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Tracking the Automatic ANT

And Other Mathematical Explorations

  • Book
  • © 1998

Overview

Editors:
  1. David Gale

    1. Department of Mathematics, University of California, Berkeley, USA

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  • Gale has a devoted following from his column in The Mathematical Intelligencer, with nearly 5,000 subscribers *

  • Gale has now retired, making this a "must-have" for fans of the column *

  • Written at a level suitable for readers with some familiarity of mathematical ideas *

  • An excellent compendium for any fan of recreational mathematics

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Table of contents (24 chapters)

  1. Front Matter

    Pages i-xi
    Download chapter PDF

  2. Simple Sequences with Puzzling Properties

    • David Gale
    Pages 1-5

  3. Probability Paradoxes

    • David Gale
    Pages 7-11

  4. Historic Conjectures: More Sequence Mysteries

    • David Gale
    Pages 13-17

  5. Privacy-Preserving Protocols

    • David Gale
    Pages 19-24

  6. Surprising Shuffles

    • David Gale
    Pages 25-29

  7. Hundreds of New Theorems in a Two-Thousand-Year-Old Subject: Where Will It End?

    • David Gale
    Pages 31-36

  8. Pop Math and Protocols

    • David Gale
    Pages 37-44

  9. Six Variations on the Variational Method

    • David Gale
    Pages 45-53

  10. Tiling a Torus: Cutting a Cake

    • David Gale
    Pages 55-62

  11. The Automatic Ant: Compassless Constructions

    • David Gale
    Pages 63-72

  12. Games: Real, Complex, Imaginary

    • David Gale
    Pages 73-81

  13. Coin Weighing: Square Squaring

    • David Gale
    Pages 83-89

  14. The Return of the Ant and the Jeep

    • David Gale
    Pages 91-100

  15. Go

    • David Gale
    Pages 101-112

  16. More Paradoxes. Knowledge Games

    • David Gale
    Pages 113-117

  17. Triangles and Computers

    • David Gale
    Pages 119-130

  18. Packing Tripods

    • Sherman K. Stein
    Pages 131-135

  19. Further Travels with My Ant

    • David Gale, Jim Propp, Scott Sutherland, Serge Troubetzkoy
    Pages 137-149

  20. The Shoelace Problem

    • David Gale
    Pages 151-161
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Keywords

About this book

For those fascinated by the abstract universe of mathematics, David Gale's columns in The Mathematical Intelligencer have been a prime source of entertainment. Here Gale's columns are collected for the first time in book form. Encouraged by the magazine's editor, Sheldon Axler, to write on whatever pleased him, Gale ranged far and wide across the field of mathematics but frequently returned to favorite themes: triangles, tilings, the mysterious properties of sequences given by simple recursions, games and paradoxes, and the particular automaton that gives this collection its title, the "automatic ant". The level is suitable for those with some familiarity with mathematical ideas, but great sophistication is not needed.

Editors and Affiliations

  • Department of Mathematics, University of California, Berkeley, USA

    David Gale

Bibliographic Information

  • Book Title: Tracking the Automatic ANT

  • Book Subtitle: And Other Mathematical Explorations

  • Editors: David Gale

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4612-2192-0

  • Publisher: Springer New York, NY

  • eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive

  • Copyright Information: Springer-Verlag New York, Inc. 1998

  • Softcover ISBN: 978-1-4612-7453-7Published: 01 October 2011

  • eBook ISBN: 978-1-4612-2192-0Published: 06 December 2012

  • Edition Number: 1

  • Number of Pages: XI, 241

  • Topics: Mathematics, general

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