Another Fine Math You've Got Me Into

by Ian Stewart

Populated by curious creatures whose stories unfold with jokes and puns, this mathematical wonderland of puzzles and games also imparts significant mathematical ideas. Ian Stewart, an active popularizer of mathematics, university professor, and former columnist for Scientific American 's "Mathematical Games" section, has selected 16 of his columns from Pour la Science, the French edition of Scientific American, most based on a mathematical idea dressed up with oddball characters and wacky wordplay.

Genres: Mathematics, Science, Nonfiction

288 pages, Paperback

First published September 1, 1992

About the author

Ian Nicholas Stewart is an Emeritus Professor and Digital Media Fellow in the Mathematics Department at Warwick University, with special responsibility for public awareness of mathematics and science. He is best known for his popular science writing on mathematical themes.
--from the author's website

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name. See other authors with similar names.

Reviews

[Caleb Stanford · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a very good book for a math enthusiast of any level. I found myself constantly fascinated by the problems Stewart chose to include, and on more than one occasion I made a note of a math problem to think about later. In short, the problems (or perhaps more accurately, problem situations) discussed in this book are very high quality.

As a college-level mathematician, I can't say for sure that the book is accessible. However, I believe it to be so, because the explanations and pace of the book seemed quite slow to me, and because most of the chapters did not presume any prerequisites as far as I recall.

Each chapter in the book is a different (mathematical) subject of study. Most of the subjects are introduced by stories involving various entertaining characters and dialogues. In general the stories do not take away from the math, but they do bring the pace down quite a bit.

After reading this book I have added Ian Stewart to my list of math authors to read. I would recommend the book to most, if not all, of those interested in recreational mathematics.

[Ben · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ian Stewart does a great job of writing popular mathematics. I'd recommend his books if you are a fan of Martin Gardner.

Also: he was on the podcast "Skeptically Speaking" last week if you want to hear something of his style of communication. (skepticallyspeaking.ca)

[Jayson Swanson]

This book is absolutely fantastic. The cleverness Stewart brought to his mathematical explanations, working them into rather amusing stories, was a huge inspiration for me to write my own math books and educational content.

[Maurizio Codogno · Rating 4 out of 5]

la mia recensione: http://xmau.com/notiziole/archives/00...