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| Title | Mathematical Recreations and Problems |
| Author | Rouse Ball, W. W. |
| Asset Number | 00530 |
| Publisher | Macmillan and Co. Ltd. |
| ISBN | |
| Published Date | 1896 |
| Edition | 3 |
| Printing | 1 |
| Description | Full leather prize binding. Boards and bindings tight.
Mathematical Recreations and Problems of Past and Present Times
Presented to E J Dudley for proficiency in maths at the Merchant Taylors School.
From the Preface.
The following pages contain an account of certain mathematical recreations, problems, and speculations of past and present times. I hasten to add that the conclusions are of no practical use, and most of the results are not new. If therefore the reader proceeds further he is at least forewarned. At the same time I think I may assert that many of the diversions - particularly those in the latter half of the book - are interesting, not a few are associated with the names of distinguished mathematicians, while hitherto several of the memoirs quoted have not been easily accessible to English readers. The book is divided into two parts, but in both parts I have included questions which involve advanced mathematics. The first part consists of seven chapters, in which are included various problems and amusements of the kind usually called mathematical recreations. The questions discussed in the first of these chapters are connected with arithmetic; those in the second with geometry; and those in the third relate to mechanics. The fourth chapter contains an account of some miscellaneous problems which involve both number and situation; the fifth chapter contains a concise account of magic squares; and the sixth and seventh chapters deal with some unicursal problems. Several of the questions mentioned in the first three chapters are of a somewhat trivial character, and had they been treated in any standard English work to which I could have referred the reader, I should have pointed them out. In the absence of such a work, I thought it best to insert them and trust to the judicious reader to omit them altogether or to skim them as he feels inclined. The second part consists of five chapters, which are mostly historical. They deal respectively with three classical problems in geometry - namely, the duplication of the cube, the trisection of an angle, and the quadrature of the circle - astrology, the hypotheses as to the nature of space and mass, and a means of measuring time.
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| Category | Mathematics |
| Epoch | Victorian/Edwardian |
| Date Acquired | 26/07/2022 |
| Condition | (3) Good |
