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Impossible?: Surprising Solutions to Counterintuitive Conundrums
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. .
Price: $14.90
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Photoshop LAB Color: The Canyon Conundrum and Other Adventures in the Most Powerful Colorspace
With a mantra like “There are no bad originals, only bad Photoshop operators,” you know best-selling author Dan Margulis is serious about exposing people to the magic of Photoshop Nowhere is that magic more apparent than in its LAB color processing capabilities, which can make even the subtle canyon colors of rock, sand, and dirt come to vivid life. However, you may be wary of taming the complex beast. Here’s your guide! In these pages, Dan shows that you can derive enormous benefits from just a few simple tools and techniques. He also demonstrates that you can take these techniques as far as you wish, employing the power-user features he describes in later chapters. Starting with canyons and progressing to faces, you will see just how quickly you can begin improving your images by following the “recipes” included here. Each chapter includes a sidebar with review questions and exercises as well as a “Closer Look” section that examines some of the principles behind the techniques. A CD includes exercise files. .
Price: $31.79
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Why Do Dogs Drink Out of the Toilet?: 101 of the Most Perplexing Questions Answered About Canine Conundrums, Medical Mysteries and Befuddling Behaviors
Because They're Dogs! That's why dogs drink out of the toilet. That's why they bark when you're on the phone, smell each other's behinds, go crazy when they see the letter carrier, jump up to say hello and roll in stuff that stinks. Everything they do makes perfect canine sense to dogs. And after you read Why Do Dogs Drink out of the Toilet?, it will make perfect sense to you, too. Award-winning pet experts Dr. Marty Becker and Gina Spadafori take you on a trip into the canine mind. And it's not at all a scary place. . . . Dogs live to smell, to feel good, to clarify their relationship with other dogs (and with us), to love, to laugh. When you start looking at the world their way, everything falls into place. Of course they drink out of the toilet—the water is fresher. Sniffing another dog's behind is just like reading their resume, except you know nothing is made up. Barking at the letter carrier makes him go away—every single time! And rolling in stinky stuff just smells like heaven. (Because what smells heavenly is, after all, a matter of taste.) The better you understand dogs, the easier it is to love the pooch on your couch. Find out why hunting dogs don't mind suppressing their basic instinct, how assistance dogs for the blind get their job done, why little dogs like to mix it up with big dogs, and everything you always wanted to know about canine sex but were afraid to ask. You'll also find the answers to questions that tend to tickle your curiosity: How do dogs get into dog shows? Which breeds are made in America? Do some dogs really have dreadlocks? Do all dogs need a backyard? How did Lassie always find her way home? You've got questions? This book's got answers. .
Price: $4.95
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Fundrum My Conundrum: A Book of Riddles
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The Egyptian Jukebox: A Conundrum
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The Riddles of the Sphinx: . . . and the puzzles, word games, brainteasers, conundrums, quizzes, mysteries, codes and ciphers that have baffled, entertained and confused the wor
The story of the puzzles, brainteasers, maps, codes, and other mysteries that have entertained and confused the world over the last century From Sudoku to crosswords, Victorian parlor games to lateral thinking, cryptograms to today’s latest brainteasers, The Riddles of the Sphinx tells the little-known histories behind a host of puzzles, word games, and riddles and introduces the extraordinary geniuses, eccentrics, rivals, code crackers, and obsessives who invented them. Who would’ve thought that, for example, Sudoku, Japan’s biggest ever puzzle craze, was actually invented by a Swiss mathematician in 1873? Or that the Times crossword helped Britain win the Second World War? Readers will also find out about the mysterious “Haberdasher’s Puzzle,” what Sheryl Crow has to do with cruciverbalism, how the World Puzzle Championships are blazing a trail for international relations, and how games help us think and develop. There’s even an opportunity to play some devilish games and classic brainteasers, making this the ultimate book for puzzle addicts..
Price: $3.20
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Psychogeography: Disentangling the Modern Conundrum of Psyche and Place
For those interested in the connection between people and place, the best of the decade long collaboration between literary brat packer Will Self and gonzo illustrator Ralph Steadman Opening with a dazzling new 20,000-word essay on walking from London to New York, Psychogeography is a collection of 50 short pieces written over the last four years, together with 50 four-color illustrations by Ralph Steadman. In Psychogeography Self and Steadman explore the relationship between psyche and place in the contemporary world. Self thinks most people have a “wind-screen-based virtuality” on long- and short-distance travel. We drive, take buses and trains, fly. To combat this compromised reality, Will Self walks, relating intimately to place, as pedestrians do. Ranging in subject from swimming the Ganges to motorcycling across the Australian outback, shopping in an Iowa mall to surfing a tsunami, Psychogeography is at once a map of our world and the psychoanalysis of the way we inhabit it. The pieces are serious, humorous, facetious, and rambunctious. Psychogeography, the study of the effects of geographical environment on the emotions and behavior of individuals, has captivated other writers including W. G. Sebald and Peter Ackroyd, but Self and Steadman have their own unique spin on how place shapes people and vice versa. .
Price: $8.59
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Conundrum (New York Review Books Classics)
The great travel writer Jan Morris was born James Morris. James Morris distinguished himself in the British military, became a successful and physically daring reporter, climbed mountains, crossed deserts, and established a reputation as a historian of the British empire. He was happily married, with several children. To all appearances, he was not only a man, but a man’s man. Except that appearances, as James Morris had known from early childhood, can be deeply misleading. James Morris had known all his conscious life that at heart he was a woman. Conundrum, one of the earliest books to discuss transsexuality with honesty and without prurience, tells the story of James Morris’s hidden life and how he decided to bring it into the open, as he resolved first on a hormone treatment and, second, on risky experimental surgery that would turn him into the woman that he truly was..
Price: $3.99
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How to Cut a Cake: And Other Mathematical Conundrums
Welcome back to Ian Stewart's magical world of mathematics! Here are twenty more curious puzzles and fantastical mathematical stories from one of the world's most popular and accessible writers on mathematics. This is a strange world of never-ending chess games, empires on the moon, furious fireflies, and, of course, disputes over how best to cut a cake. Each chapter--with titles such as, "How to Play Poker By Post" and "Repealing the Law of Averages"--presents a fascinating mathematical puzzle that is challenging, fun, and introduces the reader to a significant mathematical problem in an engaging and witty way. Illustrated with clever and quirky cartoons, each tale will delight those who love puzzles and mathematical conundrums..
Price: $4.17
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