For those fascinated by the abstract universe of mathematics, David Gale's columns in The Mathematical Intelligencer have been a prime source of entertainment. Here Gale's columns are collected for the first time in book form. Encouraged by the magazine's editor, Sheldon Axler, to write on whatever pleased him, Gale ranged far and wide across the field of mathematics but frequently returned to favorite themes: triangles, tilings, the mysterious properties of sequences given by simple recursions, games and paradoxes, and the particular automaton that gives this collection its title, the "automatic ant". The level is suitable for those with some familiarity with mathematical ideas, but great sophistication is not needed.

Contenuti

Simple Sequences with Puzzling Properties.- Probability Paradoxes.- Historic Conjectures: More Sequence Mysteries.- Privacy Preserving Protocols.- Surprising Shuffles.- Hundreds of New Theorems in a Two-Thousand-Year-Old Subject.- Pop-Math and Protocols.- Six Variations on the Variational Method.- Tiling a Torus: Cutting a Cake.- The Automatic Ant: Compassless Constructions.- Games: Real, Complex, Imaginary.- Coin Weighing: Square Squaring.- The Return of the Ant and the Jeep.- Go.- More Paradoxes, Knowledge Games.- Triangles and Computers.- Packing Tripods.- Further Travels with My Ant.- The Shoelace Problem.- Triangles and Proofs.- Polyominoes.- In Praise of Numberlessness.- A Pattern Problem, a Probability Paradox and a Pretty Proof. Appendices: A Curious Nim-Type Game.- The Jeep Once More and Jeeper by the Dozen.- Nineteen Problems on Elementary Geometry.- The Truth and Nothing But the Truth.

Le informazioni nella sezione "Su questo libro" possono far riferimento a edizioni diverse di questo titolo.