Puzzles, Paradoxes, and Problem Solving

Puzzles, Paradoxes, and Problem Solving PDF Author: Marilyn A. Reba
Publisher: CRC Press
ISBN: 1482227533
Category : Mathematics
Languages : en
Pages : 609

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Book Description
A Classroom-Tested, Alternative Approach to Teaching Math for Liberal Arts Puzzles, Paradoxes, and Problem Solving: An Introduction to Mathematical Thinking uses puzzles and paradoxes to introduce basic principles of mathematical thought. The text is designed for students in liberal arts mathematics courses. Decision-making situations that progress from recreational problems to important contemporary applications develop the critical-thinking skills of non-science and non-technical majors. The logical underpinnings of this textbook were developed and refined throughout many years of classroom feedback and in response to commentary from presentations at national conferences. The text’s five units focus on graphs, logic, probability, voting, and cryptography. The authors also cover related areas, such as operations research, game theory, number theory, combinatorics, statistics, and circuit design. The text uses a core set of common representations, strategies, and algorithms to analyze diverse games, puzzles, and applications. This unified treatment logically connects the topics with a recurring set of solution approaches. Requiring no mathematical prerequisites, this book helps students explore creative mathematical thinking and enhance their own critical-thinking skills. Students will acquire quantitative literacy and appreciation of mathematics through the text’s unified approach and wide range of interesting applications.

Puzzles, Paradoxes, and Problem Solving

Puzzles, Paradoxes, and Problem Solving PDF Author: Marilyn A. Reba
Publisher: CRC Press
ISBN: 1482297930
Category : Mathematics
Languages : en
Pages : 601

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Book Description
A Classroom-Tested, Alternative Approach to Teaching Math for Liberal Arts Puzzles, Paradoxes, and Problem Solving: An Introduction to Mathematical Thinking uses puzzles and paradoxes to introduce basic principles of mathematical thought. The text is designed for students in liberal arts mathematics courses. Decision-making situations that progress

Puzzles, Paradoxes, and Problem Solving

Puzzles, Paradoxes, and Problem Solving PDF Author: Marilyn A. Reba
Publisher: CRC Press
ISBN: 1482227533
Category : Mathematics
Languages : en
Pages : 609

Get Book Here

Book Description
A Classroom-Tested, Alternative Approach to Teaching Math for Liberal Arts Puzzles, Paradoxes, and Problem Solving: An Introduction to Mathematical Thinking uses puzzles and paradoxes to introduce basic principles of mathematical thought. The text is designed for students in liberal arts mathematics courses. Decision-making situations that progress from recreational problems to important contemporary applications develop the critical-thinking skills of non-science and non-technical majors. The logical underpinnings of this textbook were developed and refined throughout many years of classroom feedback and in response to commentary from presentations at national conferences. The text’s five units focus on graphs, logic, probability, voting, and cryptography. The authors also cover related areas, such as operations research, game theory, number theory, combinatorics, statistics, and circuit design. The text uses a core set of common representations, strategies, and algorithms to analyze diverse games, puzzles, and applications. This unified treatment logically connects the topics with a recurring set of solution approaches. Requiring no mathematical prerequisites, this book helps students explore creative mathematical thinking and enhance their own critical-thinking skills. Students will acquire quantitative literacy and appreciation of mathematics through the text’s unified approach and wide range of interesting applications.

Impossible Folding Puzzles and Other Mathematical Paradoxes

Impossible Folding Puzzles and Other Mathematical Paradoxes PDF Author: Gianni A. Sarcone
Publisher: Courier Corporation
ISBN: 0486795659
Category : Games & Activities
Languages : en
Pages : 116

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Book Description
Fun-filled, math-based puzzles include Elephants and Castles, Trianglized Kangaroo, Honest Dice and Logic Dice, Mind-reading Powers, and dozens more. Complete solutions explain the mathematical realities behind the fantastic-sounding challenges.

Colossal Book of Mathematics

Colossal Book of Mathematics PDF Author: Martin Gardner
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 9780393020236
Category : Mathematics
Languages : en
Pages : 748

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Book Description
No amateur or math authority can be without this ultimate compendium of classic puzzles, paradoxes, and puzzles from America's best-loved mathematical expert. 320 line drawings.

Entertaining Mathematical Puzzles

Entertaining Mathematical Puzzles PDF Author: Martin Gardner
Publisher: Courier Corporation
ISBN: 0486252116
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 141

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Book Description
Playing with mathematical riddles can be an intriguing and fun-filled pastime — as popular science writer Martin Gardner proves in this entertaining collection. Puzzlists need only an elementary knowledge of math and a will to resist looking up the answer before trying to solve a problem. Written in a light and witty style, Entertaining Mathematical Puzzles is a mixture of old and new riddles, grouped into sections that cover a variety of mathematical topics: money, speed, plane and solid geometry, probability, topology, tricky puzzles, and more. The probability section, for example, points out that everything we do, everything that happens around us, obeys the laws of probability; geometry puzzles test our ability to think pictorially and often, in more than one dimension; while topology, among the "youngest and rowdiest branches of modern geometry," offers a glimpse into a strange dimension where properties remain unchanged, no matter how a figure is twisted, stretched, or compressed. Clear and concise comments at the beginning of each section explain the nature and importance of the math needed to solve each puzzle. A carefully explained solution follows each problem. In many cases, all that is needed to solve a puzzle is the ability to think logically and clearly, to be "on the alert for surprising, off-beat angles...that strange hidden factor that everyone else had overlooked." Fully illustrated, this engaging collection will appeal to parents and children, amateur mathematicians, scientists, and students alike, and may, as the author writes, make the reader "want to study the subject in earnest" and explains "some of the inviting paths that wind away from the problems into lusher areas of the mathematical jungle." 65 black-and-white illustrations.

Truth and Paradox

Truth and Paradox PDF Author: Tim Maudlin
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199247293
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 223

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Book Description
Consider the sentence 'This sentence is not true'. Certain notorious paradoxes like this have bedevilled philosophical theories of truth. Tim Maudlin presents an original account of logic and semantics which deals with these paradoxes, and allows him to set out a new theory of truth-values and the norms governing claims about truth.

1,000 Playthinks

1,000 Playthinks PDF Author: Ivan Moscovich
Publisher: Workman Publishing
ISBN: 0761118268
Category : Games
Languages : en
Pages : 420

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Book Description
Presents a collection of visual challenges, riddles, and puzzles.

Secrets of the Paradox

Secrets of the Paradox PDF Author: Micheal D. Winterburn
Publisher: Troubador Publishing Ltd
ISBN: 1783060263
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 232

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Book Description
Far from merely recycling what we already know about certain paradoxes, this book breaks entirely new ground by providing what everyone really wants: solutions. The king of all paradoxes is the Liar ('This statement is false.' If it is true, it is false; if it is false, it is true), which in its earliest form is over two and a half thousand years old. Throughout all this time it has resisted every attempt to fully understand it. This work finally unlocks the secrets of the Liar, exposing principles, patterns and formulae that have long lain hidden. Several other important paradoxes also come under the logical searchlight and they too surrender their treasures. Though paradoxes are inherently difficult, this book approaches them in a clear and entertaining manner, using plain English. Secrets of the Paradox is written for the general reader, yet is sufficiently rigorous to satisfy the demands of the professional philosopher. If you relish an intellectual challenge, this book is for you!

The Gödelian Puzzle Book

The Gödelian Puzzle Book PDF Author: Raymond M. Smullyan
Publisher: Courier Corporation
ISBN: 0486315770
Category : Mathematics
Languages : en
Pages : 292

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Book Description
These logic puzzles provide entertaining variations on Gödel's incompleteness theorems, offering ingenious challenges related to infinity, truth and provability, undecidability, and other concepts. No background in formal logic necessary.

Paradox

Paradox PDF Author: Margaret Cuonzo
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262321408
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 240

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Book Description
An introduction to paradoxes showing that they are more than mere puzzles but can prompt new ways of thinking. Thinkers have been fascinated by paradox since long before Aristotle grappled with Zeno's. In this volume in The MIT Press Essential Knowledge series, Margaret Cuonzo explores paradoxes and the strategies used to solve them. She finds that paradoxes are more than mere puzzles but can prompt new ways of thinking. A paradox can be defined as a set of mutually inconsistent claims, each of which seems true. Paradoxes emerge not just in salons and ivory towers but in everyday life. (An Internet search for “paradox” brings forth a picture of an ashtray with a “no smoking” symbol inscribed on it.) Proposing solutions, Cuonzo writes, is a natural response to paradoxes. She invites us to rethink paradoxes by focusing on strategies for solving them, arguing that there is much to be learned from this, regardless of whether any of the more powerful paradoxes is even capable of solution. Cuonzo offers a catalog of paradox-solving strategies—including the Preemptive-Strike (questioning the paradox itself), the Odd-Guy-Out (calling one of the assumptions into question), and the You-Can't-Get-There-from-Here (denying the validity of the reasoning). She argues that certain types of solutions work better in some contexts than others, and that as paradoxicality increases, the success of certain strategies grows more unlikely. Cuonzo shows that the processes of paradox generation and solution proposal are interesting and important ones. Discovering a paradox leads to advances in knowledge: new science often stems from attempts to solve paradoxes, and the concepts used in the new sciences lead to new paradoxes. As Niels Bohr wrote, “How wonderful that we have met with a paradox. Now we have some hope of making progress.”