These sensational new math puzzles are packed with lost, hidden, and missing number challenges that will have you searching the nooks, crannies, and outer limits of your imagination!
"Fans will find this volume indispensable; casual readers will find it an attractive nuisance," observed Scientific American of this challenging compilation of conundrums, diabolic squares, flexagons, geometric dissections, other puzzles.
Research in mathematics is much more than solving puzzles, but most people will agree that solving puzzles is not just fun: it helps focus the mind and increases one's armory of techniques for doing mathematics. Mathematical Puzzles makes this connection explicit by isolating important mathematical methods, then using them to solve puzzles and prove a theorem. Features A collection of the world’s best mathematical puzzles Each chapter features a technique for solving mathematical puzzles, examples, and finally a genuine theorem of mathematics that features that technique in its proof Puzzles that are entertaining, mystifying, paradoxical, and satisfying; they are not just exercises or contest problems.
Famed puzzle expert explains math behind a multitude of mystifying tricks: card tricks, stage "mind reading," coin and match tricks, counting out games, geometric dissections, etc. More than 400 tricks. 135 illustrations.
The noted expert selects 70 of his favorite "short" puzzles, including such mind-bogglers as The Returning Explorer, The Mutilated Chessboard, Scrambled Box Tops, and dozens more involving logic and basic math. Solutions included.
Get smart--give your brain a super-sized workout that's fun, challenging, and mind-expanding! You'll really have to keep your wits about you as you tackle six big sections filled with puzzles and tricks of every sort, from the visual to the verbal. Try critical thinking and lateral thinking questions, where you'll have to "work outside the box," forget your assumptions, and look at the problem from a fresh viewpoint. Whodunits have all the pleasures of a mystery--but you're the detective trying to figure it out! Be "number one" at math conundrums, and open your eyes and look sharp when you tackle the picture puzzles and optical illusions. Give this a shot and find out if you can be a "toothpick architect"! Build a house using 11 toothpicks as shown in the diagram. See if you can make the house face the opposite direction by moving only one toothpick. Answer: Move one of the toothpicks in the roof.
Grounded in research and theory, this text for secondary mathematics methods courses provides useful models of how concepts typically found in a secondary mathematics curriculum can be delivered, so that students develop a positive attitude about learning and using mathematics in their daily lives.
This all-in-color follow-up to the popular Lunchbox Puzzles cooks up another serving of entertainment and challenges. As before, the book comes shaped like a lunchbox, with perforated pages that parents can easily tear out and pack along with the lunch. Choose from Rhyming Picture Puzzles, Scramblers, Rebuses, Fractured Phrases, and What's Wrong with this Picture?