Permutation Groups Book

"A wild dream, a fantasy. The magical maze is not like the Minotaur's labyrinth. It cannot be explored in an afternoon, a month, or a millennium. Some parts are for ever inaccessible. But even those parts that ARE accessible are already of infinite extent..."

Ian Stewart's journey through the mathematical is incredibly well written and engaging. Even if you're not interested in maths, there's plenty here to give you new insights into things that you've probably always wondered, "how does this work?"

There is plenty of history to get stuck into too, and lots of real world examples; how do pacemakers work? Or how do we send compressed image, audio or video data? How can probability be like water? How are tiling designs made?

My favourite is probably the example of Christiaan Huygens, the man who invented the pendulum clock. In 1665, ill and confined to his room, he stared at two of his clocks sharing a shelf. They were ticking in synchrony! The implications this would have for the world concerning coupled oscillators were astonishing.

If you have an interest in puzzles, maths, general knowledge or are just plain curious, then this is a book for you!

Rav.