REVIEWS 381

or towing a second jeep)? Again a vast number of such puzzles. There are numerous
puzzles about beams with weights hanging from other beams with weights,
reminiscent of ‘moments’ problems in mechanics except that all the weights are
unknown and integer solutions are sought within a specified range, so these are
really linear diophantine equations problems in disguise. Or, to take one more,
slightly more unusual, multi-example, puzzles (problems?) about isosceles
trapezoids (= trapezia) with integer sides circumscribed by a circle of integer radius:
this book has nearly 50 such, some of them extremely challenging. The book is also
a rich source of problems in combinatorics, probability and expected value.
Here are a few other items. ‘You have 100 cards; 75 are marked “win” and 25
are marked “lose”. You start with $10,000 and must bet 90% of your remaining
money at 1 to 1 odds on each of the 100 cards in turn [that is, if you win, your
holding is multiplied by 1.9 and if you lose by 0.1]. At the end how much money
will you have left? Suppose instead there were 80 “win” cards and 20 “lose” cards.
How much money would you have then?’ The item is called ‘Gambler's surprise’,
for a good reason you will discover if you work it out.
There is an ingenious variant on old puzzles where you walk one mile south,
then one mile east and finally one mile north and arrive at your starting point. There
are a few purely geometrical problems whose solution is easy once you add one or
two extra lines to the diagram, and a curious problem related to Morley's theorem on
the trisectors of the angles of a triangle, but here the inner triangle is to be made as
far from equilateral as possible. There is even a problem in which 1 17 hens lay 1 16
eggs in 1 15 days.
The title puzzle relates to the total volume of the human population now and in
the (extremely distant) future assuming a geometric sequence for population growth.
It is followed in the book by a puzzle labelled ‘Catenary’: ‘A 15-meter chain hangs
from two vertical 10 meter poles placed d meters apart. The low point of the chain
hangs 2.5 meters from the ground. What is d ?’ Well, some light relief is welcome
after all that hard work.
10.1017/mag.2017.114 PETER GIBLIN
Department of Mathematical Sciences, The University of Liverpool L69 7ZL
e-mail: pjgiblin@liv.ac.uk

1000 challenges mathématiques, algèbre by Mohammed Aassila, pp. 643, €42.00

(paper), ISBN 978-2-34001-108-3, Editions Ellipses (2016).
1000 challenges mathématiques, analyse by Mohammed Aassila, pp. 644, €42.00
(paper), ISBN 978-2-34001-109-0, Editions Ellipses (2016).
Mathematically-inclined A-level students might have more 50% of their teaching
hours during sixth-form devoted to maths, a great deal higher than the synoptic structure
of school syllabuses in North America and much of Western Europe. However, some
students are still looking for more, and every year thousands of the most able school-
aged, both in the UK and internationally, devote time and energy to participating in and
preparing for national and international competitions. These challenge their problem-
solving capabilities beyond the confines of school curricula, without accelerating them
through material typically encountered at university and beyond.
How much effort it's worth investing in preparing for these competitions is a
tricky question. There are low-level knowledge hurdles which are worth overcoming.
While the content of the pigeonhole principle is almost self-evident, if you know the
statement exists, you might go looking for ways to apply it. This then opens up a
range of interesting problems for which this is the first or final step. And sometimes

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 382 THE MATHEMATICAL GAZETTE

the hardest problems at the International Mathematical Olympiad, the most

prestigious such competition for school-aged contestants, might be best attacked
through the language of more esoteric theory. A well-read contestant who has
investigated projective geometry or complicated general inequalities might
occasionally find themselves at an advantage.
But many of the benefits (and critics might say the drawbacks too) of maths
competitions are broadly unrelated to the actual level and seriousness of preparation
undertaken by students, which varies hugely across countries and cultures.
Participants normally benefit hugely from meeting other teenagers who share their
interests, and from exposure to intellectual challenges at which they might actually
struggle, at least initially, by comparison with perennial high-flying success at school.
And so to this pair of textbooks, which offer students preparing for olympiads an
exhaustive collection of problems from past editions of various competitions. The
problems are divided meticulously into topics, categories and sub-categories. In this
regard, it is the perfect resource for the teacher or competition organiser looking for
a problem which uses a particular technique. However, I wonder how much benefit a
student might gain from completing a series of exercises under a chapter heading
which indicates that their task is to solve a given functional equation by reducing it
to one of the standard Cauchy functional equations. Of course, that's not to say such
problems themselves aren't valuable or interesting, since this is a good technique
both in context, and more generally (‘reduce to something you know about’), and
some of the examples might be particularly elegant. But this overt classification
rather spoils the punchline, which would normally be left for the problem-solver's
satisfaction.
That said, taken in isolation the problems are attractive with a reasonable range
of difficulty, from mid-level national olympiad up to the hardest questions posed at
the IMO. All problems come with solutions, which are generally clear, and avoid the
trend for extreme conciseness that sometimes renders ‘official solutions’ unattractive
and intimidating to the improving student. The collection of number theory problems
(in the algèbre edition) was a particular highlight. It includes some relatively
advanced theory, such as Zsigmondi's theorem, as well as lots of problems which
turn on much softer properties of the structure of the integers.
It is worth remarking that solutions are always directly adjacent to questions, so
readers attempting the problems for themselves need to make sure they don't
accidentally glance at any crucial first step! It's also certainly worth remarking that
the book is in French. Even the most ardent Francophobe will cope with the
statements of Diophantine Equations, while greater fluency would be preferable for
the wordy combinatorics questions.
Overall, this pair of books sails dangerously close to promoting a view of
competition mathematics that could be caricatured as saying the task is to decide
which of 600 known methods for solving problems is applicable to a given problem,
then applying it. Probably many would find this view both inaccurate and unhelpful.
However, as repositories go, this could be a useful resource for an ambitious and
organised student, or particularly a teacher aiming to keep them supplied with
material in a structured program, as well as anyone looking for a large set of
challenging problems to dip into occasionally.
10.1017/mag.2017.115 DOMINIC YEO
Cohen-Coleman Fellow, Technion, Israel
e-mail: dominicjyeo@gmail.com

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