A Cultural Paradox: Fun in Mathematics" by Jeffrey A
Zilahy is a great book. It is unique and very well done. And the title
turns out to be true - mathematics actually is
fun. Well, at least in this author’s hands. He has an engaging style of
writing and a great sense of humour. We have several pages of maths
jokes, and a photo of Kurt Gödel, who contributed greatly to removing
uncertainty from mathematics, and it is labelled as ‘Probably a photo of
Kurt Gödel’. Even the publication date is given in binary code! Each
chapter is a brief conversation on a certain topic, such as pi,
probability, statistics, the birthday paradox, the New Kind of Science,
various mathematicians, zero and binary numbers. We also look at the
mathematics of spaghetti and meet undercover mathematicians such as Art
Garfunkel and Brian May.
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