Encounter With Mathematics

Download or read book Encounter with Mathematics written by Lars Garding and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-12-06 with total page 277 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Trying to make mathematics understandable to the general public is a very difficult task. The writer has to take into account that his reader has very little patience with unfamiliar concepts and intricate logic and this means that large parts of mathematics are out of bounds. When planning this book, I set myself an easier goal. I wrote it for those who already know some mathematics, in particular those who study the subject the first year after high school. Its purpose is to provide a historical, scientific, and cultural frame for the parts of mathematics that meet the beginning student. Nine chapters ranging from number theory to applications are devoted to this program. Each one starts with a historical introduction, continues with a tight but complete account of some basic facts and proceeds to look at the present state of affairs including, if possible, some recent piece of research. Most of them end with one or two passages from historical mathematical papers, translated into English and edited so as to be understandable. Sometimes the reader is referred back to earlier parts of the text, but the various chapters are to a large extent independent of each other. A reader who gets stuck in the middle of a chapter can still read large parts of the others. It should be said, however, that the book is not meant to be read straight through.

Download or read book Math! written by Serge Lang and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2013-03-14 with total page 147 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Essence of Mathematics Through Elementary Problems written by Alexandre Borovik and published by . This book was released on 2019-06-11 with total page 398 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Mathematics for Operations Research written by W. H. Marlow and published by Courier Corporation. This book was released on 1993-01-01 with total page 514 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Practical and applications-oriented, this text explains effective procedures for performing mathematical tasks that arise in many fields, including operations research, engineering, systems sciences, statistics, and economics. Most of the examples and many of the 1,300 problems illustrate techniques, and nearly all of the tables display reference material for procedures. 1978 edition.

Download or read book The Mathematical Experience, Study Edition written by Philip Davis and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2011-10-28 with total page 522 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of the 1983 National Book Award! "...a perfectly marvelous book about the Queen of Sciences, from which one will get a real feeling for what mathematicians do and who they are. The exposition is clear and full of wit and humor..." - The New Yorker (1983 National Book Award edition) Mathematics has been a human activity for thousands of years. Yet only a few people from the vast population of users are professional mathematicians, who create, teach, foster, and apply it in a variety of situations. The authors of this book believe that it should be possible for these professional mathematicians to explain to non-professionals what they do, what they say they are doing, and why the world should support them at it. They also believe that mathematics should be taught to non-mathematics majors in such a way as to instill an appreciation of the power and beauty of mathematics. Many people from around the world have told the authors that they have done precisely that with the first edition and they have encouraged publication of this revised edition complete with exercises for helping students to demonstrate their understanding. This edition of the book should find a new generation of general readers and students who would like to know what mathematics is all about. It will prove invaluable as a course text for a general mathematics appreciation course, one in which the student can combine an appreciation for the esthetics with some satisfying and revealing applications. The text is ideal for 1) a GE course for Liberal Arts students 2) a Capstone course for perspective teachers 3) a writing course for mathematics teachers. A wealth of customizable online course materials for the book can be obtained from Elena Anne Marchisotto ([email protected]) upon request.

Download or read book A Primer for Mathematics Competitions written by Alexander Zawaira and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2008-10-31 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The importance of mathematics competitions has been widely recognised for three reasons: they help to develop imaginative capacity and thinking skills whose value far transcends mathematics; they constitute the most effective way of discovering and nurturing mathematical talent; and they provide a means to combat the prevalent false image of mathematics held by high school students, as either a fearsomely difficult or a dull and uncreative subject. This book provides a comprehensive training resource for competitions from local and provincial to national Olympiad level, containing hundreds of diagrams, and graced by many light-hearted cartoons. It features a large collection of what mathematicians call "beautiful" problems - non-routine, provocative, fascinating, and challenging problems, often with elegant solutions. It features careful, systematic exposition of a selection of the most important topics encountered in mathematics competitions, assuming little prior knowledge. Geometry, trigonometry, mathematical induction, inequalities, Diophantine equations, number theory, sequences and series, the binomial theorem, and combinatorics - are all developed in a gentle but lively manner, liberally illustrated with examples, and consistently motivated by attractive "appetiser" problems, whose solution appears after the relevant theory has been expounded. Each chapter is presented as a "toolchest" of instruments designed for cracking the problems collected at the end of the chapter. Other topics, such as algebra, co-ordinate geometry, functional equations and probability, are introduced and elucidated in the posing and solving of the large collection of miscellaneous problems in the final toolchest. An unusual feature of this book is the attention paid throughout to the history of mathematics - the origins of the ideas, the terminology and some of the problems, and the celebration of mathematics as a multicultural, cooperative human achievement. As a bonus the aspiring "mathlete" may encounter, in the most enjoyable way possible, many of the topics that form the core of the standard school curriculum.

Download or read book Encounters with Euclid written by Benjamin Wardhaugh and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2023-11-14 with total page 416 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A sweeping cultural history of one of the most influential mathematical books ever written Euclid's Elements of Geometry is one of the fountainheads of mathematics—and of culture. Written around 300 BCE, it has traveled widely across the centuries, generating countless new ideas and inspiring such figures as Isaac Newton, Bertrand Russell, Abraham Lincoln, and Albert Einstein. Encounters with Euclid tells the story of this incomparable mathematical masterpiece, taking readers from its origins in the ancient world to its continuing influence today. In this lively and informative book, Benjamin Wardhaugh explains how Euclid’s text journeyed from antiquity to the Renaissance, introducing some of the many readers, copyists, and editors who left their mark on the Elements before handing it on. He shows how some read the book as a work of philosophy, while others viewed it as a practical guide to life. He examines the many different contexts in which Euclid's book and his geometry were put to use, from the Neoplatonic school at Athens and the artisans' studios of medieval Baghdad to the Jesuit mission in China and the workshops of Restoration London. Wardhaugh shows how the Elements inspired ideas in theology, art, and music, and how the book has acquired new relevance to the strange geometries of dark matter and curved space. Encounters with Euclid traces the life and afterlives of one of the most remarkable works of mathematics ever written, revealing its lasting role in the timeless search for order and reason in an unruly world.