The Liar Paradox and the Towers of Hanoi: The Ten Greatest Math Puzzles of All Time | 
| Author: Marcel Danesi
Publisher: Wiley
Category: Book
List Price: $15.95
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Avg. Customer Rating:  2 reviews
Sales Rank: 831870
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 256
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.8
Dimensions (in): 9.3 x 6.3 x 0.8
ISBN: 0471648167
Dewey Decimal Number: 793.74
EAN: 9780471648161
ASIN: 0471648167
Publication Date: August 27, 2004
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
A walk through history's most mind-boggling puzzles
Ever since the Sphinx asked his legendary riddle of Oedipus, riddles, conundrums, and puzzles of all sizes have kept humankind perplexed and amused. The Liar Paradox and the Towers of Hanoi takes die-hard puzzle mavens on a tour of the world's most enduringly intriguing braintwisters, from Koenigsberg's Bridges and the Hanoi Towers to Fibonacci's Rabbits, the Four Color Problem, and the Magic Square. Each chapter introduces the basic puzzle, discusses the mathematics behind it, and includes exercises and answers plus additional puzzles similar to the one under discussion. Here is a veritable kaleidoscope of puzzling labyrinths, maps, bridges, and optical illusions that will keep aficionados entertained for hours.
Marcel Danesi (Etobicoke, ON, Canada) is the author of Increase Your Puzzle IQ
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| Customer Reviews:
For a mixed audience February 20, 2007
4 out of 4 found this review helpful
I think this book aims at a mixed audience with mixed success. For the puzzle solver, there is interesting background on some popular forms, but probably not enough puzzles. For someone with a background in math the exploration is too simple, (e.g. one paragraph of Godel) and for the computer scientist not enough exploration of algorithms. For the historian of science there are some new perspectives, but the history is not carried through. On the discussion of Labyrinths, I wish Danesi would have mentioned the book Labyrinths by Borge, and also alluded to the form in some churches.
Although the book may not be for the "specialist", there is quite a bit of fun for anyone here. For example I had been familiar with the Fibonacci series, but hadn't seen the Rabbit Puzzle before. Everyone has heard of the Mobius strip, but the Klein bottle was new to me (and I'd love to buy one). I had done mazes before, but the one by Lewis Carroll us fun.
Good start, but never becomes really challenging January 8, 2006
17 out of 17 found this review helpful
Liar's Paradox has ten chapters covering 10 puzzles that mankind has created over its history. Each chapter covers a main puzzle, the historical and philosophical background behind it, and describes how each affected mathematics/science as people thought their way through the puzzles. Each chapter includes a set of follow up questions/puzzles, with a good answer section at the back.
One should note that while most of the chapters focus on math, others seem only indirectly related--for instance, one chapter is almost solely devoted to problems related to perception and psychology (such as two-tone pictures in which you can see both a vase and two people's faces), and other chapters are related to math only in extremely advanced ways--for instance, the Liar's Paradox may be a math problem for some, but at the level this book is written it doesn't really get past a discussion of logical paradoxes.
On that note, this book is written at the level of someone who vaguely remembers high school algebra (for instance, there is a fairly in depth discussion of what "exponents" are). For someone at that level, I think the book is excellent. The puzzles Mr. Danesi chooses are interesting and all described well. The puzzles at the end of each chapter are entertaining.
I think readers should recognize before they buy this book that it is probably not meant to be a brain-wracking, headache-inducing puzzle book, but rather a leasurely review of some of mankind's more interesting puzzles. Mr. Danesi has done a good job of accomplishing that.
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