Cabinet of Mathematical Curiosities Book Review

If you are looking for fun and excitement, you must be the perfect person reading this book: Cabinet of Mathematical Curiosities by Ian Stewart. The author is a mathematician at the University of Warwick in England. The good thing in this book is that you won’t feel bored. Instead, you would look forward for the next pages to come after you read the latter page. Stewart’s book consists of different mathematical problems that you would love to solve. It would be too lengthy if I discuss it all here, but I’m just going to give you one example of the problems on logic, geometry and probability which you will encounter if you get to read the book.

I have 15 cards, numbered consecutively from 1 to 15. I want to lay them out in a triangle. I’ve put numbers on the top three forlater reference:

 However, I don’t want any old arrangement. I want each card to be the difference between the two cards immediately below it, to left and right. For example, 5 is the difference between 4 and 9. (The differences are always calculated so that they are positive.) This condition does not apply to the cards in the bottom row, you appreciate. The top three cards are already in place – and correct. Can you find how to place the remaining twelve cards?

Ian Stewart’s book is not only filled with mind boggling puzzles and problems but it also contains information about the ongoing history of mathematics concerning the late mathematicians and their role on shaping the present mathematics we have today.

Did you know the man behind the Pythagorean theorem? Well, he is Pythagoras, born around 569 BC on the island of Samos in the north-eastern Aegean. He studied philosophy under Pherekydes. He learned his knowledge about cosmology and geometry by attending lectures of Anaximander. He even became a prisoner in Babylon wherein he absorbed ideas on Babylonian mathematics and musical theory. Pythagoras is famous for the Pythagorean school he founded in Croton, Italy. The Pythagoreans believed that the universe is mathematical. Various symbols and numbers have spiritual meaning. Proofs for Pythagoras’ Theorem can be debatable. Based on the clay tablet called Plimpton 322, Babylonians was the first to understand the theorem 1200 years earlier. Euclid also had his method of proving the theorem which he called Pythagoras’s pants. Aside from Pythagoras, another mathematician became famous for his theorems.  One of his theorems which is a very hard one, took the pioneering mathematicians 350 years to prove it. This theorem is known as Fermat’s Last Theorem.

While reading the book, you may bump into some mathematical jokes. It is now up to you if you will laugh or just stare at it blankly. Anyway, the jokes were not even placed there to make you laugh. It is just for showing what things can make a mathematician laugh. Now, if you got a sense of humor like a mathematician, then you might see yourself laugh at it also.

I would recommend this book to those who found their everyday life boring. If you are very used to your everyday routine and wanted to try something new, then you can make fun out of this book.  If you do not have so many things to do, then you can use this book to fill your nearly empty schedule. But to those who are impatient and non-math lovers, just please try another one.