Friday, March 28, 2014

A Book Review on Cabinet of Mathematical Curiosities by Ian Stewart

       The book was a not a novel or a story to read, but a valuable one made for us to enjoy in our leisure time. As people who are not Mathematicians, the book presents a lot of facts about the most popular facts, games and puzzles with the solutions purposely placed by the author for readers to understand them and be able to solve them. I was really in such awe when I tried to look at the solutions on the latter pages of the book. There are a lot of practicalities presented in each that I never get bored and made me crave to solve for more. It was also a great reference for me if I would like to impress some friends by knowing something really good about Mathematics. However, I would just like to highlight a few sections I just thought were really good: First, in our past learnings in elementary and high school we have calculated basic arithmetic in its standard form. However, the section on Curious Calculations amazed me on how one could calculate lengthy arithmetic in just seconds. Second, I have also discovered more from Pythagoras and his theorem commonly encountered in Trigonometry. Stories about Leonhard Euler, The Witch of Aghasi and Pierre de Fermat’s last theorem brought a lot of things new for us. Lastly, the geometrical figures such as the Greek Cross, The Sphinx of the Reptile and the Knots involving Topology brings one of us to recall one fond moment in a Molecular Biology class as true enough, topology and the mechanism of knots are evident in DNA since they are considered supercoiled most of the time.

Areas of Mathematics such as Algebra, Statistics, Arithmetic, Trigonometry, and Geometry are in the book and each are well-represented by problems. The book is good for everyone to learn while having fun at the same time. Had it not been for these Mathematicians who labored and have devoted their lives to Mathematics, this practical world would probably remain as one that is not understood by everyone. Indeed, they are amazing for making complicated things simple. 

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