Which Way Did the Bicycle Go?

And Other Intriguing Mathematical Mysteries

Stan Wagon author Joseph D E Konhauser author Dan Velleman author

Format:Paperback

Publisher:American Mathematical Society

Published:30th Dec '96

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Which Way Did the Bicycle Go? cover

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.

These problems have charm and character. Many have unexpected twists. I couldn't put the book down. The style of the book is informal. Many of the problems are phrased in a natural, non-mathematical way. ... The problems in Which Way' were designed to appeal to undergraduate students, though they will also appeal to graduate students, high school students, and most any mathematician."" — Daniel H. Ullman, The American Mathematical Monthly

ISBN: 9781470463823

Dimensions: unknown

Weight: unknown

235 pages