| Introduction |
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3 | (24) |
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Easy words for hard ideas |
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Radicals, hyperradicals, and ultraradicals (nonpolitical) |
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New numbers for the nursery |
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Miracle of the rising book |
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27 | (38) |
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Counting---the language of number |
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Counting, matching, and ``Going to Jerusalem'' |
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The infinite and its progeny |
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Measuring the measuring rod |
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The whole is no greater than some of its parts |
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The first transfinite---Aleph0 |
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Cardinality of the continuum |
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Extravagances of a mathematical madman |
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The house that Cantor built |
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65 | (47) |
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Squaring the circle and its cousins |
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Mathematical impossibility |
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Silk purse, sow's ear, ruler and compass |
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Algebraic equations and transcendental numbers |
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Galois and Greek epidemics |
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Cube duplicators and angle trisectors |
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Infancy: Archimedes, the Bible, the Egyptians |
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Adolescence: Vieta, Van Ceulen |
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Maturity: Wallis, Newton, Leibniz |
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Old Age: Dase, Richter, Shanks |
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Boon to insurance companies |
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Logarithms or tricks of the trade |
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Biography of e; or e, the banker's boon |
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Pituitary gland of mathematics: the exponential function |
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Humpty Dumpty, Doctor of Semantics |
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The -1, or ``Where am I?'' |
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Biography of i, the self-made amphibian |
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Omar Khayyam, Cardan, Bombelli, and Gauss |
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Program music of mathematics |
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Breakfast in bed; or, How to become a great mathematician |
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Geometric representation of i |
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A famous formula, faith, and humility |
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Assorted Geometries---Plane and Fancy |
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112 | (44) |
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The talking fish and St. Augustine |
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High priests and numbo jumbo |
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Pure and applied mathematics |
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Ghosts, table-tipping, and the land of the dead |
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Foruth-dimension flounders |
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Fourth dimension---a new gusher |
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Four-dimensional geometry defined |
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Three-dimensional cats and two-dimensional kings |
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Gallant Gulliver and the gloves |
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Beguiling voices and strange footprints |
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Space credos and millinery |
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The prince and the Boethians |
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The mathematicians unite---nothing to lose but their chains |
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Lobachevsky breaks a link |
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Checks and double checks in mathematics |
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The tractix and the pseudosphere |
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The skeptic persists---and is stepped on |
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Lobachevskian Eiffel Towers and Riemannian Holland Tunnels |
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Pastimes of Past and Present Times |
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156 | (37) |
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Puzzle acorns and mathematical oaks |
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Charlemagne and crossword puzzles |
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Mark Twain and the ``farmer's daughter'' |
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Carolyn Flaubert and the cabin boy |
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A wolf, a goat, and a head of cabbage |
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High finance; or, The international beer wolf |
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Buddha, God, and the binary scale |
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The march of culture; or, Russia, the home of the binary system |
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The ritual of Benares: or, Charley horse in the Orient |
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Nim, Sissa Ben Dahir, and Josephus |
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Take a number from 1 to 10 |
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Paradox Lost and Paradox Regained |
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193 | (30) |
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Great paradoxes and distant relatives |
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Paradoxes strange but true |
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Wheels that move faster on top than on bottom |
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The curse of transportation; or, How locomotives can't make up their minds |
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Point sets---the Arabian Nights of mathematics |
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Hausdorff spins a tall tale |
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Messrs. Banach and Tarski rub the magic lamp |
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Baron Munchhausen is stymied by a pea |
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Trouble from a bubble; or, Dividing by zero |
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The infinite---troublemaker par excellence |
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Logical paradoxes---the folk tales of mathematics |
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Deluding dialectics of the poacher and the prince; of the introspective barber; of the number 111777; of this book and Confucius: of the Hon. Bertrand Russell |
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Scylla and Charybdis; or, What shall poor mathematics do? |
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223 | (42) |
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The clue of the billiard cue |
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A little chalk, a lot of talk |
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Watson gets his leg pulled by probable inference |
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Finds it all absurdly simple |
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Passionate oysters, waltzing ducks, and the syllogism |
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The twilight of probability |
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Interesting behavior of a modes coin |
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Biological necessity and a pair of dice |
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A poll of views: a meteorologist, a bootlegger, a bridge player |
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The subjective view---based on insufficient reason, contains an element of truth |
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What happens will probably happen |
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Experimental eurythmics; or, Pitching pennies |
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The adventure of the dancing men |
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Scheherezade and John Wilkes Booth---a challenge to statistics |
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Charles Peirce predicts the weather |
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Mr. Jevons omits an acknowledgment |
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The study of craps---the very guide of life |
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Dice, pennies, permutations, and combinations |
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D'Alembert drops the ball |
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Count Buffon plays with a needle |
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A black ball and a white ball |
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The calculus of probability re-examined |
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Found to rest on hypothesis |
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Laplace needs no hypothesis |
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The Marquis de Condorcet has high hopes |
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M. le Marquis omits a factor and loses his head |
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The syllogism scraps a standby |
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Ring out the old logic, ring in the new |
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265 | (34) |
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Seven bridges over a stein of beer |
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Is warmed by news from home |
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Dissolves the dilemma of Sunday strollers |
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Babies' cribs and Pythagoreans |
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Talismen and queer figures |
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Position is everything in topology |
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Competition for the caliph's cup; or, Sifting out the suitors by science |
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Odd facts concerning Times Square and a balloonist's head |
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Eccentric deportment of several distinguished gentlemen at Princeton |
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Their passion for pretzels |
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Their delving in doughnuts |
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Enforced modesty of readers and authors |
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Lachrymose recital around a Paris pissoir |
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``Who staggered how many times around the walls of what?'' |
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Gastric surgery---from doughnut to sausage in a single cut |
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Just as black as it is painted |
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Forments industrial discontent |
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Bane of painter and paintpot alike |
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Mathematical cotillion; or, How on earth do I get rid of my partner? |
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Topology---the pinnacle of perversity; or, Removing your vest without your coat |
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Down to earth---map coloring |
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The simplest universal law |
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The search for invariants |
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299 | (58) |
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Meaning of change and rate of change |
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``Flying Arrow'' local---stops at all points |
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The arithmetic men dig pits |
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Lamentable analogue of the boomerang |
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Story of the great rectangle |
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Shrinking and swelling; or, ``Will the circle go the limit?'' |
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Brief dictionary of mathematics and physics |
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Military idyll; or, The speed of the falling bomb |
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Higher derivatives and radius of curvature |
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Laudable scholarship of automobile engineers |
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The third derivative as a shock absorber |
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The derivative finds its mate |
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Measuring lengths; or, The yawning regress |
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Measuring areas under curves |
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Method of rectangular strips |
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One the inverse of the other |
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The outline of history and the descent of man: or, y=ex |
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Sickly curves and orchidaceous ones |
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Infinite perimeters and postage stamps |
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Super-colossal pathological specimen---the curve that fills space |
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The unbelieveable crisscross |
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| Epilogue. Mathematics and the Imagination |
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357 | |
Other versions by this Author
