Professor Stewart’s cabinet of mathematical curiosities

Ian Stewart0465013023, 9780465013029, 9780786727254

Knowing that the most exciting math is not taught in school, Professor Ian Stewart has spent years filling his cabinet with intriguing mathematical games, puzzles, stories, and factoids intended for the adventurous mind. This book reveals the most exhilarating oddities from Professor Stewart’s legendary cabinet. Inside, you will find hidden gems of logic, geometry, and probability?like how to extract a cherry from a cocktail glass (harder than you think), a pop-up dodecahedron, and the real reason why you can’t divide anything by zero. Scattered among these are keys to Fermat’s last theorem, the Poincare conjecture, chaos theory, and the P=NP problem (you’ll win a million dollars if you solve it). You never know what enigmas you’ll find in the Stewart cabinet, but they’re sure to be clever, mind-expanding, and delightfully fun.