Originally published by Bodley Head under the title: 100 essential things you didn't know you didn't know about maths and the arts.

Includes bibliographical references.

The art of mathematics -- How many guards does an art gallery need? -- Aspects of aspect ratios -- Vickrey auctions -- How to sing in tune -- The Grand Jeté -- Impossible beliefs -- Xerography-- Déjà vu all over again -- Making pages look nice -- The sound of silence -- A most unusual cake recipe -- Designing roller coasters -- The beginning of the universe live on TV -- Coping with stress -- Art is critical -- Culinary arts -- Curved triangles -- The days of the week -- The case for procrastination -- Diamonds are forever -- How do you doodle? -- Why are eggs egg-shaped -- The El Greco effect -- Eureka -- What the eye tells the brain -- Why the flag of Nepal is unique -- The Indian rope trick -- An image that defeats the eye -- It's Friday the thirteenth again -- Strip friezes -- The gherkin -- Hedging your bets -- Infinity at the theater -- Shedding light on (and with) the golden ratio -- Magic squares -- Mondrian's golden rectangles -- Monkey business with tiles -- Pleasing sounds -- New tiles from old -- The nine-degree solution -- Paper sizes and a book in the hand -- Penny blacks and penny reds -- Prime time cycles -- If you can't measure it, why not? -- The art of nebulae -- Reverse auctions : going backward for Christmas -- Ritual geometry for the gods -- Prize rosettes -- Getting a handle on water music : singing in the shower -- Sizing up pictures -- Triquetra -- Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow -- Some perils of pictures -- Drinking with Socrates -- Strange formulae -- Stylometry : mathematics rules the waves -- Getting it together -- When time has to reckon with space -- How to watch TV -- Curvaceous vase profiles -- All the wallpapers in the universe -- The art of war -- Shattering wineglasses -- Let the light shine in -- Special triangles -- Gnomons are golden -- The upside-down world of Scott Kim -- How many words did Shakespeare know? -- The strange and wonderful law of first digits -- Organ donor preferences -- Elliptical whispering galleries -- The tunnel of Eupalinos -- A time-and-motion study of the Great Pyramid -- Picking out tigers in the bushes -- The art of the second law -- On a clear day ... -- Salvador Dalí and the fourth dimension -- The sound of music -- Chernoff's faces -- The man from underground -- Möbius and his band -- The bells, the bells -- Following the herd -- Finger counting -- The other Newton's hymn to the infinite -- Charles Dickens was no average man, Florence Nightingale no average woman -- Markov's literary chains -- From free will to the Russian elections -- Playing with supreme beings -- The drawbacks of being a know-all -- Watching paint crack -- Pop music's magic equation -- Random art -- Jack the Dripper -- The bridge of strings -- Lacing problems -- Where to stand to look at statues -- The hotel infinity -- The color of music -- Shakespeare's monkeys : the new generation.

"At first glance, the worlds of math and the arts might not seem like comfortable neighbors. But as mathematician John D. Barrow points out, they have a strong and natural affinity--after all, math is the study of all patterns, and the world of the arts is rich with pattern. Barrow whisks us through 100 thought-provoking and often whimsical intersections between math and many arts, from the golden ratios of Mondrian's rectangles and the curious fractal-like nature of Pollock's drip paintings to ballerinas' gravity-defying leaps and the next generation of monkeys on typewriters tackling Shakespeare"--Dust jacket flap.

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