Reddit reviews The Lady or the Tiger?: and Other Logic Puzzles (Dover Recreational Math)

I feel like the most important thing for people without an express interest in math is just understanding and being comfortable with first-order logic.

Give her a puzzle book like this. You can discuss formalizing some of these problems and solving them systematically with first-order logic. The later problems get fairly sophisticated and get into some Godelian territory.

If you like abstract number puzzles (like sudokus), there are a whole bunch of obscure japanese stuff you can use for inspiration.

If you like truth tellers and liars style logic puzzles, Smullyan has written several books on that. I'd recommend checking out The lady or the Tiger from a nearby library.

If you want riddles, check out /r/riddles . For example.

> You're an awesome person and an awesome response! I would love to read your dissertation if possible!
>

Ha, that's actually a pretty boring read! If you want a book that might start to change your mind about math try The Lady or the Tiger by Raymond Smullyan. Smullyan was a brilliant mathematician (and philosopher, Toaist, and concert pianist), who died a few months ago. The book is filled with awesome puzzles - the same kind you might find on an LSAT - which progress in difficulty and really challenge you to think!

If you're craving more after that, then Forever Undecided by the same author introduces the concepts of something called Godel's Incompleteness Theorems without using any of what most people might call "math". It's really quite fascinating (my favorite mathematical theorem, actually), and beautifully put together. I always recommend any of his books to people who "hate math" but "love puzzles".

If you and your kid ever run into problems with their math homework, check out /r/learnmath. It's an awesome subreddit, frequented by a lot of mathematicians, where we try to help people in situations just like that.