- Paperback: 256 pages
- Publisher: Oxford University Press (May 11 2010)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0199562075
- ISBN-13: 978-0199562077
- Product Dimensions: 19.3 x 12.7 x 2.8 cm
- Shipping Weight: 340 g
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Amazon Bestsellers Rank:
#326,221 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #82 in Books > Entertainment > Puzzles & Games > Math Games
- See Complete Table of Contents
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Product Details |
Product Description
Review
His easy style...makes the explanation of maths behind black holes, animal gait and time travel simple to digest. Dominic Lenton, Engineering and Technology
Book Description
From the mathematics of mazes, to cones with a twist, and the amazing sphericon - and how to make one - Ian Stewart is back with more mathematical stories and puzzles that are as quirky as they are fascinating, and each from the cutting edge of the world of mathematics. We find out about the mathematics of time travel, explore the shape of teardrops (which are not tear-drop shaped, but something much, much more strange!), dance with dodecahedra, and play the game of Hex, amongst manymore strange and delightful mathematical diversions.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
4.0 out of 5 stars (3 customer reviews)
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 stars
Buyable Book - but poor quality of binding, Jun 14 2010
By Krishna Jagannath "KRISHJAG" - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Cows in the Maze: And other mathematical explorations (Paperback)
've been looking forward to this book - which was delayed by almost a year after it was announced and am bit disappointed with the content - not as entertaining with his "recreational maths " as Ian Stewart's previous books like Maths hysteria as the topics are more physics and less recreational maths etcStewart covers mathematics of time travel, explores the shape of teardrops (physics ?) ,strategies for the game of Hex, and the title "Where Are the Cows?" maze, which changes every time you pass through it. He also covers on how to count magic squares, describes the mathematical patterns in animal movement (with a story more about Tarzan and Jane than the actual problem ) and the physics of sand piles etc though all embellished with wit , humour and delightful cartoons.
Another gripe is on the quality of binding as the book has come apart within 4-5 days and also why has the book size has been reduced from the earlier comfortable standard 9 x 6 to 7 x 5 as in math hysteria and How to cut a cake . Most inconvenient.
5.0 out of 5 stars
Stewart at his best, April 18 2012
By Charles Ashbacher - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Cows in the Maze: And other mathematical explorations (Paperback)
Ian Stewart is one of the most amusing and effective writers of mathematics for the general audience. His essays are thorough without being overly detailed, written in a style worthy of following the great Martin Gardner, which Stewart did in fact do in writing the "Mathematical Recreations" column for "Scientific American."The majority of essays in this collection are close to if not within recreational mathematics.Some of the topics are:
*) Relativity, black holes and time travel, multiple essays featuring a friend of H. G. Wells.
*) Analyzing the Hex board game
*) The lure of dice
*) What shape is a teardrop?
*) Knight's tours on rectangles
*) Most-perfect magic squares
*) Tiling space with knots
While the level is one that will allow the general reader to understand, Stewart often makes it clear where a more advanced analysis will start or lead.
My favorite essay is one that has very serious repercussions. It is called "The Interrogator's Fallacy" and in it Stewart uses conditional probability to argue that a confession can lead to a higher probability that a person is innocent. He also raises questions about legitimate probability arguments that are made (and often dismissed) in a court of law. It is fascinating to read that there are questions regarding the probabilistic validity of DNA and fingerprint data, the impression one gets is that those two data points are as definitive as legal proof can be.
Light reading in mathematics may seem to be a contradiction in terms, but it is in fact a longstanding area of mathematics, one that Stewart is very effective in continuing.
3.0 out of 5 stars
Good but not Stewart's best, Jun 24 2011
By Per Holst - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Cows in the Maze: And other mathematical explorations (Paperback)
21 chapters of mathematical recreation. Usually I find the professors books rather entertaining, but I must say I'm feeling a bit disappointed about this volume.It's off to a good start with "the Lore and Lure of Dice" - the context specific reflection on the question of probability, and the non-transitive dice. Then quickly passing Piet Hein's board game Hex.
Why we're introduced to Tarzan and Jane in the midst of an otherwise interesting subject, "Walking with quadropeds" - the patterns of the gaits of four legged animals, I have no idea.
Chapters 7, 8, and 9 touches upon time travel, which - as I recall it - is much more physics and sci-fi than mathematics. Luckily though chapter 10 serves a nice gem - Cone with a Twist - the sphericon.
Chapter 11 touches upon the shape of a drop, and in chapter 12 we're back to probability and fallacies in The Interrogator's Fallacy, where we now use Bayes' theorem and Mathews's formula. There's an error in the formula printed on page 173 at the top though, it should be:
P(A|C) = P(C|A) * P (A)/ P(C)
Then we get to the title chapter: Cows in the Maze. And while it has cows and is kind of a maze - it's not a standard maze, it's a maze of logic statements.
Leaving the maze on a Knight's Tour into Cat's Cradle over Klein bottles (and Möbius bands) into Voronoï celled craters into knots, which again I found a bit disappointing.
The construction of Most Perfect Squares are matched up with Mathematical impossibilities.
The final chapter of the book regards dancing with strings forming regular solids.
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