
In this retitled and revised edition of The Problems of Mathematics, renowned mathematician Ian Stewart gives math buffs and non-technical readers—as well as students of the subject—the perfect guide to today's mathematics. This challenging and fascinating book includes three new chapters that cover the most recent developments in the mathematics field, including one on Kepler's sphere-packing problem, to which a solution has been at last announced after a wait of 380 years. Stewart, a particularly gifted mathematician and writer, shows us not only that math can be explained in everyday language, but that it can be downright fun as well. Puzzle solvers especially will delight in accounts of puzzles like Fermat's famous theorem, manifolds (a kind of mathematical origami in many dimensions), and the patterns in chaos. And what reader wouldn't want probability theory explained by demonstrating how to maximize one's lottery winnings? According to From Here to Infinity, good mathematics has an air of economy and an element of surprise. One could easily make the same claim for this instructive, amusing, and sometimes mind-boggling book.
Author

Ian Nicholas Stewart is an Emeritus Professor and Digital Media Fellow in the Mathematics Department at Warwick University, with special responsibility for public awareness of mathematics and science. He is best known for his popular science writing on mathematical themes. —from the author's website Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name. See other authors with similar names.