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Mathematical Fallacies and Paradoxes

Mathematical Fallacies and Paradoxes

List Price: $8.95
Your Price: $8.06
Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Intriguing
Review: Being a physicist who has always had an interest in math, I've found this book a good way to learn about aspects of mathematics usually saved for metamathematical philosophy courses. The book is not a textbook but it has enough depth for you to understand why paradoxes like Godel's, Grelling's and Russell arise and what their implications are. Each chapter gets more interesting and more complicated than the previous. Even though the book does not have a completely polished feel, I recommend it to any recreational mathematician.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Interesting
Review: I would recommend this book to anyone interested in Mathematics. The fallacies are interesting, including the author's. For example, on page 94 regarding Oscar Wilde's epigram : "The only way to get rid of temptation is to yield to it". Mr. Bunch suggests this to be a fallacy due to the key word "only", and offers an example such as suicide to show "only" to be invalid. But would not suicide be a temptation as well? Or for that manner, anything one would try?

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Interesting
Review: I would recommend this book to anyone interested in Mathematics. The fallacies are interesting, including the author's. For example, on page 94 regarding Oscar Wilde's epigram : "The only way to get rid of temptation is to yield to it". Mr. Bunch suggests this to be a fallacy due to the key word "only", and offers an example such as suicide to show "only" to be invalid. But would not suicide be a temptation as well? Or for that manner, anything one would try?

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Zeno and set theory
Review: It is the paradoxes that keep us honest in mathematics. Tarski with Banach found a basic flaw in the axiom of choice in set theory. Zeno has puzzled children for two thousand years... Time travel paradoxes are the modern "new" problem of tacyonic loops and the Hawking conjecture. Without examples of critical thinking doctrine rules and men become fools!

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: jovial
Review: My 8 year old niece loves her schoolteacher but as she has a bit of devilment in her ... yesterday she ask the school m'arm, "what is 1 divided by 1 - 1"? And where did the little sweetheart get that lovely bit of nothingness? Seems her uncle was reading this book ... : Hey, this is a swell book fun to read with calculator at hand and niece [with her dog ] at knee.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: This is a Great Book for Math Fans
Review: This is a great book for people who love mathematics, including: recreational math enthusiasts, math teachers, professors and other university level math instructors, curious and self-motivated students, etc. This book provides numerous examples of how seemingly logical steps can lead to mathematically fallacious results. The level of math ranges from advanced high school to college level math, but the level is not really important ... what is important is the insights one can get from looking at common mathematical mistakes.

This book may also be of interest to neuroscientists, cognitive scientists, and psychologists who are interested in how human beings learn and apply mathematics. On a somewhat related note, I have noticed that (for some strange reason) this book has attracted a set of rather bizarre reviewers (see below). Please ignore them and buy this inexpensive and insightful book on math.


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