Nets, Puzzles, and Postmen: An Exploration of Mathematical Connections

When you travel by train, use the internet, move from guest to guest at a party, do a crossword, or find a route using a streetmap, you are using or experiencing networks. Networks are everywhere. The connections may be in space or in time, thy may be physical, or they may be intangible or abstract, but wherever we find objects that are interrelated we find mathematical networks. The importance of such networks is taking everyone by surprise book, and in this lively and fascinating book, Peter Higgins reveals why. It is a realm of mathematics that might easily be taken for granted –for while numbers are everywhere, and while geometry confronts us with striking visual symmetries, networks provide us with an altogether more subtle, but no less powerful, way of understanding the world. Beginning with simple mathematical puzzles, like tic-tac-toe, Sudoku, and the famous riddle of the Bridges of Konigsberg (which challenged people to stroll around the old town of konigsberg, and cross all of its seven bridges only once), Peter Higgins explains the mathematics of how networks are represented, how they work, and how mathematicians decipher and understand them. And among many engaging puzzles, he introduces examples and applications from science, technology, and the social sciences, that illustrate the power of thinking through networks –from organizational structure, and the way profits and strategies can be maximized, to logic, secret codes, the shape of molecules, and genetics. Written in accessible language, and with a separate detour for mathematics connoisseurs, Nets, Puzzles, and Postmen will open your eyes to the hidden networks that exist all around.