Mathematical Recreations

By Maurice Kraitchik

Book Overview

Ranging from ancient Greek and Roman problems to the most modern applications of special mathematical techniques for amusement, this popular volume contains material to delight both beginners and advanced mathematicians. Its 250 lively puzzles, problems, situations, and demonstrations of recreational mathematics feature full solutions and analyses. Fifty-seven highly unusual historic problems are derived from ancient Greek, medieval European, Arabic, and Hindu sources. Other problems are based on "mathematics without numbers," geometry, topology, the calendar, arithmetic, and the mathematics of chess moves. Fifty pages comprise numerical pastimes built out of figurate numbers, Mersenne numbers, Fermat numbers, cyclic numbers, automorphic numbers, and prime numbers; probability problems are also fully analyzed. More than forty pages are devoted to magic squares, and the concluding portion of the book presents more than twenty-five new positional and permutational games of permanent value. A discussion of fairy chess is followed by rules and procedural information on latruncles, go, reversi, jinx, ruma, lasca, tricolor, four-story towers, tetrachrome, and other games. More than a collection of wonderful puzzles, this volume offers a thorough, rigorous, and entertaining sampler of recreational mathematics, highlighted by numerous insights into specialized fields.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0486201635
• ISBN13: 9780486201634
• Release Date: January 1953
• Publisher: Dover Pubns
• Length: 330 Pages
• Weight: 0.86 lbs.
• Dimensions: 5.1" x 8.3"

Customer Reviews

Demonstrates the staples of recreational math

While it is a target subject to change over time, recreational mathematics does have some staple subjects. They are: puzzles with numbers, magic squares, geometric dissections, problems with board games such as chess and general games. This book is largely a collection of some of the most commonly encountered problems in these areas. The first chapter is a section of ancient problems and puzzles, some of which are thousands of years old. In general, the problem and solution is given with little or no explanation of how the answer was derived. For the remainder of the problems, detailed explanations of the solutions are given. The range of the problems covers nearly all of recreational mathematics, being challenging without being hard. No mathematics beyond the basics of algebra is required to understand them. Although the book was last updated in 1953, the problems are still of interest. I consider them to be an accurate reflection of the areas of recreational mathematics and believe it could serve as a primer for anyone who is curious as to what recreational mathematics is. If you are a teacher of high school or college algebra, this book could also serve as an excellent source of problems that will pique the interest of your students.