Dover Recreational Math

How many cards do I have to deal before I know for certain that you have a straight? If two typists can type two pages in two minutes, how many typists will it take to type 18 pages? How many days are in five million seconds? If you think these are good questions, this is the book for you! Over two hundred entertaining puzzles involving mathematical and mechanical calculations include challenges to your lateral thinking and logical reasoning. When your brain's tired of being teased, you can consult the complete solutions.

Mathematics was only one area of interest for Gerolamo Cardano ― the sixteenth-century astrologer, philosopher, and physician was also a prolific author and inveterate gambler. Gambling led Cardano to the study of probability, and he was the first writer to recognize that random events are governed by mathematical laws. Published posthumously in 1663, Cardano's Liber de ludo aleae (Book on Games of Chance) is often considered the major starting point of the study of mathematical probability. The Italian scholar formulated some of the field's basic ideas more than a century before the better-known correspondence of Pascal and Fermat. Although his book had no direct influence on other early thinkers about probability, it remains an important antecedent to later expressions of the science's tenets.

Clear, thorough account, without complicated mathematics, explains geometric and the zone plate holography and the different types of holograms, including transmission, reflection, phase, projection, rainbow, and multiplex. It also shows basic setups for making holograms and provides step-by-step instructions so readers can make their own. 116 black-and-white illustrations.

Praised for its "exceptionally good value" by the Journal of Recreational Mathematics, this book offers fun-filled insights into many fields of mathematics. The brainteasers include original puzzles as well as new approaches to classic conundrums. A vast assortment of challenges features domino puzzles, the game of noughts and crosses, games of encirclement, sliding movement puzzles, subtraction games, puzzles in mechanics, games with piles of matches, a road puzzle with concentric circles, "Catch the Giant," and much more. Detailed solutions show several methods by which a particular problem may be answered, why one method is preferable, and where the others fail. With numerous worked examples, the clear, step-by-step analyses cover how the problem should be approached, including hints and enumeration of possibilities and determination of probabilities, application of the theory of probability, and evaluation of contingencies and mean values. Readers are certain to improve their puzzle-solving strategies as well as their mathematical skills.

This collection gathers together nearly 330 tangrams, the best creations of both Chinese and Occidental puzzle devisers. Included are puzzles carefully selected from rare 19th-century books and some of the most inventive and imaginative inventions of Loyd and Dudeney. Tangrams range from the relatively easy to the difficult.