For today’s mathematical puzzle, assume that in the year 1956 there was a children’s magazine in New York named after a giant egg, Humpty Dumpty, who purportedly served as its chief editor.

Mr. Dumpty was assisted by a human editor named Martin Gardner, who prepared “activity features” and wrote a monthly short story about the adventures of the child egg, Humpty Dumpty Jr. Another duty of Mr. Gardner’s was to write a monthly poem of moral advice from Humpty Sr. to Humpty Jr.

At that point, Mr. Gardner was 37 and had never taken a math course beyond high school. He had struggled with calculus and considered himself poor at solving basic mathematical puzzles, let alone creating them. But when the publisher of Scientific American asked him if there might be enough material for a monthly column on “recreational mathematics,” a term that sounded even more oxymoronic in 1956 than it does today, Mr. Gardner took a gamble.

He quit his job with Humpty Dumpty.

On Wednesday, Mr. Gardner will celebrate his 95th birthday with the publication of another book — his second book of essays and mathematical puzzles to be published just this year. With more than 70 books to his name, he is the world’s best-known recreational mathematician, and has probably introduced more people to the joys of math than anyone in history.

How is this possible?

Actually, there are two separate puzzles here. One is how Mr. Gardner, who still works every day at his old typewriter, has managed for so long to confound and entertain his readers. The other is why so many of us have never been able to resist this kind of puzzle. Why, when we hear about the guy trying to ferry a wolf and a goat and a head of cabbage across the river in a small boat, do we feel compelled to solve his transportation problem?

It never occurred to me that math could be fun until the day in grade school that my father gave me a book of 19th-century puzzles assembled by Mr. Gardner — the same puzzles, as it happened, that Mr. Gardner’s father had used to hook him during his school days. The algebra and geometry were sugar-coated with elaborate stories and wonderful illustrations of giraffe races, pool-hall squabbles, burglaries and scheming carnival barkers. (Go to nytimes.com/tierneylab for some examples.)

Read more . . .

Related articles by Zemanta

• Report: Students need to improve math skills (cnn.com)

Related posts:

1. The Happiest People
2. New Programs Aim to Lure Young Into Digital Jobs
3. Etalk Daily, People Magazine and Entertainment Tonight – Should You Be Quaking in Your Boots?
4. Author Sherman Alexie’s Rants On Colbert Against Ebooks, Piracy And ‘Open Source Culture’
5. 10/GUI the human computer interface of the future for people with more than two fingers

Tags: calculus, martin gardner, math course, mathematical puzzle, mathematical puzzles, mathematician, recreational mathematics, transportation problem

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 20th, 2009 at 8:55 am and is filed under Consider This, Innovation Needed, NY Times, learning. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.