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arirang 's review for:
Alex Bellos writes an excellent column in the Guardian with weekly maths puzzles, and one in particular, the Cheryl's birthday problem (https://www.theguardian.com/science/alexs-adventures-in-numberland/2015/apr/15/why-the-cheryl-birthday-problem-turned-into-the-maths-version-of-thatdress) led to a fascinating discussion with readers as the logic puzzle, interesting enough in its own right, turned out to have two different solutions depending on how one interpreted the information given, and that in turn led Bellos to write this book.
This made for an excellent stocking filler and prompt for family discussion over Christmas / New Year, suitable for children (from say upper KS2 age) and adults alike, and will be one to dip into over 2017 (perhaps in the loo!).
The book has a number of qualities that, combined, set this apart from, the usual books of this type:
- Bellos provides a history of the puzzles origins where available, presenting puzzles in each section in roughly chronological order
- there is a range of puzzle types (logic, geometrical, numerical etc) and of difficulty, although Bellos deliberately doesn't rank them by difficulty as that is subjective and personal
- the book has answers to all of the puzzles, which don't just give the solution but instead explain it in detail, including ambiguities in the interpretation and crucially what strategies one might have have used to solve both it and other similar problems. To give an example "if in a puzzle there is a single solution from a choice of three, where two of the three are interchangable, then the solution must be a consequence of choosing the odd one out."
This made for an excellent stocking filler and prompt for family discussion over Christmas / New Year, suitable for children (from say upper KS2 age) and adults alike, and will be one to dip into over 2017 (perhaps in the loo!).
The book has a number of qualities that, combined, set this apart from, the usual books of this type:
- Bellos provides a history of the puzzles origins where available, presenting puzzles in each section in roughly chronological order
- there is a range of puzzle types (logic, geometrical, numerical etc) and of difficulty, although Bellos deliberately doesn't rank them by difficulty as that is subjective and personal
- the book has answers to all of the puzzles, which don't just give the solution but instead explain it in detail, including ambiguities in the interpretation and crucially what strategies one might have have used to solve both it and other similar problems. To give an example "if in a puzzle there is a single solution from a choice of three, where two of the three are interchangable, then the solution must be a consequence of choosing the odd one out."