This book joins several other books available for the preparation of young scholars for a future that involves solving mathematical pr- lems. The introductory explanations... Læs mere
A mathematician, like a painter or a poet, is a maker of patterns. A mathematician, on the other hand, has no material to work with but ideas, and so his patterns are likely to last longer, since ideas wear less with time than words.
contains dozens of proofs and counterexamples to a variety of problems, such as a pool table problem, a fifty-dollar problem, a five-point problem, and a joint problem.
This book provides an exciting history of the discovery of Ramsey Theory, and contains new research along with rare photographs of the mathematicians who developed this theory, including Paul Erdös, B.L. van der Waerden, and Henry Baudet.
In fact, the prototype of such problems is the following: If each point of the plane is to be given a color, how many colors do we need if every two points at unit distance are to receive distinct colors?
Indeed the book contains a wealth of source material that allows the reader to form a highly detailed picture of the events and personalities discussed in the book.