|
Nets, Puzzles and Postmen: An Exploration of Mathematical Connections |  | Author: Peter M Higgins
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
List Price: $35.00
Buy Used: $3.95
as of 3/21/2010 22:50 CDT details
You Save: $31.05 (89%)
New (25) Used (23) from $3.95
Seller: bananabooks
Rating:  1 reviews
Sales Rank: 854230
Media: Hardcover
Pages: 288
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1
Dimensions (in): 8.5 x 5.7 x 1.1
ISBN: 0199218420
Dewey Decimal Number: 510
EAN: 9780199218424
ASIN: 0199218420
Publication Date: February 20, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
| |
| Also Available In:
|
| Similar Items:
| |
| Editorial Reviews:
Product Description
What do road and railway systems, mingling at parties, mazes, family trees, and the internet all have in common? All are networks--either people or places or things that relate and connect to one another. In this stimulating book, Peter Higgins shows that these phenomena--and many more--all share the same deep mathematical structure.
The mathematics of networks form the basis of many fascinating puzzles and problems, from tic-tac-toe to circular sudoku. Higgins reveals that understanding networks can give us remarkable new insights into many of these puzzles as well as into a wide array of real-world phenomena. Higgins offers new perspectives on such familiar mathematical quandaries as the four-color map and the bridges of Konisberg. He poses the tantalizing question Can you walk through all the doors of the house just once? He also sheds light on the Postman Problem, a puzzle first posed by a Chinese mathematician: what is the most efficient way of delivering your letters, so you get back to your starting point without having traversed any street twice. And he explores the Harem Problem--a generalization of the Marriage Problem--in which we work out how to satisfy all members of a set of men who have expressed a wish for a harem of wives.
Only relatively recently have mathematicians begun to explore networks and connections, and their importance has taken everyone by surprise. Nets, Puzzles, and Postmen takes readers on a dazzling tour of this new field, in a book that will delight math buffs everywhere.
|
| Customer Reviews:
Engaging book on casual graph theory and combinatorial complexity December 31, 2009
Digital Puer (Los Angeles, CA USA)
I'm glad to have found this little gem of a book on graph theory at my local bookstore. It is a rather odd book, as it's clearly not a rigourous math or computational theory book, and yet it has enough technical sophistication to put it beyond the reach of understanding for a general audience. It seems more apt for people who are non-mathematicians but who have had some background in graph and complexity theory and would like to read some mathematical diversions written in a casual, colloquial style.
Although the author likes to term the subject of his book as "nets", it is clearly focused on graph theory, with topics covering a wide range of areas, including planarity, colouring, reachability, network flow, shortest path, and automata. There is also an excellent discussion of the pigeonhole principle and the handshaking lemma, both used in many places throughout the book. The author unfortunately does not cover combinatorial subgraph selection (e.g. clique and vertex cover), approximation algorithms, or all-pairs-shortest-path in much detail.
The author's writing style is very engaging and friendly, and it's certainly a nice break from the encyclopedic style found in typical textbooks. The author presents the history of graph theory, including Euler's Konigsberg bridges problem, and discusses a number of complexity problems, including sudoku, amino acid chains, marriage arrangement, and Huffman encoding. Although the book is not mathematically rigourous, the author does provide a nice bibliography, and chapter 10 serves as an appendix that goes into mathematical detail with proofs of several of the concepts presented in earlier chapters.
There are only a few negatives. The problem of lying tribesmen in chapter 1 is unnecessarily tedious as a motivating example on complexity. Furthermore, although the author has sprinkled diagrams throughout the book, there is certainly a need for more given that the book is centered on graphs. The section on network flow definitely would benefit from more illustrations.
In summary, this is an excellent casual book on graph theory and complexity written in an engaging style.
|
|
|
|
Return to Math.com | |
