Two enrichment articles are presented; one dealing with finding partial fractions and reducing to polynomials; the other, with finding the heaviest object from eleven others of equal weight where all twelve are identical in appearance. (JG)

A biography of Martin Gardner is given, elaborating on how he developed his "Mathematical Games" column. (PK)

The well-planned writing workshop is an effective tool for expanding the mathematical discourse of students and helping them become more skillful writers in the discipline. This article reviews a step-by-step process for conducting a workshop and details different reader response strategies. It also offers suggestions for various types of…

A definition is given for curves parallel to a closed curve. Equations for inner and out elliptic parallels are derived and explained. (RS)

The main strand of the NRICH project is the NRICH website (http://nrich.maths.org), which was set up in 1996 to cater for secondary-aged pupils who were attending mathematics master-classes at the Royal Institution. By 1998, problems aimed at primary children were included and the site began to provide for students aged five to 18-plus. At this…

On a visit to Russia the author was able to inspect the Moscow papyrus, fragments of an ancient Egyptian mathematical document. (SD)

This brief biography of Riemann is one of a series of biographical sketches in this journal. Riemann was born in Germany in 1826 and studied with Gauss among others. His numerous contributions to mathematics include the invention of a non-euclidean geometry and the founding of topology. (SD)

A three-digit number is chosen, the digits reversed, and the smaller is subtracted from the larger. The difference is a page number in the textbook; the teacher tells the last word on that page. The learning begins when the class uses algebra to prove why the teacher's trick works. (KM)

A fictional biography unfolds the story of Evariste Galois, a staunch French Republican and brilliant mathematician of the nineteenth century. A biographical sketch of the author, Leopold Infeld, is also included. (MN)

This article recounts the history of a specific cop y of a mathematics textbook published in 1623. An indication of the style of the book as well as its contents is given. An attempt is made to identify the owners of the book and to explain some marginal notes. (LS)