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Books : Impossible?: Surprising Solutions to Counterintuitive ConundrumsIn association with Amazon.comby: Julian Havil  List Price: $27.95 Amazon.com's Price: $18.45 You Save: $9.50 (34%)Prices subject to change. Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
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Binding: HardcoverDewey Decimal Number: 510 EAN: 9780691131313 ISBN: 0691131317 Label: Princeton University Press Manufacturer: Princeton University Press Number Of Items: 1 Number Of Pages: 264 Publication Date: April 21, 2008 Publisher: Princeton University Press Studio: Princeton University Press Sales Rank: 51176 Related Items:
Editorial Review: Product Description: In Nonplussed!, popular-math writer Julian Havil delighted readers with a mind-boggling array of implausible yet true mathematical paradoxes. Now Havil is back with Impossible?, another marvelous medley of the utterly confusing, profound, and unbelievable--and all of it mathematically irrefutable. Whenever Forty-second Street in New York is temporarily closed, traffic doesn't gridlock but flows more smoothly--why is that? Or consider that cities that build new roads can experience dramatic increases in traffic congestion--how is this possible? What does the game show Let's Make A Deal reveal about the unexpected hazards of decision-making? What can the game of cricket teach us about the surprising behavior of the law of averages? These are some of the counterintuitive mathematical occurrences that readers encounter in Impossible? Havil ventures further than ever into territory where intuition can lead one astray. He gathers entertaining problems from probability and statistics along with an eclectic variety of conundrums and puzzlers from other areas of mathematics, including classics of abstract math like the Banach-Tarski paradox. These problems range in difficulty from easy to highly challenging, yet they can be tackled by anyone with a background in calculus. And the fascinating history and personalities associated with many of the problems are included with their mathematical proofs. Impossible? will delight anyone who wants to have their reason thoroughly confounded in the most astonishing and unpredictable ways. Average Rating:
 Rating: - you may be a little too surprised by these surprises to be surprisedi warn the potential purchaser that this may not be quite what you expect. There is a demand for substantial mathematical sophistication - which was a little beyond my level (i do have a doctorate, but not in math, and had to stop taking math courses after my sophomore year in college because matrix algebra was about all i could handle). i don't doubt that the book is delightful for those strong in math and i probably would give it 5 stars except that the title strikes me as a bit misleading. probably ... Read More Browse for similar items by category:
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