Mathematical Circus Martin Gardner Pdf

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· 85 ratings · 4 reviews

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Mar 20, 2021 Amelia rated it it was amazing

This is a good old fashioned math fun book.
I really enjoyed it, and I think the independent chapter format makes it a great bathroom/coffee table read. You can read a 10 page chapter as a finite story. It felt mostly accessible, but with a few hints towards higher level mathematics (not many).

The authour writes little puzzles into each chapter that the reader has the ability to try to solve by themselves before being given the answers, which makes it very interactive, but also I didn't always put the pressure on myself to try to solve the problem without reading the answer. Whatever felt right.

I do think the book is a little dated which has both pros and cons. Pros: the mathematic problems discussed are probably better suited for an audience that enjoys paper and pencil problems. There is a limit to the complexity of algorithms that can be discussed because computers were limited, which I think gives a nice consistency to the book in that the computational complexity of most of the problems remains below a certain limit. Cons: the generic masculine is used, and there is kind of the feel of an old boys club at times. At the same time, there are frequent references to readers of the magazine the columns were originally written for and it's a nice reminder that all sorts of people are interested in recreational math. It's fun to think about people thinking about these problems in their extra time.

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Realmente esperaba otro tipo de contenido. Sin embargo, es interesante.

Apr 21, 2015 Jim Razinha rated it really liked it

Wonderful book. Boole and Turing, abacus math, optical illusions, palindromes, compass geometry, rotations, triangles, randomness, lots of numbers and other problems. And I confess to never having thought about hyperspheres before reading this book.

One of his better collections.

Dec 03, 2014 Jess JK rated it it was amazing

I gave this book 5 stars because it began my life long passion for maths. Before I read this (around age 12) I thought maths consisted basically of dry mechanical problems. This was the first book that gave me an idea of the creativity and scope of mathematics.

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Martin Gardner was an American mathematics and science writer specializing in recreational mathematics, but with interests encompassing micromagic, stage magic, literature (especially the writings of Lewis Carroll), philosophy, scientific skepticism, and religion. He wrote the Mathematical Games column in Scientific American from 1956 to 1981, and published over 70 books.