''Wheels, Life and Other Mathematical Amusements'' is a book by

Martin Gardner Martin Gardner (October 21, 1914May 22, 2010) was an American popular mathematics and popular science writer with interests also encompassing scientific skepticism, micromagic, philosophy, religion, and literatureespecially the writings of Lewis ...

published in 1983. The Basic Library List Committee of the

Mathematical Association of America The Mathematical Association of America (MAA) is a professional society that focuses on mathematics accessible at the undergraduate level. Members include university, college, and high school teachers; graduate and undergraduate students; pure a ...

has recommended its inclusion in undergraduate mathematics libraries.

''Wheels, Life and Other Mathematical Amusements'' is a book of 22 mathematical games columns that were revised and extended after being previously published in ''

Scientific American ''Scientific American'', informally abbreviated ''SciAm'' or sometimes ''SA'', is an American popular science magazine. Many famous scientists, including Albert Einstein and Nikola Tesla, have contributed articles to it. In print since 1845, it i ...

''. It is Gardner's 10th collection of columns, and includes material on

Conway's Game of Life The Game of Life, also known simply as Life, is a cellular automaton devised by the British mathematician John Horton Conway in 1970. It is a zero-player game, meaning that its evolution is determined by its initial state, requiring no further ...

supertask In philosophy, a supertask is a countably infinite sequence of operations that occur sequentially within a finite interval of time. Supertasks are called hypertasks when the number of operations becomes uncountably infinite. A hypertask that inc ...

intransitive dice A set of dice is intransitive (or nontransitive) if it contains three dice, ''A'', ''B'', and ''C'', with the property that ''A'' rolls higher than ''B'' more than half the time, and ''B'' rolls higher than ''C'' more than half the time, but it is ...

, braided

polyhedra In geometry, a polyhedron (plural polyhedra or polyhedrons; ) is a three-dimensional shape with flat polygonal faces, straight edges and sharp corners or vertices. A convex polyhedron is the convex hull of finitely many points, not all on t ...

combinatorial game theory Combinatorial game theory is a branch of mathematics and theoretical computer science that typically studies sequential games with perfect information. Study has been largely confined to two-player games that have a ''position'' that the players ...

, the

Collatz conjecture The Collatz conjecture is one of the most famous unsolved problems in mathematics. The conjecture asks whether repeating two simple arithmetic operations will eventually transform every positive integer into 1. It concerns sequences of integ ...

, mathematical card tricks, and

Diophantine equation In mathematics, a Diophantine equation is an equation, typically a polynomial equation in two or more unknowns with integer coefficients, such that the only solutions of interest are the integer ones. A linear Diophantine equation equates to a c ...

s such as

Fermat's Last Theorem In number theory, Fermat's Last Theorem (sometimes called Fermat's conjecture, especially in older texts) states that no three positive integers , , and satisfy the equation for any integer value of greater than 2. The cases and have been k ...

Reception

Dave Langford David Rowland Langford (born 10 April 1953) is a British author, editor, and critic, largely active within the science fiction field. He publishes the science fiction fanzine and newsletter ''Ansible'', and holds the all-time record for mos ...

reviewed ''Wheels, Life and Other Mathematical Amusements'' for ''

White Dwarf A white dwarf is a stellar core remnant composed mostly of electron-degenerate matter. A white dwarf is very dense: its mass is comparable to the Sun's, while its volume is comparable to the Earth's. A white dwarf's faint luminosity comes fro ...

'' #55, and stated that "Here too are revisions of the three famous pieces on Conway's solitaire game ''Life'', which has absorbed several National Debts' worth of computer time since 1970. Fascinating." The book was positively reviewed in several other mathematics and science journals.Additional reviews: * * * *

References

{{Italic title Books about mathematics

Contents

Reception

References