especially effective with adults (or near-adults) who are persuaded that they hate math. His worst student review has been, "Well, I still hate math, but Iike THIS math." He now teachers senior citizens in our retirement community.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Treasure Trove for Students and Teachers Alike, March 19, 2009

By	Laura Sheppard-Brick (Somerville, MA United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I teach middle school and high school math, and I am always on the lookout for challenge problems for my students. This books is full of fun, mathematical challenges for all levels of students: from middle school right on up to the teacher. I also enjoy flipping through to find amusing anecdotes, famous unproven hypotheses, practical explanations of mathematical conventions, and really nerdy jokes. I recommend it for anyone who is passionate about math and wants to help other people become passionate about math as well.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Serious Fun, May 9, 2009

By	R. Hardy "Rob Hardy" (Columbus, Mississippi USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 50 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

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"When I was fourteen years old, I started a notebook. A _math_ notebook." Ian Stewart starts his most recent book this way, and then apologizes for being such a geek. He has written lots of books about serious mathematics, and his new one is serious, too, but it is full of serious fun. _Professor Stewart's Cabinet of Mathematical Curiosities_ (Basic Books) comes from that notebook, and the subsequent notebooks he had to get because more curiosities kept crowding in. He didn't put his school math in the notebooks; he put in all the interesting math that he wasn't taught at school. So in these pages are about two hundred short chapters or essays on what is usually called "recreational math". It's not mathematics you can be tested on, so it's fun. A lot of it does not have to do with numbers; mathematicians may forever be associated with numbers and counting, but it is the logic and the study of patterns that occupies higher math, and a lot of that higher math can be brought down to earth for entertainment purposes, as Stewart has done here repeatedly. For those who like recreational math books, there will be much that is familiar, like the problem of crossing all the bridges of Konigsberg exactly once, or that of the farmer who has to cross the river with a wolf, a goat and a cabbage, but has room in his boat for only two at a time, and none must get eaten by the others en route. If those don't ring a bell, this is a splendid book to start you on wondering about some entertaining mathematical ideas. If you know the old ones, Stewart has included lots of new puzzles, as well as small biographies of quirky mathematicians through history, and little essays on non-puzzle material like fractals or Gödel's proof. He has also, at the back of the book, included the answers, in a section labeled, "Professor Stewart's Cunning Crib Sheet: Wherein the discerning or desperate reader may locate answers to those questions that are currently known to possess them... with occasional supplementary facts for their further edification."

There are rings on the coat of arms of the Borromeo family, three rings that you cannot pull apart but none of which is linked to another. There is a section on famous mathematicians who aren't famous for being mathematicians. Sure, you knew Lewis Carroll, famous for the _Alice_ books, was a mathematician / logician, but did you know Art Garfunkel got his master's in math, and only stopped work on his PhD so he could pursue his singing career? Bram Stoker, author of _Dracula_, had a mathematics degree. Leon Trotsky had his mathematical career ended by exile to Siberia. There is a section on Fermat's famous Last Theorem and how it was proved fifteen years ago by complicated modern methods. Fermat himself could not have used such methods in the proof he said he had, but he did not write it down because he didn't have enough space in the margin in which he was writing notes. Stewart says that there might be a simpler proof, and while he repeatedly encourages readers to branch out on their own from these problems, he warns them about coming up with proofs for this one, and he also hints at the frustrations of being a public mathematician: "If you think you've found it, _please don't send it to me_. I get too many attempted proofs as it is, and so far - well, just don't get me started, OK?" There is a section on dividing a cake fairly. It's easy with two people - one cuts the cake and the other gets to decide which piece to take. How do you extend this to three people? If you have a block of cheese in cube form, how can you cut it so that the cut face is hexagonal? Why in lists of numerical data, like the areas of each of the fifty states, are the numbers far more likely to start with 1 or 2 rather than 8 or 9? And how can this be true whether the numbers represent square miles, square kilometers, acres, or any other measurement? What shape of road would give a smooth ride to a bicycle with square wheels? A person born in 35 BC died after his birthday in 35 AD; how old was he? (Hint: those ancients could do math, but they didn't have the concept of 0.) What number, spelled out in Scrabble tiles, equals its Scrabble score? This delightful book is a real miscellany.

It also has one characteristic those older recreational math books didn't have: internet references. When discussing, for instance, John Horton Conway's fascinating complexity-from-simplicity game Life, Stewart can send the reader to an internet version "which is easy to use and will give hours of pleasure." Some of the references are merely to Wikipedia, but others are to specialty sites, including the extensive Wolfram Mathworld. This would be a wonderful book to give to any young person, especially one who claims not to like math. Stewart may not have a cure for such a condition, but his fine collection of amusements could demonstrate that such abhorrence is at least sometimes misdirected.