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"A Quarter Century of Recreational Mathematics," by Martin Gardner. Scientific American, August 1998.
The line between recreational math and serious math is a blurry one. Math is considered recreational if it has a playful aspect that can be understood and appreciated by nonmathematicians. At times, these types of problems generate simple and elegant solutions, but they can also lead to mind-bending paradoxes, bewildering magic tricks, and topological curiousities such as Mobius bands and Klein bottles.
It is in this world that Martin Gardner lives. From 1956 to 1981, he wrote Scientific American's column "Mathematical Games." He took no math courses in college, but as a journalist who loves math, he has been able to coax interesting problems out of professional mathematicians. Early on he worked with Solomon Golomb, who studied polyominoes, shapes formed by joining identical squares along their edges (the domino being a simple example). In 1977, MIT's Ronald Rivest allowed Gardner to be the first to reveal the "public-key" cipher system that Rivest invented.
At times, seemingly purely recreational problems have turned serious. Magic squares, arrangements of numbers that add up to the same number in every row, column, or diagonal, have always been a popular part of recreational math. Extending this idea, retired railroad clerk Clifford Adams devised a magic hexagon. After receiving it in the mail, Gardner passed it on to mathematician Charles Trigg, who proved that Adams' elegant pattern was the only possible magic hexagon of any size.
Gardner sees recreational math as potentially educational. For example, he regards ticktacktoe, a game so simple and well-known, to be a superb way to introduce students to combinatorial mathematics, game theory, and probability. With the latest teaching trend emphasizing problem solving and cooperative learning, Gardner believes that recreational math problems would be extremely valuable and should be integrated with the standard curriculum.
---Ben Stein
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