In Nonplussed!, popular-math writer Julian Havil delighted readers
with a mind-boggling array of implausible yet true mathematical
paradoxes. Now Havil is back with Impossible?, another marvelous
medley of the utterly confusing, profound, and unbelievable--and all of
it mathematically irrefutable.
Whenever Forty-second Street in New York is temporarily closed, traffic
doesn't gridlock but flows more smoothly--why is that? Or consider that
cities that build new roads can experience dramatic increases in traffic
congestion--how is this possible? What does the game show Let's Make A
Deal reveal about the unexpected hazards of decision-making? What can
the game of cricket teach us about the surprising behavior of the law of
averages? These are some of the counterintuitive mathematical
occurrences that readers encounter in Impossible?
Havil ventures further than ever into territory where intuition can lead
one astray. He gathers entertaining problems from probability and
statistics along with an eclectic variety of conundrums and puzzlers
from other areas of mathematics, including classics of abstract math
like the Banach-Tarski paradox. These problems range in difficulty from
easy to highly challenging, yet they can be tackled by anyone with a
background in calculus. And the fascinating history and personalities
associated with many of the problems are included with their
mathematical proofs. Impossible? will delight anyone who wants to have
their reason thoroughly confounded in the most astonishing and
unpredictable ways.
