Mathematical Circus

Readers who enjoy brain teasers will find this collection drawn from the monthly puzzle feature Martin Gardner wrote for Scientific American, where he spent many years making mathematics playful. The pieces range widely, taking in visual tricks that fool the eye, the unpredictable paths of random walks, the logic behind Boolean algebra, the geometry of spheres and hyperspheres, the curious behavior of cyclic numbers, and the sequence associated with Fibonacci. Every puzzle comes with its answer, so the book works both as a set of challenges and as a guided tour through recreational mathematics for anyone curious about how numbers can surprise.