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The Book
The Penguin Dictionary of Curious and Interesting Numbers
By David wells
ISBN 0-14-02614904

Cost
£8.99 (www.amazon.co.uk)

Difficulty
If you know what a power or a root is, you’ll be fine.

Review
Why on Earth am I posting a review of this book on a magic forum? Well, ask yourself how many conjuring or mentalism effects rely on the weird properties of numbers? Who hasn’t used a trick where a seemingly randomising operation actually produces a more predictable number, for instance? I’m guessing that a good many people have wondered whether there are any other natural mathematical quirks to exploit.

The answer is a resounding yes. In this book, you’ll find a mountain of weird properties of numbers ranging from the merely imaginary right up to a number so massive that it has its own notation.

Knowing how numbers dance across paper is one possible first step in creating completely unheard of and utterly astonishing effects, but studying number theory is only really for the Very Clever Indeed. From time to time, someone lets slip a technique, but to have 231 pages of this stuff all laid out in numerical order, with an index of concepts at the back, and all for £8.99 represents excellent value for money.

The index is a great idea. Supposing you find a property you think you can exploit to create a new trick but don’t like the look of the maths involved, simply look up what other numbers have that property to see if there’s a better way.

You’ll get most use out of pages 13 to 149, which cover the numbers between 1 and 999. There are some strange facts here, too. Fifty-two, the number of cards in a deck, is an "untouchable" number, as is five (which has 10 ½ pages of facts devoted to it).

Overall

This is a great book for people who would like to delve deeply into the treasure box of numbers and their properties. It contains a wealth of information and techniques you can use to create some very interesting effects indeed. It also makes great toilet reading!

Thank you for the review. I have it on my bookshelf and the cost when I got it was £4.99! I suspect you can guess how long ago that might have been. It's a fascinating read - although not the kind of novel with which you'd curl up in bed.

JuanTheMan wrote:Thank you for the review. I have it on my bookshelf and the cost when I got it was £4.99! I suspect you can guess how long ago that might have been. It's a fascinating read - although not the kind of novel with which you'd curl up in bed.

Yeah, I agree. Not a book for the hard of thinking.

It's like entering another world. I mean, people have actually sat down and worked all this stuff out! I've had it a couple of days and I think I may have found something I can exploit that I simply didn't know existed (and neither will the spec )

(Quick edit: Did you know that 7 is the minimum number of riffle shuffles required to randomise a deck of cards? I certainly didn't!)

Great book. Worth getting just so you can read about 121.

Alan Jackson wrote:Great book. Worth getting just so you can read about 121.

I've just looked it up. You're ight! I feel inspiration coming on...