The Price of Cake: Clément and Guillaume Deslandes ***

This is a bit of an oddity that is likely to prove Marmite-like in attracting a mix of enthusiasm and dislike - so three stars is something of an average outcome. The authors describe it as 'a compendium of difficult mathematical riddles'. I don't think this is strictly accurate: these aren't riddles in any conventional sense, they are word-based mathematical problems or puzzles, but lack the wordplay that is essential to a riddle.

Which side of the divide you come down on is likely to depend on two factors. Whether you like indulging in mathematical problems, and whether you only like mathematical problems where an intuitive grasp is enough, or whether you enjoy ploughing through mathematical workings to get to the solution. I suspect my use of the word 'ploughing' there highlights that, while I personally do like them, I haven't the patience for problems that take a lot of working through.

For those of us with limited patience, there is a hints section that gives something of a pointer to the way of approaching the problem, before a detailed solutions section (the longest part of the book). It's probably best to give an example. The first 'riddle' says that a blacksmith has five chains, each with three links. He wants to make a chain 15 links long. Given he can open and close links, what is the minimum number he needs to open. The hint tells us that four links is obvious, but is it optimal? And the solution gives the actual answer.

Here the answer is practically one line: this is the kind of intuitive puzzle I find appealing. But with a fair number there was some mathematical working required. The subtitle mentions these are 'classic' riddles - and almost every popular mathematical problem I've come across is in there, from Monty Hall to the seven bridges of Koenigsberg, via plenty of statistical and speed of travel problems, both familiar and novel.

In practice, I did enjoy it rather more than I thought I would, though for me it would have worked better if the solutions had come straight after the relevant problems - I spent most of my time reading a problem, failing to solve it then flipping to the back to read the solution.

Not at all a bad book (though I wish the cover had looked a little less self-published) - but one with a very specific readership. You'll know if it's for you - and if it is, you should get a copy.

Paperback:

Kindle:
Using these links earns us commission at no cost to you
Review by Brian Clegg - See all Brian's online articles or subscribe to a weekly email free here

Comments

The Infinity Machine - Sebastian Mallaby ****

It's very quickly clear that Sebastian Mallaby is a huge Demis Hassabis fan - writing about the only child prodigy and teen genius ever who was also a nice, rounded personality. After a few chapters, though, things settle down (I'm reminded of Douglas Adams' description of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy ) and we get a good, solid trip through the journey that gave us DeepMind, their AlphaGo and AlphaFold programs, the sudden explosion of competition on the AI front and thoughts on artificial general intelligence. Although Mallaby does occasionally still go into fan mode - reading this you would think that AlphaFold had successfully perfectly predicted the structure of every protein, where it is usually not sufficiently accurate for its results to have direct practical application - we get a real feel for the way this relatively unusual company was swiftly and successfully developed away from Silicon Valley. It's readable and gives an important understanding of...

In Seach of Sea Dragons - Matthew Myerscough ****

It's common advice to would-be authors of narrative non-fiction to open with something dramatic - Matthew Myerscough certainly does this with the story of his being trapped under an avalanche on Snowdon (while his girlfriend, also carried away remains on top of the snow unhurt). It certainly is dramatic, but seemed entirely disconnected from the reason I got the book, which was to read about fossil collecting. Luckily, though, in the second chapter we get into a more conventional 'how I got interested in fossils as a boy'. Having recently reviewed Patrick Moore's autobiography and noting that astronomy was one of the few sciences where amateurs can still make a contribution, it came to mind that palaeontology is another - Myerscough is a civil engineer by trade, but just as amateur astronomers can find new details in the skies, so amateur fossil hunters have been searching for these relics for centuries. When I give talks in junior schools, the two topics that guarant...

Robot-Proof - Vivienne Ming ****

As Vivienne Ming makes apparent, there seem largely to be two views of AI's pros and cons, both of which are almost certainly wrong. It's either doom-saying 'It'll destroy life as we know it' or Pollyanna-ish 'It'll do all the boring work and we can all be wonderfully creative and live lives of leisure.' Instead, Ming gives us a clear analysis of the likely trajectory for the workplace, particularly for the IT industry. She describes three 'equally flawed, intellectually lazy strategies' to deal with the impact of AI. The first is substitution and deprofessionalisation, using AI to allow cheaper 'AI-augmented technicians' to replace more expensive professionals, producing more low wage jobs and fewer mid-range. This does save money but leaves a company at risk of being easily outcompeted. The second is what Ming describes as the '"A-Player" Hunger Games', the approach favoured by Silicon Valley. This sees the growing rif...

Search This Blog