Robbie wrote:There's a difference between a "maths trick" and a "maths-based trick".
A maths trick is clearly centred around mathematics. "Think of a number, double it", etc. Age cards. Lightning calculation. Creating a magic square. Doing a knight's tour of the chessboard. Personally, I find them deadly dull. Children learn "think of a number" stuff and age cards in school. Mathematicians might be impressed by magic squares and knight's tours, but most people won't be. Lightning calculation more impressive to the non-mathematician, but there's no real "wow" factor. Numbers turn people off.
A maths-based trick exploits mathematical principles for its deep working, but on the surface doesn't seem to be mathematical. Paul Carnazzo's "Animania", for example, is based on the age cards principle, but is disguised as an ESP test on a single card. I've seen effects based on parity, and others based on modulo arithmetic.
So, based on your definition, I'd say that maths tricks are a subset of maths-based tricks...
