The Mathematics of Oz: Mental Gymnastics form Beyond the Edge

This is a math puzzle book, and quite a nice short sci-fi story as well. It follows good ol’ Dorothy , as an alien (Oz) captures her, her faithful companion Toto and the entirety of Kansas to perform odd experiments. Particularly mathematical experiments on Dorothy who some how for a child a superb mathematician.

These are not easy puzzles, they’re arranged form 1 to 5 stars of difficulty , most peple will find Pickover’s problems seems to be extraterrestrially intelligent they’ll pose a big challenge. The 1 star problems should take you a day maybe if you think about them long enough and if you have a much great ability at solving problems. Then the 5 star ones will sometimes take Phd’s or more to complete. There are 108 problems which train your mind to think, “Damn! There are some hard problems out there to solve.” The problems are very varied with topics from geometry to probability, so you get classic which way to go problems and absolutely scary number problems. Even if you don’t have any talent at mathematics you’ll still enjoy this book, because of the answers…

The answers are the best part of this book with Pickover revealing some of the answers to amazing mathematical problems such as the zebra irrationals, Lissajous’ curves and Legion’s number. Sometimes though he doesn’t even have the answer himself, so you get to hear about some of the unsolved problems in mathematics, which is an extra bonus. The answers are very well written, whether your a mathematician or someone who just likes problems to solve you can understand them. Then as a bonus you learn some history of the problem to give you some extra knowledge!

Pickover’s writing is humorous, educated and enjoyable, because you can instantly tell he has a huge passion for his subject. (plus as already the author of over thirty books you would of thought he would of picked up a few things.) The story has lots of reminiscent memories from watching The Wizard of Oz on TV with quotes coming around that remind you of the good ol’ days.

The first downfall from getting this book is getting bored of problems you can’t solve, for example any problem above 2 stars the average person has no chance of solving, although the answers are great most people with a book like this want over 50% of the book to be something they can solve. If it was written problem, answer, problem answer, it wouldn’t be such an annoyance, but having the answers in the back was irritating. Or another downfall is the very few problems which you just couldn’t care less about. For instance there was way to many “which way should Dorothy go” problems, which the first one is ok but then there should be more interesting and easier problems.

I bought this book on a whim, and I’m very glad I did so, it partly got me to do math at university. So I’m probably going to be pretty biased about it, sorry. But I still would recommend it to anyone who wants to read a short sci-fi, be challenged by puzzles, or even want to learn a little mathematical history.

7/10