More Cabinets Please...

            If given the chance to solve one extreme mathematical problem, most students would probably decline, fly away and never return again. No matter how hard great minds encouraged other people to love mathematics, some would rightly close their doors and accept the fact that mathematics is not and will never be their forte.

            Cabinet of Mathematical Curiosities, a book written by Ian Stewart, showed different situations or problems involving mathematics. With his belief that the most interesting topics of mathematics are not taught in school but are usually experienced by the person in the least expected places and things, he decided to collect mathematical problems, jokes or trivia where while you’re trying to find out how it can be answered, you’re also having fun understanding the concepts that, without you being aware, is already a part of mathematics.

            I am neither a fan nor a hater of mathematics, it’s just that collections of numbers and theorems make my head go round and round to the point that I almost appreciate nothing about the subject. But with this book, its level of difficulty aids you to become more appreciative of the learnings you had from your previous Math classes because you are able to apply them without being too meticulous on how you dealt with the problem or with how you wrote your solution. Also, getting a correct answer from the problem gives you that drive to answer more and to pull out a pencil and a scratch paper to be able to get the correct answer.

            Most of the questions from the book are from the fields of geometry, logic, probability, plain arithmetic and mathematical theorems which we already encountered from other books and mathematical movies that we had in our class. The book started off with some easy, answerable by me questions with an increasing level of difficulty as you proceed to the next pages. The good thing about this book is that each concept is grouped together, so you can start with those topics where you’re good at and proceed to the next concept where you slightly dislike or you’re having difficulty with. Add to it the title of each chapters which are really interesting and can really get your attention, like it brings back to your childhood fantasies like alien encounter, shaggy cat story, shaggy dog story (which reminds me of Scooby Doo) and many more.

            Over all, I really found the book very educational, very entertaining and very challenging. Though I was not able to answer most of the questions, most especially on the middle up to the end part, I was able to learn something new and I was able to assess myself on my capabilities to solve a certain kind of mathematical problem. I recommend this book to everyone, especially to those who want something that can fuss up their minds and can slightly cripple their brain cells (until they decide to skip that question and proceed to the next harder question) and to those who really loves math and wants to test their skills. Hopefully, they’d be able to see that spark that I saw while I was doing and applying math and they’d be able to ask for more mathematical cabinets the next time.