The Call of the Primes: Surprising Patterns, Peculiar Puzzles, and Other Marvels of Mathematics

Exploring the challenge of sudoku and the best strategy for winning the grand prize on Let’s Make a Deal, O’Shea, a regular contributor to the Journal of Recreational Mathematics, strips away the mystique of math to reveal both its practical uses and its pleasures. Each of the book’s 16 short entries exudes the playful spirit of Martin Gardner’s celebrated Scientific American column, “Mathematical Games,” and is sprinkled with historical tidbits: for example, the properties of “magic squares” in modern sudoku puzzles echo those once used as protective amulets and good luck charms. There’s little need for more than basic addition and subtraction to follow O’Shea’s discussions as he writes of π, primes, and triangular numbers. The transcendental number e becomes much less mysterious when O’Shea demonstrates how it’s used for calculating exponential growth and decay in such phenomena as compound interest, radiocarbon dating, and population growth. Similarly, the apparent magic of coincidence becomes transparent through the lens of probability theory. O’Shea’s discussion is comfortably matter-of-fact and lighthearted, and each chapter ends with references for further study. Readers curious about recreational mathematics can enjoy this book without fear of getting lost in the weeds. (Apr.)