Preface

Summary

This book is a collection of mathematics problems from various sources, which are listed as references. Most of the problems (and some solutions) are followed by a number within [], which indicates the reference number of the source. It may be pointed out that some problems can be located in more than one source. For some problems, no source has been mentioned. Either these problems are too common to mention a particular source or I received from some friends and the original source is not known to me. Now I must say ‘sorry’ to the authors of the original sources and this lapse is totally unintentional. Undoubtedly, my biggest debt is to the king of puzzles of the modern era, Martin Gardner. Next in line are Professors Ian Stewart and Ross Honsberger, who authored various books with excellent collections of problems to excite both non-mathematician adults and young students.

This collection of problems is not intended for teaching mathematics and, therefore, not much effort has been put to make a systematic or graded presentation. It is aimed at high school students and those who have some interest in elementary mathematics.

I am thankful to a number of my friends who encouraged me to put together this collection in the form of a book. Special thanks are due to Dr Raminder Singh, who went through almost all the problems and the solutions and suggested improvements.