Book Description
A funny, entertaining introduction to Ben Franklin and his many inventions, including the story of how he created the "magic square." A magic square is a box of nine numbers arranged so that any line of three numbers adds up to the same number, including on the diagonal! Teachers and kids will love finding out about this popular teaching tool that is still used in elementary schools today! ... Read more

Customer Reviews (13)

Awesome book!!!
I love this book! It introduced me to magic squares. Sometimes they're hard but not always. I read the book in 3rd grade. We were doing math groups and Mrs. Wrigely said" Today we are doing Magic squares."
What is a magic square?" I asked.
"It is 9 cubes that all have to equal the same number." Mrs. Wrigely
And that's how I was introduced to magic squares. I recommend this book for kids 6 and above. I think that because some words may be a little challenging for kids that are 5 or 4.


Mitchell S. 4th grade

AMAZINGLY AMAZING BOOK BOB 21


I THINK BEN FRANKLIN AND THE MAIGIC SQUARES IS A REALLY GOOD BOOK FOR KIDS. AND MAYBE PARENTS TOO. I READ MOST OF HIS BOOKS. HE WAS MY TEACHER IN 4THGRADE. HE IS A VERY GOOD WRITER I THINK. HE WRITESAMAZINGLY AMAZINGBOOKS. HE IS A REALLY GOOD TEACHER.


RYAN .B
HOLLAND

WOW!
what other book can make math interesting? and funny? Mr. Murphy has done it once again with his fabulous work! A++++++++++++!
-Stephanie
Connecticut

GREAT BOOK!!!
I thought that ths book was really good! I thoght it was so interesting!! Mr.Murphy is my math teacher... and he is amazing at teaching!!! He did very well with all of the writers craft in it. In class for Language arts he encourages us to use writers crafts and he actually uses them in this book!! This book is very interesting for adults who are interested in math and Ben Franklin. It is also a great book for children who are interested in math and Ben Franklin!! I love math because it is so interesting and because I have a great math teacher!!
[...]

MY BOOK REVIEW BY THE COSMIC GENIUS
This book was great for kid's teenagers and adults. What I'm trying to say is that this book is suitable for all ages. I think elementary teachers should read this to their students. This book is great to teach kids about the past and how inventions are still used today, in different ways. I learned how Ben Franklin invented most of the instruments we use today; like the stove, bifocals, flippers and many other inventions. I encourage you to buy this book if you have young kids or not.

Scott G(...)
... Read more

Book Description
A magic square consists of a series of numbers so arranged in a square that the sum of each row and column and of both the corner diagonals shall be the same amount which may be termed the summation. In "Magic Squares and Cubes" W.S. Andrews writes "The study of magic squares probably dates back to prehistoric times. Examples have been found in Chinese literature written about AD 1125 which were evidently copied from still older documents. It is recorded that as early as the ninth century magic squares were used by Arabian astrologers in their calculations of horoscopes, etc. Hence, the probable origin of the term magic, which has survived to the present day." Topics such as magic squares, magic cubes, the Franklin squares, magics and Pythagorean numbers, the theory of reversions, magic circles, spheres, and stars, and magic octahedroids, among other things. ... Read more

Product Description
This illustrated treatise on Magic Squares covers the history of Magic Squares, information about the general classes of Magic Squares, various formulae for creating Magic Squares, detailed analyses of 3 x 3, 4 x 4 and 5 x 5 Magic Squares, variations on Magic Squares, Magic Square routines, puzzles and presentations, including 'one novel contribution by the author which combines origami (the Crossed Box Pleat) with a Magic Square, The Origami Magic Square' (Eddie Dawes, M.I.M.C., in The Magic Circular), as well as references to approximately 40 other works on Magic Squares and mnemonics and over 40 pages of detailed Appendices. Note that many of the magical routines are not explained, since the secrets are not mine to reveal, although the book does cross-reference all of the necessary sources.Comments from reviews by other magicians and mathematicians include: '... the definitive work on Magic Squares for years to come' (Joe Riding, M.I.M.C.)'... a significant addition to the literature of magic squares' (Eddie Dawes, M.I.M.C., in The Magic Circular) '... a splendid piece of work' (Alan Shaxon, M.I.M.C.) 'I wish a book like this would have been available to me a long time ago' (Jules Lenier) '... an excellent reference book ...' (Michael Close in Magic) '... I can honestly say that I have never seen such a thorough treatise on magic squares anywhere ...' (Andrew Jeffrey, Head of Maths, St Aubyns School, Rottingdean) ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Best source for magic squares
This book is probably the definitive source for magic squares. Although simple instructions appear in other works (notably Corinda, which is flawed), this little book contains all the logic and methodology for creating all types of magic squares.

And why is that important? Well, that's important because a magic square is a killer magical stage or platform item. Professionals such as John Archer, Geoffrey Durham and Derren Brown (to name three UK magicians) show just what you can do with magic squares. And it's very impressive.

Plus, this book comes with routines of its own. So you're onto a winner from the start.

I highly recommend this book. ... Read more

Book Description

Humanity's love affair with mathematics and mysticism reached a critical juncture, legend has it, on the back of a turtle in ancient China. As Clifford Pickover briefly recounts in this enthralling book, the most comprehensive in decades on magic squares, Emperor Yu was supposedly strolling along the Yellow River one day around 2200 B.C. when he spotted the creature: its shell had a series of dots within squares. To Yu's amazement, each row of squares contained fifteen dots, as did the columns and diagonals. When he added any two cells opposite along a line through the center square, like 2 and 8, he always arrived at 10. The turtle, unwitting inspirer of the ''Yu'' square, went on to a life of courtly comfort and fame.

Pickover explains why Chinese emperors, Babylonian astrologer-priests, prehistoric cave people in France, and ancient Mayans of the Yucatan were convinced that magic squares--arrays filled with numbers or letters in certain arrangements--held the secret of the universe. Since the dawn of civilization, he writes, humans have invoked such patterns to ward off evil and bring good fortune. Yet who would have guessed that in the twenty-first century, mathematicians would be studying magic squares so immense and in so many dimensions that the objects defy ordinary human contemplation and visualization?

Readers are treated to a colorful history of magic squares and similar structures, their construction, and classification along with a remarkable variety of newly discovered objects ranging from ornate inlaid magic cubes to hypercubes. Illustrated examples occur throughout, with some patterns from the author's own experiments. The tesseracts, circles, spheres, and stars that he presents perfectly convey the age-old devotion of the math-minded to this Zenlike quest. Number lovers, puzzle aficionados, and math enthusiasts will treasure this rich and lively encyclopedia of one of the few areas of mathematics where the contributions of even nonspecialists count.

Customer Reviews (9)

Superb Collection of Mathematical Objects
Magic squares have fascinated us for many centuries. Even in ancient Babylonian times, people considered these squares to have magical powers. Albrecht Dürer, the painter and printmaker, used them in his artworks.

Most of the ideas in this book can be explored with just a pencil and paper!You can even discover new patterns in old magic squares that no one has ever found before. Even the famous eighteenth-century American Benjamin Franklin loved magic squares although he once considered them a waste of time.

Pickover presents interesting people and their magic squares.From Benjamin Franklin's magic squares to four-dimensional magic tesseracts, the patterns fascinate us with their elegance.The book is a treasure and has gotten some rave reviews in the press.I enjoyed the magic spheres best of all, but I think each reader will find something new and interesting as they browse.A lot of magic squares deal with the chess board.Some focus on DNA sequences!A few were made by prisioners in jail. The author has certainly searched far and wide to assemble this massive collection.

No Math, but pretty anyway
This is a book about mathematical artifacts, but it has practically no mathematical content of its own. A casual reader who wants to gaze at these beautiful objects and come away impressed but with little understanding will find this a marvellous book.However, a mathematically inclined reader is not satisfied with someone declaring that an object has such-and-such a property, he wants to know WHY.

Chapter 1 of this book gives dozens of fascinating constructions, but for most of them not a shred of proof is offered that the arrays produced are the magic squares Pickover claims.It leaves me wondering whether or not Pickover could produce such proofs himself, even for the more simple constructions in the book.

Pickover describes some interesting computer experiments at the end of the chapter but seems completely stymied as to why they work.The demonstration is a lovely, but simple, piece of matrix theory that I would expect my first or second year Linear Algebra students to be able to perform.
He shows two "brute-force" proofs for the order 3 case, one by Hendricks and "another" by Johnson (at least here is an attempt at including a proof), but annoyingly seems unaware that the second is just a minor variation on the first.I wonder if Pickover actually tried to follow these proofs himself or if he just copied them for his book.

Mathematics is not a collection of statements that the hearer must accept on "authority", it is a systematic development of theory in which every statement can be, at least in principle, demonstrated by a logical argument.The mathematics is in understanding "why", not in the acceptance of fact.Without demonstration of the claims, all that is left is the shell with no life.Beautiful, like other shells we find along the shore, but not the genuine article itself.

I am reminded somewhat of Stephen Hawking's popularizations of physics in which the reader is deeply impressed with the beauty of the subject, but comes away knowing practically no actual physics to speak of, for the author carefully sealsthe machinery of physics from his reader and presents only the glamorous face.In the case of Hawking, however, the author's authority is unquestionable; I'm sure he could, if pressed, demonstrate every claim in his books from first principles.I suspect that Pickover could not.

Aside from a few excusable errors of fact, the book shares a serious omission with almost every book on magic squares that I have seen, in that it does not present what is surely the most elementary construction known for magic squares of any odd order, as the sum of a circulant and a back-circulant matrix.Even Pickover would be able to prove that this construction works, since the reason it works is extremely obvious.Given the connection of this construction to the very important subject of orthogonal Latin Squares, you would think a serious writer would devote some space to it.

Aside from all of the above, the material in the book is comprehensive and fascinating, drawing on a number of sources, displaying many artifacts that have titillated dabblers for millennia. As a museum piece I'd have to give the book an "A", but as a piece of mathematics, only a "D".

What fun!
OK, there were a couple of typos -- keeps you on your toes.Lots and lots of examples of different variations on the magic square theme -- and puzzles for the reader to solve.Some of those puzzles are quite easy and some are quite difficult and have yet to be solved by anyone.You can't be a mathphobe to read this book, but you don't need to be a math whiz either.Anybody who likes the challenge of a good crossword or crossnumber puzzle should like this.

Diverse collection
A magic square is an array of numbers in which the sums of numbers in rows, columns, and diagonals are equal. A magic square uses consecutive numbers from 1 to N.Here's an example,


4 9 2
3 5 7
8 1 6


This book is different from all others I've seen on the subject, and I don't know any other books that present the large range of patterns that you'll find here.The book also focuses on discoveries in the last few years. As Pickover says, the book is essentially an exhibit of magnificent forms discovered through the centuries. All sorts of historical and quirky-human aspects are also described.Centuries ago, people believed that magic squares to had special, magical powers....

an editor please
This book contains print and mathematical errors. A cute book but because of the math misprints [I refuse to believe the author cannot add]a shoddy publication very uncharacteristic of Princeton ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Beware- this is NOT new material!
Although this is interesting material on magic squares, and the page above says it is copyright 2005, it is NOT new material on magic squares. Instead, it is a chapter extracted from the book "Mathematical Recreations and Essays" by W.W. Rouse Ball. Nowhere on the Amazon page does it tell the potential buyer this. Although probably legal, it is certainly irksome for those of us who want to read everything on a subject to order what seems to be new material only to find it is a reprint from a book I already own. I urge the publisher, and the Amazon staff to warn readers that this is a reprint and tell us where it is from so we can make an informed decision as to whether we want to spend another $12 for a chapter we may already own. PS: if you do NOT already own the book, this IS great info on magic sqaures. My complaint, and low review, is not with the material but with the deceptive advertising. ... Read more

Product Description
Ben Franklin is always busy. He is a writer, a scientist, and an inventor. Then he gets a new job. He takes notes at meetings about making laws. The meetings are very boring. Can Ben invent something to make them more interesting? Find out in this true Story! ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Talisman Magic
WASTE of MONEY! Most of the contents in this book are covered in greater details in another book with the title "Chinese Numerolgy". I returned this book for a refund after buying it.

Warning---they're addictive!
This is a little book with a simple and easy to use system of divination and spell work.You can pick it up and within minutes you will be doing divinatory squares for yourself, family and friends.These squares arelike potato chips, once you start, you can't stop.You will also be ableto use the squares to create charms and talismans for prosperity, luck andmuch more.All you need is paper, pencil and "Talisman Magic." Recommended. ... Read more

Book Description
In his minimalist sculpture and prints, Gerhard Trieb ponders the theme of the imagic square,i dealing with the traditions of modern art, exposing dissonances, and triggering related thought processes. Interested neither in portraying nature nor in using colors, Trieb has spent the last 20 years confronting the battle between nature and art, the natural and sculpted stone. As the artist himself has said, iI produce art because there is nothing else left for me.i ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

a badly needed study of "Magic Squares"
I have researched Klee's work at the Ryerson Library of Art Institute of Chicago ,this little book is the only book on the subject.The squares were part of the Bauhaus curricula. The only other place you will find any mention of the Magic Squares is in the Will Grohman book. ... Read more

Book Description
The first complex presentation of Chinese urbanism in a Western language. ... Read more

Book Description
This digital document is an article from Arts & Activities, published by Publishers' Development Corporation on September 1, 2003. The length of the article is 1189 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: Paul Klee's magic squares.
Author: Ellen McNally
Publication: Arts & Activities (Magazine/Journal)
Date: September 1, 2003
Publisher: Publishers' Development Corporation
Volume: 134Issue: 1Page: 36(3)

Distributed by Thomson Gale ... Read more