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Review: Professor Stewart's Cabinet of Mathematical Curiosities by Ian Stewart

By Justin Mullins

10 December 2008

READING a book of mathematical games and puzzles can be like wading through treacle: it looks inviting but it’s all too easy to become bogged down. Not so with Ian Stewart’s menagerie of mathematical jokes, puzzles and treats. has a genius for explanation that allows details of the Poincaré conjecture and Riemann hypothesis to sit happily alongside a quip about a chicken crossing a Möbius strip. Find a comfortable chair for some holiday puzzling: mathematics doesn’t come more entertaining than this.

Read all the reviews in our Christmas Books Special

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