The Mathematics of Oz: Mental Gymnastics from Beyond the Edge

by Clifford A. Pickover

• ISBN13: 9780521016780
• ISBN10: 0521016789
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2002-09-02
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

Grab a pencil. Relax. Then take off on a mind-boggling journey to the ultimate frontier of math, mind, and meaning as acclaimed author Dr Clifford Pickover, Dorothy, and Dr Oz explore some of the oddest and quirkiest highways and byways of the numerically obsessed. Prepare yourself for a shattering odyssey as The Mathematics of Oz unlocks the doors of your imagination. The thought-provoking mysteries, puzzles, and problems range from zebra numbers and circular primes to Legion's number - a number so big that it makes a trillion pale in comparison. The strange mazes, bizarre consequences, and dizzying arrays of logic problems will entertain people at all levels of mathematical sophistication. The tests devised by enigmatic Dr Oz to assess human intelligence will tease the brain of even the most avid puzzle fan. Test your wits on a host of mathematical topics: geometry and mazes, sequences, series, sets, arrangements, probability and misdirection, number theory, arithmetic, and even several problems dealing with the physical world. With numerous illustrations, this is an original, fun-filled, and thoroughly unique introduction to numbers and their role in creativity, computers, games, practical research, and absurd adventures that teeter on the edge of logic and insanity. The Mathematics of Oz will have you squirming in frustration and begging for more.

Author Biography

Clifford A. Pickover received his Ph.D. from Yale University and is the author of more than twenty books on topics such as computers and creativity, art, mathematics, black holes, human behavior and intelligence, time travel, alien life, and science fiction. Pickover is a prolific inventor with dozens of patents, is the associate editor of several journals, the author of colorful puzzle calendars, and puzzle contributor to magazines geared to children and adults. Pickover's computer graphics have been featured on the cover of many popular magazines and on TV shows

Table of Contents

Travel guide

Preface

Introduction

Puzzles: 1. The yellow-brick road

2. Animal array

3. An experiment with Kansas

4. An experiment with signs

5. The logic of greenness

6. Magical maze

7. Kansas railway contraction

8. The problem of the bones

9. Square overdrive

10. Squares and cubes

11. Plex's matrix

12. Chaos at the clock factory

13. The upsilon configuration

14. Bone toss

15. Animal farm courthouse

16. Omega sphere

17. Leg bone shatter produces triangle

18. Z-bar ranch

19. Mystery of phasers

20. Salty number cycle

21. Where are the composites?

22. Brain trip

23. The gaps of omicron

24. Hutchinson problem

25. Flint hill series

26. Wacky tiles

27. Toto clone puzzle

28. Legions' number

29. The problems of the tombs

30. Plex's tiles

31. Phasers on targets

32. The chamber of death and despair

33. Zebra irrationals

34. Creatures in resin

35. Prime-poor equations

36. Number satellite

37. Flatworm math

38. Regolith paradox

39.

40. Entropy

41. Animal gap

42. Arranging alien heads

43. Ramanujan congruences and the quest for transcendence

44. Getting noticed

45. Juggler numbers

46. Friends from Mars

47. Phi in four 4s

48. On planet Zyph

49. The jellyfish of Europa

50. Archeological dissection

51. The gamma gambit

52. Robot hand hive

53. Ramanujan and the quattuordecillion

54. Lunatic ferris wheel

55. The ultimate spindle

56. Prairie artifact

57. Alien pellets

58. The beauty of polygon slicing

59. Cosmic call

60. Knight moves

61. Sphere

62. Potawatomi target

63. Sliders

64. Swapping

65. Triangle dissection

66. A simple code

67. Heterosquare

68. Insertion

69. Missing landscape

70. The choice

71. Animal selection

72. The skeletal men of Uranus

73. Hindbrain stimulation

74. The arrays of absolution

75. Trochophore abduction

76. The dream pyramids of Missouri

77. Mathematical flower petal

78. Blood and water

79. Cavern problems

80. Three triplets

81. Oos and oob gambit

82. Napiform mathematics

83. Toto, Mr. Plex, elephant

84. Witch overdrive

85. What is art?

86

Wendy magic square

87. Heaven and hell

88. The stars of heaven

89. Vacation in the tarantula nebula

90. Hot lava

91. Circular primes

92. The truth about cats and dogs

93. Disc mania

94. N2+m2=s

95. 2, 271, 2718281

96. Android watch

97. Knight moves

98. Pool table gambit

99. A connection between pi and e

100. Venusian number bush

101. Triangle cave

102. Rat attack

103. The scarecrow formula

104. Circle math

105. A, AB, ABA

106. Ants and cheese

107. The omega crystal

108. Attack of undulating undecamorphs

Epilog

Further exploring

For further reading

About the author.