Mathematical Carnival PDF
Preview Mathematical Carnival
MARTIN GARDNER is a remarkable man. He is most familiar as
the author for many years of the Mathematical Games column
of the Scientific American magazine. Every month thousands
of readers of that magazine would turn eagerly to Gardner's col-
umn to find what was new in the world of recreational mathe-
matics. The articles were always written in an eminently read-
able style, whether he was retailing the witty frivolities of Dr.
Matrix, or giving an erudite exposition of some recent research.
I was privileged to stay with Martin and Charlotte Gardner at
their former home in Hastings-on-Hudson, New York on several
-
occasions. Many happy hours were spent pouring over some of
the contents of Martin's den at the top of the house on Euclid
Avenue. It was filled with puzzles, games, mechanical toys, sci-
entific curiosities, and a host of other intriguing objects, exactly
like a wizard's den. Not inappropriately, Martin is a keen ama-
teur magician, and so has lots of magic books and of course he
also has a large collection of the L. Frank Baum books about
the Wizard of Oz. His other books were no less interesting.
Where else could you take a book at random off the shelf and
discover that it was an entire novel written without using the
letter "en?
Don't let all of this give you the impression that Martin him-
self is in any way strange. In fact he is an intensely rational
man, who has no patience with cranks, tricksters, or charlatans
of any description. He has written many articles exposing vari-
ous deceptions, and has a fine book, Fads and Fallacies irz the
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