The Mathematics of Oz: Mental Gymnastics from Beyond the Edge

by Clifford A. Pickover

• ISBN13: 9780521700849
• ISBN10: 0521700841
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2007-03-19
• 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.

Table of Contents

Travel guide

Preface

Introduction

Puzzles

The yellow-brick road

Animal array

An experiment with Kansas

An experiment with signs

The logic of greenness

Magical maze

Kansas railway contraction

The problem of the bones

Square overdrive

Squares and cubes

Plex's matrix

Chaos at the clock factory

The upsilon configuration

Bone toss

Animal farm courthouse

Omega sphere

Leg bone shatter produces triangle

Z-bar ranch

Mystery of phasers

Salty number cycle

Where are the composites?

Brain trip

The gaps of omicron

Hutchinson problem

Flint hill series

Wacky tiles

Toto clone puzzle

Legions' number

The problems of the tombs

Plex's tiles

Phasers on targets

The chamber of death and despair

Zebra irrationals

Creatures in resin

Prime-poor equations

Number satellite

Flatworm math

Regolith paradox

.

Entropy

Animal gap

Arranging alien heads

Ramanujan congruences and the quest for transcendence

Getting noticed

Juggler numbers

Friends from Mars

Phi in four 4s

On planet Zyph

The jellyfish of Europa

Archeological dissection

The gamma gambit

Robot hand hive

Ramanujan and the quattuordecillion

Lunatic ferris wheel

The ultimate spindle

Prairie artifact

Alien pellets

The beauty of polygon slicing

Cosmic call

Knight moves

Sphere

Potawatomi target

Sliders

Swapping

Triangle dissection

A simple code

Heterosquare

Insertion

Missing landscape

The choice

Animal selection

The skeletal men of Uranus

Hindbrain stimulation

The arrays of absolution

Trochophore abduction

The dream pyramids of Missouri

Mathematical flower petal

Blood and water

Cavern problems

Three triplets

Oos and oob gambit

Napiform mathematics

Toto, Mr. Plex, elephant

Witch overdrive

What is art?

Wendy magic square

Heaven and hell

The stars of heaven

Vacation in the tarantula nebula

Hot lava

Circular primes

The truth about cats and dogs

Disc mania

N2+m2=s

2, 271, 2718281

Android watch

Knight moves

Pool table gambit

A connection between pi and e

Venusian number bush

Triangle cave

Rat attack

The scarecrow formula

Circle math

A, AB, ABA

Ants and cheese

The omega crystal

Attack of undulating undecamorphs

Epilog

Further exploring

For further reading

About the author

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