The Joy of SET: The Many Mathematical Dimensions of a Seemingly Simple Card Game Hardcover – November 22, 2016

This is a great book for math nerds (and really hard core Set players I suppose). I just keep it with our Sets game so I can show it to our daughter when we play. One day....

It's an interesting game. and I want to see what math problems I can bring to my son when we play this game. Then I found I really didn't have the patience to finish this book. I wish the book could have been shortened to several pages with related problems listed in it.

Great

How is there only one review for this wonderful book?I just got it last night, have read chapters 1 and 2, and can't wait to dive in deeper!The book intersperses whimsical dialogues (a la Galileo, although nobody is a dolt like Simplicio) with actual mathematical content (sprinkled with tongue-in-cheek footnotes). In chapters 1 and 2 we've only covered relatively straightforward counting questions like How many cards? How many SETs? How many SETs is each card in?, as well as introducing higher-level concepts like "planes" (groups of 9 cards that contain 12 SETs) and "hyperplanes" (the relationship between Set and affine geometry will be developed more fully in later chapters).Anybody who is a trained mathematician will devour this like ordinary people devour beachside murder mysteries. Less advanced readers with a mathematical bent will need to take a little more time, give a little more effort, to grok the concepts, but the engaging writing will make it easier. Combinatorial infrastructure like factorials and permutations and combinations are introduced from first principles, without a lot of algebraic notation.I think the real target audience for this book is middle school and high school math teachers, who will (a) enjoy reading the book themsevles, and (b) find a load of interesting extracurricular math topics based on the game of Set that they can use in class or in math clubs.

Demonstrates interesting maths behind a very simple game. However it has not made me into a better player yet!