Last Review

Ian Stewart’s Cabinet of Mathematical Curiosities was a fun read. Technically, it didn’t fit as an academic or reference book. It had nothing about “serious” math, which made it that much better. Unlike the previous books, it was basically just a compilation of fun math-related games and stories. It even had all the answers at the end of the book, which removed that annoying itch when you don’t know the answer (though I mostly looked at the answers before thinking seriously, that “answers at page ___” was just too tempting).

Reading the book felt like reading a magazine, where you don’t need to retain anything, you just pass through every page. And every now and then skip those excessively long or complicated parts or those that you can’t relate too (who cares about coloring maps with only four colors? Not me…).

I enjoyed most of the entries, though I skipped a lot of them, some because I have already heard them before while some because they seemed boring. The only thing that kept me going was the interesting opening letter from Ian Stewart, it made me want to read everything until those “challenging” ones. But didn’t enjoy those, I was too tired and bored when I reached that part. Mainly because Ian Stewart lied, by page 38 the mixed in “easy stuff” couldn’t even come close to stop those “challenging” ones from wearing down my brain. You can’t possibly notice “easy stuff” when its surrounded by problems like Fermat’s Last Theorem and extradimensional ouroborus.

Overall, I just read those short stories and puzzles while avoiding those serious problems and even those easier ones (when I see more than 1 page or a lot of numbers and solutions… I skipped them). Also I had too much free during high school that I already knew most of those calculator tricks. I also tried out the first few physical problems like the pentagon paper and string thing, but it was difficult preparing the items or finding alternatives so I eventually skipped the preceding ones. Now that I enumerated most of them, I don’t think I read even half of the book.

Overall, again, the book taught me a lot of new and interesting things about math, most of which weren't or will not be taught in class rooms. I also relearned a lot of things that I thought were too childish or nerdy for me to remember. I really enjoyed reading it, unlike before I didn't feel to guilty skipping some parts, since they didn't really relate to each other unlike the past books. In fact, I copied it to my computer since I really think I may read it cover to cover some day in the future… if I have absolutely nothing else to do… absolutely nothing else…