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Fun sharpens the mind: How simple problems bring us closer to complex mathematical theories

Fernando Blasco

Abstract


This article presents a historical approach to recreational mathematics and the kinds of questions it deals with. I will present some authors, their works, the problems they contributed, and the fields of knowledge to which they gave rise, from Egyptian mathematics through the Renaissance and the Scientific Revolution to the 19th century, devoting a special section to the work of Leonhard Euler. I will present the problems, but not the solutions, so that the readers can actively participate by solving them or, if they wish, by checking the solutions in the references given.

Keywords


mathematics; recreational science; puzzles; problems; ingenuity



DOI: https://doi.org/10.7203/metode.15.27423

References


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