Nancy and her friends are on an epic quest to discover the identity of a treacherous Greek scholar in this fifteenth book of the Nancy Drew Diaries, a fresh approach to the classic mystery series. Nancy, Bess, and George are excited to attend Oracle College’s annual Greek mythology themed gala. But the festive sprit turns troubled when a student falls from the balcony mid-speech. Nancy’s investigations quickly reveal this was a case of collegiate sabotage. Can she find the campus menace before someone else gets hurt?
The Professor’s Puzzle is designed as a handbook for new and aspiring professors to help them transition from the independent research of their doctoral program to classroom teaching. Unfortunately, acquiring a Ph.D. often does not involve real preparation for teaching. One cannot assume that mastering content necessarily means one is qualified to teach it. Drawing from years of experience training young faculty members, professor Michael S. Lawson gathers together the best of educational research and practices, leavened with the yeast of Christian theology, so that readers are equipped to put the “teaching puzzle” together. Ideal for aspiring professors in Christian higher education, as well as all who enter the teaching profession, so they may learn artful teaching and careful administration. The following translations are available from the publisher: Chinese, German, French, Russian, and Spanish.
Why do word puzzles fascinate us? How do they help develop problem-solving skills? How do they teach us about geography, literature, sports, and popular culture? How are they an international language? Jonathan Berkowitz offers a brief history of wordplay, with insights into puzzles and the brain. He offers tips on how to solve puzzles and explains the educational value of puzzles. Challenges in the form of rebuses, anagrams, codes and cryptograms, crosswords, and wordplay with numbers supply even more fun! The Whirl of Words is a unique, rich, and intriguing tour of a wide variety of word puzzles certain to stimulate a brain work-out.
These pleasantly perplexing highlights from the classic 1893 puzzle book abound in Victorian charm. They include both arithmetic problems and challenges involving words and letters. Complete solutions.
Dr. Sophie Knowles is a math professor with a knack for creating complex puzzles that delight her students. But now, at the close of the academic year, she must solve a crime that doesn’t quite add up… At the math department’s graduation party, Sophie hears heated arguments coming from the graduates about Mayor Graves, the commencement speaker. Not the mayor’s biggest fan, Sophie is happy to escape the drama with an after-hours campus stroll accompanied by her helicopter-piloting boyfriend, Bruce Granville. However, their date is interrupted by the mayor himself—with a knife in his back. As it turns out, the knife is actually a Henley College letter opener—something that is gifted to every member of the graduating class. Sophie is led to a complicated puzzle of scandal and corruption, and it seems that Mayor Graves is at the apex of it all. When Sophie finds out that the mayor was seeking her help on the day he was murdered, she must use her top-notch logic to crack the puzzle and catch the killer running free on campus…
"Humans are the only animals who create and solve puzzles--for the sheer pleasure of it--and there is no obvious genetic reason why we would do this. Marcel Danesi explores the psychology of puzzles and puzzling, with scores of classic examples. His pioneering book is both entertaining and enlightening." --Will Shortz, Crossword Editor, The New York Times "... Puzzle fanatics will enjoy the many riddles, illusions, cryptograms and other mind-benders offered for analysis." --Psychology Today "... a bristlingly clear... always intriguing survey of the history and rationale of puzzles.... A] splendid study...." --Knight Ridder Newspapers
This is the second volume of a unique collection that brings together the best English-language problems created for students competing in the Computational Linguistics Olympiad. These problems are representative of the diverse areas presented in the competition and designed with three principles in mind: · To challenge the student analytically, without requiring any explicit knowledge or experience in linguistics or computer science; · To expose the student to the different kinds of reasoning required when encountering a new phenomenon in a language, both as a theoretical topic and as an applied problem; · To foster the natural curiosity students have about the workings of their own language, as well as to introduce them to the beauty and structure of other languages; · To learn about the models and techniques used by computers to understand human language. Aside from being a fun intellectual challenge, the Olympiad mimics the skills used by researchers and scholars in the field of computational linguistics. In an increasingly global economy where businesses operate across borders and languages, having a strong pool of computational linguists is a competitive advantage, and an important component to both security and growth in the 21st century. This collection of problems is a wonderful general introduction to the field of linguistics through the analytic problem solving technique. "A fantastic collection of problems for anyone who is curious about how human language works! These books take serious scientific questions and present them in a fun, accessible way. Readers exercise their logical thinking capabilities while learning about a wide range of human languages, linguistic phenomena, and computational models. " - Kevin Knight, USC Information Sciences Institute
The 15 Puzzle Book contains an illustrated history of one of the most popular and important mechanical puzzles of all time. It can be argued that the 15 Puzzle in 1880 had the greatest impact on American and European society of any mechanical puzzle the world has ever known. Books by famous mathematicians tell that a deaf mute invented the 15 Puzzle but other sources claim it was invented by Sam Loyd, who Martin Gardner called, "America's greatest puzzle designer." Or has Sam Loyd, who claimed to invent the puzzle, continued to fool the world for more than 100 years? The true story of the puzzle is told here for the first time: - The real inventor and his patent application records were found. - The story of how the puzzle came to be manufactured. - Proof that the 15 Puzzle is mathematically impossible to solve. - How a young New Yorker solved it. - The worldwide puzzle craze that it created.
Nancy, Bess, and George must find the truth behind a photographic mystery in this nineteenth book of the Nancy Drew Diaries, a fresh approach to the classic mystery series. Nancy and her friends are spending the weekend in a small mountainside town called Shady Oaks. The local museum is displaying a never-before-seen collection from famous nature photographer, Christopher DeSantos. So the usually sleepy town is now filled with tourists. But it’s not just the dramatic lighting of the old black and white photographs that people have come to see. Newspapers all over the country have picked up the story of two visitors who went missing in Shady Oaks only to turn up in the old DeSantos photographs, seemingly frozen in time. What’s more, there was a rumor that DeSantos was cursed by his former partner after a disagreement. Now everyone is wondering if the legend is real. Nancy, Bess, and George are convinced that there is another explanation to be found. But it quickly becomes clear that someone is making sure they don’t find it. Can these three teenage sleuths solve this mystery before it’s too late?
Blast off with this new edition in the first book in the best selling Professor Astro Cat series! Featuring updated details about how rockets work, recent missions to Mars, space junk, and black holes. “Conducted by a cat in a retro-futuristic space suit, this tour of the solar system and beyond earns style points for both its illustrations and its selection of “Factoroids.” -Kirkus Reviews "Cute characters (such as the titular Professor Astro Cat and his assistant Astro Mouse) give a humorous, conversational tone to this nonfiction book's information about space, our solar system, and changing space exploration technology. Like the text, the book's browsable layout encourages readers to keep exploring. Overall, a great book to nurture interest in and wonder at the infinite possibilities of space." -The Horn Book "Both modern in its scientific spirit and with a sensibility modeled after the delightful mid-century children’s books from the Golden Age of space exploration, it tickles young readers - as well as their space-enchanted parents - into precisely that “palpable zest to make contact with the cosmos.” -Brain Pickings Professor Astro Cat is the smartest cat in the alley. He's got a degree in just about every discipline under the sun! Speaking of the sun, he happens to be specialist on that too, and Professor Astro Cat's Frontiers of Space will tell you everything that there could be to know about our star, our planet, our solar system, our galaxy, our universe, and many more new insights into the ever-developing science of space and the outer reaches of the universe! The professor's made sure of that; he's a fastidious little feline! Professor Astro Cat's Frontiers of Space also explores topics such as gravity, extraterrestrial life, time, and many other fascinating subjects that will take you and your children on a journey to the very frontiers of space!
