Fool your friends; baffle your buddies; and perplex your parents with dozens of amazing tricks. Each of these fascinating feats appears to be the work of magical forces, but their true secret lies in mathematical manipulations. Correctly guess the age of any volunteer. Startle a stranger with knowledge about his or her life. Read minds, make accurate predictions, perform lightning-quick calculations, and demonstrate seemingly mystical powers of memory.

Perform extraordinary effects with cards, dice, pencil and paper (and occasionally a calculator). In all of these tricks, the mathematical principle is well-concealed, and in many of them the use of numbers isn’t even suspected.

For each trick, an explanation of why it works is included in order to help you better understand the principle behind it, as well as to enable you to make your own variations on the trick or to develop other tricks on your own.

Suggestions are given for what to say when introducing a trick so as to heighten suspense, increase sur prise, and keep your audience as confounded as possible.

No sleight of hand is used, but with your brain power as your “magic wand,” you’ll have fun entertaining, amazing, and confusing people for hours.