Contents

Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xi

Part I: Arithmetic 1
1. A Dozen Questions About the Powers of Two . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
James Tanton.
Math Horizons, vol. 8, no. 1 (September 2001), pp. 5–10; 2002 Trevor Evans Award.
2. From 30 to 60 is Not Twice as Hard . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
Michael Dalezman.
Mathematics Magazine, vol. 73, no. 2 (April 2000), pp. 151–153.
3. Reducing the Sum of Two Fractions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
Harris S. Shultz and Ray C. Shiflett.
Mathematics Teacher, vol. 98, no. 7 (March 2005), pp. 486–490.
4. A Postmodern View of Fractions and Reciprocals of Fermat Primes . . . . 23
Rafe Jones and Jan Pearce.
Mathematics Magazine, vol. 73, no. 2 (April 2000), pp. 83–97; 2001 Allendoerfer
Award.
5. Visible Structures in Number Theory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
Peter Borwein and Loki Jörgenson.
American Mathematical Monthly, vol. 108, no. 10 (December 2001), pp. 897–910;
2002 Lester Ford Award.
6. Visual Gems of Number Theory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
Roger B. Nelsen.
Math Horizons, vol. 15, no. 3 (February 2008), pp. 7–9, 31.

Part II: Primes 59

7. A New Proof of Euclid's Theorem . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61
Filip Saidak.
American Mathematical Monthly, vol. 113, no. 10 (December 2006), pp. 937–938.
8. On the Infinitude of the Primes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63
Harry Furstenberg.
American Mathematical Monthly, vol. 62, no. 5 (May 1955), p. 353.
9. On the Series of Prime Reciprocals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65
James A. Clarkson.
Proceedings of the AMS, vol. 17, no. 2 (April 1966), p. 541.
10. Applications of a Simple Counting Technique . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67
Melvin Hausner.
American Mathematical Monthly, vol. 90, no. 2 (February 1983), pp. 127–129.
11. On Weird and Pseudoperfect Numbers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69
S. J. Benkoski and P. Erdo²s.
Mathematics of Computation, vol. 28, no. 126 (April 1974), pp. 617–623.
12. A Heuristic for the Prime Number Theorem . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77
Hugh L. Montgromery and Stan Wagon.
Mathematical Intelligencer, vol. 28, no. 3 (2006), pp. 6–9.

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 13. A Tale of Two Sieves . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85
Carl Pomerance.
Notices of the AMS, (December 1996), pp. 1473–1485; 2001 Conant Prize.

Part III: Irrationality and Continued Fractions 105

14. Irrationality of the Square Root of Two—A Geometric Proof . . . . . . . . . 107
Tom M. Apostol.
American Mathematical Monthly, vol. 107, no. 9 (November 2000), pp. 841–842.
15. Math Bite: Irrationality of m . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109
Harley Flanders.
Mathematics Magazine, vol. 72, no. 3 (June 1999), p. 235.
16. A Simple Proof that p is Irrational . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111
Ivan Niven.
Bulletin of the AMS, vol. 53 (1947), p. 509.
17. p, e and Other Irrational Numbers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113
Alan E. Parks.
American Mathematical Monthly, vol. 93, no. 9 (November 1986), pp. 722–723.
18. A Short Proof of the Simple Continued Fraction of e . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115
Henry Cohn.
American Mathematical Monthly, vol. 113, no. 1 (January 2006), pp. 57–61.
19. Diophantine Olympics and World Champions: Polynomials and
Primes Down Under . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 121
Edward B. Burger.
American Mathematical Monthly, vol. 107, no. 9 (November 2000), pp. 822–829;
2004 Chauvenet Prize.
20. An Elementary Proof of the Wallis Product Formula for Pi . . . . . . . . . . 129
Johan Wästlund.
American Mathematical Monthly, vol. 114, no. 10 (December 2007), pp. 914–917.
21. The Orchard Problem . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 133
Ross Honsberger.
Mathematical Gems, Chapter 4, pp. 43–53, Dolciani Mathematical Expositions,
MAA, 1973.

Part IV: Sums of Squares and Polygonal Numbers 141

22. A One-Sentence Proof that every Prime p  1 (mod 4) is a Sum of
Two Squares . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 143
D. Zagier.
American Mathematical Monthly, vol. 97, no. 2 (February 1990), p. 144.
23. Sum of Squares II . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 145
Martin Gardner and Dan Kalman.
Proofs Without Words: Exercises in Visual Thinking, Classroom Resource Materials,
MAA, p. 78.
24. Sums of Squares VIII . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 147
Roger B. Nelsen.
Proofs Without Words II: More Exercises in Visual Thinking, Classroom Resource
Materials, MAA, p. 88.

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 25. A Short Proof of Cauchy's Polygonal Number Theorem . . . . . . . . . . . . 149
Melvyn B. Nathanson.
Proceedings of the AMS, vol. 99, no. 1 (January 1987), pp. 22–24.
26. Genealogy of Pythagorean Triads . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 153
A. Hall.
Mathematical Gazette, vol. 54, no. 390 (December 1970), pp. 377–379.

Part V: Fibonacci Numbers 155

27. A Dozen Questions About Fibonacci Numbers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 157
James Tanton.
Math Horizons, vol. 12, no. 3 (February 2005), pp. 5–9.
28. The Fibonacci Numbers—Exposed . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 167
Dan Kalman and Robert Mena.
Mathematics Magazine, vol. 76, no. 3 (June 2003), pp. 167–181.
29. The Fibonacci Numbers—Exposed More Discretely . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 183
Arthur T. Benjamin and Jennifer J. Quinn.
Mathematics Magazine, vol. 76, no. 3 (June 2003), pp. 182–192.

Part VI: Number-Theoretic Functions 195

30. Great Moments of the Riemann zeta Function . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 199
Jennifer Beineke and Chris Hughes.
Original article.
31. The Collatz Chameleon . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 217
Marc Chamberland.
Math Horizons, vol. 14, no. 2 (November 2006), pp. 5–8.
32. Bijecting Euler's Partition Recurrence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 223
David M. Bressoud and Doron Zeilberger.
American Mathematical Monthly, vol. 92, no. 1 (January 1985), pp. 54–55.
33. Discovery of a Most Extraordinary Law of the Numbers Concerning
the Sum of Their Divisors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 225
Leonard Euler. Translated by George Pólya.
Mathematics and Plausible Reasoning, Volume I, Princeton University Press,
(1954), pp. 90–98.
34. The Factorial Function and Generalizations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 233
Manjul Bhargava.
American Mathematical Monthly, vol. 107, no. 9 (November 2000), pp. 783–799;
2003 Hasse Prize.
35. An Elementary Proof of the Quadratic Reciprocity Law . . . . . . . . . . . . 251
Sey Y. Kim.
American Mathematical Monthly, vol. 111, no. 1 (January 2004), pp. 48–50.

Part VII: Elliptic Curves, Cubes and Fermat’s Last Theorem 255
36. Proof Without Words: Cubes and Squares . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 257
J. Barry Love.
Mathematics Magazine, vol. 50, no. 2 (March 1977), p. 74.

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37. Taxicabs and Sums of Two Cubes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 259
Joseph H. Silverman.
American Mathematical Monthly, vol. 100, no. 4 (April 1993), pp. 331–340;
1994 Lester Ford Award.
38. Three Fermat Trails to Elliptic Curves . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 273
Ezra Brown.
The College Mathematics Journal, vol. 31, no. 3 (May 2000), pp. 162–172;
2001 Pólya Award.
39. Fermat's Last Theorem in Combinatorial Form . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 285
W. V. Quine.
American Mathematical Monthly, vol. 95, no. 7 (August-September 1988), p. 636.
40. “A Marvelous Proof” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 287
Fernando Q. Gouvêa.
American Mathematical Monthly, vol. 101, no. 3 (March 1994), pp. 203–222; 1995
Lester Ford Award.

About the Editors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 311