Mathematical treks. From surreal numbers to magic circles (Q2771510)

In 1995, Ivars Peterson and his colleagues at Science News began planning the magazine's debut on the World Wide Web. Ivars Peterson, who had long admired Martin Gardner's ''Mathematical Games'' columns in Scientific American decided to write a weekly on-line column about various aspects of mathematics. The MAA offered to post these articles on the MAA website, which became the immensely popular ''Math Treks'' column in MAA Online (http://www.maa.org/news/columns.html).NEWLINENEWLINEThis volume collects together and updates Ivars Peterson's Mathland columns that appeared during 1996 and 1997. The first article appeared on MAA Online on February 26, 1996 on the chess match between world champion Garry Kasparov and Chess computer Deep Blue. Since then he has written more than 250 articles on a wide range of topics in mathematics and its applications, along wire a glance at old puzzles, famous problems and historic events: anything mathematical that happens to catch his eye. NEWLINENEWLINEUpdates can be seen on www.maa.org/pubs/books/mtr.html.