The Great Courses – Mind-Bending Math: Riddles and Paradoxes

The Great Courses – Mind-Bending Math: Riddles and Paradoxes

Great math riddles and paradoxes have a long and illustrious history, serving as both tests and games for intellectual thinkers across the globe. Passed through the halls of academia and examined in-depth by scholars, students, and amateurs alike, these riddles and paradoxes have brought frustration and joy to those seeking intellectual challenges.

In addition, it’s well known that brain exercises are as fundamental to staying sharp as body exercises are to staying fit. Stretching your mind to try to solve a good puzzle, even when the answer eludes you, can help improve your ability to focus.

Now, in the 24 lectures of Mind-Bending Math: Riddles and Paradoxes, you’ll explore the ageless riddles that have plagued even our greatest thinkers in history—confounding the philosophical, mathematical, and scientific minds grappling to solve them. You’ll learn how to break down, examine, and solve these famous quandaries.

From Ancient Greek philosophers to noodling through an unusual enigma involving spaghetti, you’ll cover a wide range of amazing—and in some cases history-changing—conundrums, such as:

• Zeno’s astonishing argument that motion itself is impossible
• The compelling conundrum of infinity, which didn’t garner a resolution until the 1900s
• Gödel’s strange loop, ascertaining no axiom system would work to prove mathematical theorems
• The Banach–Tarski paradox, proving that one can cut up a ball and reassemble the pieces into two balls, each the same size as the original
• More mind-bending math games that have endured through time, including the Liar’s Paradox, the Prisoner’s Problem, and the Monty Hall Problem

When it comes to delving into topics such as bending space and time, and topological universes, you need a knowledgeable and captivating instructor, which you get in abundance with Professor of Mathematics David Kung. He infuses each lesson with fun tangents, stories, and real-life riddles, making this one of the most intriguing and entertaining math courses available.

This mesmerizing course will have you contemplating everything from the enthralling paradox of paradoxes to the potential pitfalls when it comes to buying apples—using basic logic and math principles as the fundamental connector to solve exciting, mind-bending mysteries.