The Countingbury tales. Fun with mathematics. Translated by Jody Doran (Q2734839)

In this booklet, the author shows how some harmless looking ``real life'' phenomena may lead to elementary but nontrivial mathematical considerations. The topics covered in the 9 chapters range from analysis like the ``mathematics of a sandwich'' (not describing, as one could expect, the intermediate value or fixed point theorem, but just the appearance of cone sections in ``all-day life''), to geometrical problems like the classification of regular polyhedra in dimension 3, 4 or 5. For example, it is shown how elementary group-theoretical arguments lead to surprisingly simple strategies in solitaire or leap frog games.NEWLINENEWLINENEWLINESummarizing, this is a nice book for ``armchair-reading'' which may be recommended to non-mathematicians who are not afraid to play with mathematics.