“Its engaging Beauty and vast Use” is just one of the enthusiastic
descriptions of mathematics (algebra in this case) that fill the pages of David
Wells’s The Penguin Book of Curious and Interesting Mathematics (Penguin,
£8.99, ISBN 014 02 3603 1. The title says it all, and it’s a treasure
trove of extracts, puzzles—and even a toast to the confusion of
Newton.
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