Professor Stewart’s Cabinet of Mathematical Curiosities by Ian Stewart

Published by Profile Books, 2008

Ian Stewart collects together an assortment of recreational maths – jokes, puzzles and introductory articles on a wide range of maths topics.  If you have read your share of maths books, there are not a great deal of original ideas here.  However, dipping in anywhere will remind you of puzzles you had forgotten or introduce an area of maths you had heard of or studied a long time ago.  Checking the answers will lead you off to thinking about the maths underlying the problems and there are web addresses to follow and numerous starting points to explore further.

Idea for the classroom:  Deceptive Dice (page 36)

Three dice with different numbers on: Yellow has 1, 5 and 9 (each on two faces), Red has 3, 4 and 8 and Blue has 2, 6 and 7.  Two players each pick a dice, roll and the winner is the one with the higher score.  Which is the best dice?  Could use this as an investigation – in groups, investigate one pairing (eg. Yellow v Red) – do trials, construct sample spaces etc.  Then send one member of each group to the other groups to share results.  Can you explain the surprising outcome?