Edward Taylor Pegg Jr. (born December 7, 1963) is an expert on mathematical

puzzle A puzzle is a game, problem, or toy that tests a person's ingenuity or knowledge. In a puzzle, the solver is expected to put pieces together ( or take them apart) in a logical way, in order to find the solution of the puzzle. There are differe ...

s and is a self-described recreational

mathematician A mathematician is someone who uses an extensive knowledge of mathematics in their work, typically to solve mathematical problems. Mathematicians are concerned with numbers, data, quantity, mathematical structure, structure, space, Mathematica ...

. He wrote an online puzzle column called Ed Pegg Jr.'s ''Math Games'' for the

Mathematical Association of America The Mathematical Association of America (MAA) is a professional society that focuses on mathematics accessible at the undergraduate level. Members include university A university () is an educational institution, institution of tertiary edu ...

during the years 2003–2007. His puzzles have also been used by Will Shortz on the puzzle segment of NPR's '' Weekend Edition Sunday''. He was a fan of

Martin Gardner Martin Gardner (October 21, 1914May 22, 2010) was an American popular mathematics and popular science writer with interests also encompassing magic, scientific skepticism, micromagic, philosophy, religion, and literatureespecially the writin ...

and regularly participated in Gathering 4 Gardner conferences. In 2009, he teamed up with Tom M. Rodgers and Alan Schoen to edit two Gardner tribute books. Pegg received a master's degree in mathematics from the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs, writing his thesis on the subject of fair dice. In 2000, he left

NORAD North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD ; , CDAAN), known until March 1981 as the North American Air Defense Command, is a combined organization of the United States and Canada that provides aerospace warning, air sovereignty, and pr ...

to join

Wolfram Research Wolfram Research, Inc. ( ) is an American Multinational corporation, multinational company that creates computational technology. Wolfram's flagship product is the technical computing program Wolfram Mathematica, first released on June 23, 1988. ...

, where he collaborated on '' A New Kind of Science'' (NKS). In 2004, he started assisting Eric W. Weisstein at Wolfram

MathWorld ''MathWorld'' is an online mathematics reference work, created and largely written by Eric W. Weisstein. It is sponsored by and licensed to Wolfram Research, Inc. and was partially funded by the National Science Foundation's National Science ...

. He has made contributions to several hundred MathWorld articles. He was one of the chief consultants for '' Numb3rs''.

References

External links

*
MathPuzzleEd Pegg Jr.'s ''Math Games''

The Math Behind Numb3rsCBS puzzle
* Ed Pegg Jr.'s entry in th

1963 births 20th-century American mathematicians 21st-century American mathematicians Cellular automatists Living people Puzzle designers Recreational mathematicians Mathematics popularizers Pegg Edward {{US-mathematician-stub