Mathematics is the mother of all sciences. The world cannot move an inch without mathematics. Every businessman, accountant, engineer, mechanic, farmer, scientist, shopkeeper, even street hawker requires a knowledge of mathematics in the day to day life.
Besides man, animals and insects also use mathematics in their day to day existence. Snails make shells with curious mathematical precision. Spiders produce intricacies of engineering. Honey bees construct combs of greatest strength consistent with the least possible amount of wax. There are countless mathematical patterns in nature's fabric.
God or nature, whichever one believes in, is the greatest mathematician 'of all. Fruits of teasle and sunflower and the scales of cones are not arranged haphazardly. A close examination would convince us that in corn and elm each leaf is halfway around the stem from the leaves immediately above and below it. If one should trace the point of attachment upwards with the aid of thread freshly coated with mucilage, it would be found that they lie on a spiral.
In plants like beech and sedge each leaf is attached one-third of the way around the stem from leaves immediately above or below it. Another kind of spiral is found in twigs of the oak, the apple and many other plants. The leaves are two-fifths of the circumference apart and the curve, make two revolutions and goes through five attachments in passing from any leaf to the one directly over it. This would be the fraction 2/5.
Mathematical training is essential to children if they are to flourish effectively in the newly forming technological world of tomorrow. No longer it is enough to train children to meet unknow - challenges; they must be prepared to face the unknown - because it seems certain that tomorrow won't be much like today: It is now time for us to rethink our approach to maths learning.
Experience shows that the basic principles of learning mathematics can be made easier and more fun for the clever and ordinary alike through mathematical activities and games. If mathematics can be turned into a game, it can literally become child's play. Class experience indicate clearly that mathematical puzzles and riddles encourage an alert, open minded attitude in youngsters and help them develop their clear thinking.
In the light of this aspect I have presented the puzzles, riddles and games in this book. Each puzzle, riddle or game is designed to develop some aspect of a person's inborn potential to think creatively.
I have tried to cover a wide range of mathematical topics and levels of difficulty, with an aim to pull together many diffrent topics in mathematics. The viiried kinds of levels of problems provide both a review of previous work and an introduction to a new topic as well as motivation to learn new techniques needed to solve more specialized types of problems.
The writing of this book has been a thrilling experience for me and I hope my readers will share with me this experience.
