Ian Stewart - Professor Stewart’s Casebook of Mathematical Mysteries

Professor Stewarts Casebook of Mathematical Mysteries

Professor Ian Stewart is known throughout the world for making mathematics popular. He received the Royal Societys Faraday Medal for furthering the public understanding of science in1995, the IMA Gold Medal in 2000, the AAAS Public Understanding of Science and Technology Award in 2001 and the LMS/IMA Zeeman Medal in 2008. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 2001. He is Emeritus Professor of Mathematics at the University of Warwick, where he divides his time between research into nonlinear dynamics and furthering public awareness of mathematics. His many popular science books include (with Terry Pratchett and Jack Cohen) The Science of Discworld I to IV, The Mathematics of Life, 17 Equations that Changed the World and The Great Mathematical Problems. His app, Professor Stewarts Incredible Numbers, was published jointly by Profile and Touch Press in March 2014.

By the Same Author

Concepts Of Modern Mathematics

Game, Set, And Math

Does God Play Dice?

Another Fine Math Youve Got Me Into

Fearful Symmetry

Natures Numbers

From Here To Infinity

The Magical Maze

Lifes Other Secret

Flatterland

What Shape Is A Snowflake?

The Annotated Flatland

Math Hysteria

The Mayor Of Uglyvilles Dilemma

How To Cut A Cake

Letters To A Young Mathematician

Taming The Infinite (Alternative Title: The Story Of Mathematics)

Why Beauty Is Truth

Cows In The Maze

Mathematics Of Life

Professor Stewarts Cabinet Of Mathematical Curiosities

Professor Stewarts Hoard Of Mathematical Treasures

Seventeen Equations That Changed The World (Alternative Title: In Pursuit Of The Unknown)

The Great Mathematical Problems (Alternative Title: Visions Of Infinity)

Symmetry: A Very Short Introduction Jack Of All Trades (Science Fiction eBook)

with Jack Cohen

The Collapse Of Chaos

Evolving The Alien (Alternative Title: What Does A Martian Look Like?)

Figments Of Reality

Wheelers (Science Fiction)

Heaven (Science Fiction)

The Science Of Discworld Series (With Terry Pratchett & Jack Cohen)

The Science Of Discworld

The Science Of Discworld II: The Globe

The Science Of Discworld III: Darwins Watch

The Science Of Discworld IV: Judgement Day

iPad app

Incredible Numbers

Professor Stewarts Casebook of Mathematical Mysteries

Ian Stewart

First published in 2014 by

PROFILE BOOKS LTD

3A Exmouth House

Pine Street

London EC1R 0JH

www.profilebooks.com

Copyright Joat Enterprises 2014

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Text design by Sue Lamble

Typeset in Stone Serif by Data Standards Ltd, Frome, Somerset.

The moral right of the author has been asserted.

All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the publisher of this book.

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

eISBN 978 1 84765 432 8

Acknowledgements

Left and centre figures: Laurent Bartholdi and Andr Henriques. Orange peels and Fresnel integrals, Mathematical Intelligencer 34 No. 4 (2012) 13.

Right figure: Luc Devroye.

Box puzzle concept: Moloy De.

Extract from Not a Wake: Mike Keith.

Haiku: Daniel Mathews, Jonathan Alperin, Jonathan Rosenberg.

Amazing squares: devised by Moloy De and Nirmalya Chattopadhyay.

The Thirty-Seven Mystery: based on observations by Stephen Gledhill.

Clueless pseudoku: Gerard Butters, Frederick Henle, James Henle and Colleen McGaughey. Creating clueless puzzles, The Mathematical Intelligencer 33 No. 3 (Fall 2011) 102105.

Right Figure: Steven Snape.

Figure: Courtesy of the UW-Madison Archives.

Left figure: [George Steinmetz, courtesy of Anastasia Photo].

Right figure: NASA, HiRISE on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.

Right figure: Rudi Podgornik.

Figure: Veit Schwammle and Hans J. Herrmann. Solitary wave behaviour of sand dunes, Nature 426 (2003) 619620.

Figure: Persi Diaconis, Susan Holmes and Richard Montgomery, Dynamical bias in the coin toss, SIAM Review 49 (2007) 211223.

Figures: Michael Elgersma and Stan Wagon, Closing a Platonic gap, The Mathematical Intelligencer (2014) to appear.

The following figures are reproduced under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license and credited as requested on the description page:

Krishnavedala.

(left) Ricardo Liberato.

Tekisch.

.

Braindrain0000.

LutzL.

Walters Art Museum, Baltimore.

Introducing Soames and Watsup

Professor Stewarts Cabinet of Mathematical Curiosities appeared in 2008, just before Christmas. Readers seemed to like its random mixture of quirky mathematical tricks, games, weird biographies, snippets of strange information, solved and unsolved problems, odd factoids, and the occasional longer and more serious piece on topics such as fractals, topology, and Fermats Last Theorem. So in 2009 it was followed by Professor Stewarts Hoard of Mathematical Treasures, which continued in the same vein with an intermittent pirate theme.

They say that three is a good number for a trilogy. The late Douglas Adams of The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy fame did eventually decide that four was better and five better still, but three sounds like a good place to start. So, after a gap of five years, here is Professor Stewarts Casebook of Mathematical Mysteries. This time, however, theres a new twist. The short quirky items, such as Hexakosioihexekontahexaphobia, the Thrackle Conjecture, What Shape is an Orange Peel?, the RATS Sequence, and Euclids Doodle, are still there. So are more substantial articles about solved and unsolved problems: Pancake Numbers, the Goldbach Conjecture, the Erds Discrepancy Problem, the Square Peg Conjecture, and the ABC Conjecture. So are the jokes, poems, and anecdotes. Not to mention unusual applications of mathematics to flying geese, clumps of mussels, spotty leopards, and bubbles in Guinness. But these miscellanea are now interspersed with a series of narrative episodes featuring a Victorian detective and his medical sidekick

I know what youre thinking. However, I developed the idea a year or so before Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freemans spectacularly successful modern take on Sir Arthur Conan Doyles much-loved characters hit the small screen. (Trust me.) More to the point, its not that pair. Not even as portrayed in Sir Arthurs original stories. Yes, my guys live in the original time period, but across the road at number 222B. From there, they cast envious eyes on the stream of rich clients entering the premises of the more famous duo. And from time to time a case comes up that their illustrious neighbours have shunned or failed to solve: such arcane mysteries as the Sign of One, the Dogs that Fight in the Park, the Catflap of Fear, and the Greek Integrator. Then Hemlock Soames and Dr John Watsup put their brains in gear, show their true colours and their strength of character, and triumph over adversity and lack of market presence.