Which Way Did the Bicycle Go? And Other Intriguing Mathematical Mysteries

Konhauser, Joseph D. E. (Author)/ Velleman, Dan (Author)/ Wagon, Stan (Author)

ISBN 10: 1470463822 / ISBN 13: 9781470463823

Published by MP–AMM American Mathematical, 1996

About this Item

235 pages. 9.00x6.00x0.50 inches. In Stock.

Seller Inventory # __1470463822

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Which Way Did the Bicycle Go? And Other Intriguing Mathematical Mysteries
• Publisher: MP AMM American Mathematical
• Publication Date: 1996
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1470463822
• ISBN 13: 9781470463823
• Binding: Paperback
• Condition: Brand New
• Weight: 0.35 kilograms

About this title

Synopsis

This collection will give students (high school or beyond), teachers, and university professors a chance to experience the pleasure of wrestling with some beautiful problems of elementary mathematics. Readers can compare their sleuthing talents with those of Sherlock Holmes, who made a bad mistake regarding the first problem in the collection: Determine the direction of travel of a bicycle that has left its tracks in a patch of mud.

Which Way did the Bicycle Go? contains a variety of other unusual and interesting problems in geometry, algebra, combinatorics, and number theory. For example, if a pizza is sliced into eight 45-degree wedges meeting at a point other than the center of the pizza, and two people eat alternate wedges, will they get equal amounts of pizza? Or: What is the rightmost nonzero digit of the product $1\cdot 2\cdot 3\cdots 1,000,000$? Or: Is a manufacturer's claim that a certain unusual combination lock allows thousands of combinations justified? Complete solutions to the 191 problems are included along with problem variations and topics for investigation.