Figuring It Out: Entertaining Encounters with Everyday Math [Paperback]

This is a book of mathematical stories  funny and puzzling mathematical stories. They tell of villains who try to steal secrets, heroes who encode their messages, and mathematicians who spend years on end searching for the best way to pile oranges.

There are also stories about highway confusions occurring when the rules of Cartesian geometry are ignored, small-change errors due to ignorance of ancient paradoxes, and mistakes in calendars arising from poor numerical approximations.

This book is about the power and beauty of mathematics. It shows mathematics in action, explained in a way that everybody can understand. It is a book for enticing youngsters and inspiring teachers.

Nuno Crato is a leading science writer and mathematician, whose entertaining essays have won a number of international awards.

This fun book uses stories to explain mathematics. It tells of villains who steal secrets, heroes who encode messages, highway confusions that result from ignoring Cartesian geometry, mistakes in calendars due to poor numerical approximations, and more.

1.Everyday Matters.The dinner table algorithm.-Cutting the Christmas cake.-Oranges and computers.-When two and two dont make four.-Getting more intelligent every day.-The other lane always goes faster.-Shoelaces and neckties.-Number puzzles.-Tossing a coin.-The switch.- Eubulides, the heap and the euro.- 2.The Earth Is Round. How GPS works.-Gear wheels.- February 29.-The nonius scale.- Pedro Nunes map.- Lighthouse geometry.-Asteroids and least squares.-The useful man and the genius.-3.Secret Affairs. Alice and Bob.- Inviolate cybersecrets.-Quantum cryptography.-The FBI wavelet.-The Enigma machine.-4. Art And Geometry.The Vitruvian Man.-The golden number.-The geometry of A4 paper sizes.-The strange worlds of Escher.-Escher and the M?bius belt.-Picasso, Einstein and the fourth dimension.-Pollocks fractals.-Voronoi diagrams.-The Pllsi