The Big Sudoku Book has received another review, and in an unexpected venue: The Wall Street Journal! The review is by Keith Devlin, a mathematician at Stanford University and the author of a small library of books of his own. Devlin writes:
The authors show vividly that mathematics is really about the power of abstraction, the push to explain as much as possible in the most compact form possible. Numbers and arithmetic are a part of that enterprise, but there is a lot more besides. “Taking Sudoku Seriously” is an excellent vehicle whereby devotees of the puzzle can come to understand the nature of mathematics.
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Mathematician Tanya Khovanova has just posted a review of the Big Sudoku Book. She writes:
I received the book Taking Sudoku Seriously by by Jason Rosenhouse and Laura Taalman for review and put it aside to collect some dust. You see, I have solved too many Sudokus in my life. The idea of solving…
The Mathematical Association of America has now posted a thorough review of the Big Sudoku Book. The review is by Mark Hunacek, of Iowa State University. His verdict:
This is a delightful book which I thoroughly enjoyed reading. In some sense it is hardly surprising that I would enjoy it, since…
Via Mark Chu-Carroll, I just finished reading this article by mathematician Keith Devlin. He writes:
Let's start with the underlying fact. Multiplication simply is not repeated addition, and telling young pupils it is inevitably leads to problems when they subsequently learn that it is not.…
Writing in the online statistics magazine Significance, Angie Wade, of University College London, has posted a review of Taking Sudoku Seriously. That's the book about the mathematics of Sudoku puzzles that I cowrote with my JMU colleague Laura Taalman, published by Oxford University Press, for…
Actually, that was about the only positive comment in the review. Devlin was generally dismissive. "Real mathematicians don't find puzzles interesting" was my takeaway. He was really quite snooty about it.