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Author: Barry Mazur
Publisher: Penguin UK
Published: 2004-03-25
Total Pages: 288
ISBN-13: 0141931701
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThe book shows how the art of mathematical imagining is not as mysterious as it seems. Drawing on a variety of artistic resources the author reveals how anyone can begin to visualize the enigmatic 'imaginary numbers' that first baffled mathematicians in the 16th century.
Author: Barry Mazur
Publisher: Macmillan + ORM
Published: 2004-02-01
Total Pages: 290
ISBN-13: 1429931469
DOWNLOAD EBOOKHow the elusive imaginary number was first imagined, and how to imagine it yourself Imagining Numbers (particularly the square root of minus fifteen) is Barry Mazur's invitation to those who take delight in the imaginative work of reading poetry, but may have no background in math, to make a leap of the imagination in mathematics. Imaginary numbers entered into mathematics in sixteenth-century Italy and were used with immediate success, but nevertheless presented an intriguing challenge to the imagination. It took more than two hundred years for mathematicians to discover a satisfactory way of "imagining" these numbers. With discussions about how we comprehend ideas both in poetry and in mathematics, Mazur reviews some of the writings of the earliest explorers of these elusive figures, such as Rafael Bombelli, an engineer who spent most of his life draining the swamps of Tuscany and who in his spare moments composed his great treatise "L'Algebra". Mazur encourages his readers to share the early bafflement of these Renaissance thinkers. Then he shows us, step by step, how to begin imagining, ourselves, imaginary numbers.
Author: Richard Evan Schwartz
Publisher: American Mathematical Soc.
Published: 2014-06-30
Total Pages: 194
ISBN-13: 1470414252
DOWNLOAD EBOOKIn the American Mathematical Society's first-ever book for kids (and kids at heart), mathematician and author Richard Evan Schwartz leads math lovers of all ages on an innovative and strikingly illustrated journey through the infinite number system. By means of engaging, imaginative visuals and endearing narration, Schwartz manages the monumental task of presenting the complex concept of Big Numbers in fresh and relatable ways. The book begins with small, easily observable numbers before building up to truly gigantic ones, like a nonillion, a tredecillion, a googol, and even ones too huge for names! Any person, regardless of age, can benefit from reading this book. Readers will find themselves returning to its pages for a very long time, perpetually learning from and growing with the narrative as their knowledge deepens. Really Big Numbers is a wonderful enrichment for any math education program and is enthusiastically recommended to every teacher, parent and grandparent, student, child, or other individual interested in exploring the vast universe of numbers.
Author: Christof Weber
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Published: 2023-10-10
Total Pages: 255
ISBN-13: 1003839231
DOWNLOAD EBOOKImagine a plastic cup lying on the floor. Give the cup a nudge so that it begins to roll. What does the path it takes look like? So begins the journey that Christof Weber takes you on in Mathematical Imagining: A Routine for Secondary Classrooms . Along the way, he makes the case that the ability to imagine, manipulate, and explain mathematical images and situations is fundamental to all mathematics and particularly important to higher level study. Most importantly, drawing on years of experiments in his own classroom, Weber shows that mathematical imagining is a skill that can be taught efficiently and effectively. Mathematical Imagining describes an original routine that gives students space and time to imagine a mathematical situation and then revise, discuss, and act upon the mental images they create. You can use this creative routine to glimpse into your students' thinking and discover teaching opportunities, while empowering them to create their own mathematics.Inside you’ll find the following: An introduction to the routine including the rationale behind it, facilitation guidance, and classroom examples Modifications to implement the routine in your classroom, even with varying time constraints 37 exercises broken into four categories: constructions, problem-solving, reasoning, and paradoxes Discussions of the mathematics involved in each exercise, including possible follow-up questions Instructions on how to create your own exercises beyond the book This one-of-a-kind resource is for secondary teachers looking to inspire student creativity and curiosity, deepen their own subject matter knowledge and pedagogical content knowledge, and invite all students to access the power of their own mathematical imaginations.
Author: John H. Conway
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Published: 2012-12-06
Total Pages: 313
ISBN-13: 1461240727
DOWNLOAD EBOOK"...the great feature of the book is that anyone can read it without excessive head scratching...You'll find plenty here to keep you occupied, amused, and informed. Buy, dip in, wallow." -IAN STEWART, NEW SCIENTIST "...a delightful look at numbers and their roles in everything from language to flowers to the imagination." -SCIENCE NEWS "...a fun and fascinating tour of numerical topics and concepts. It will have readers contemplating ideas they might never have thought were understandable or even possible." -WISCONSIN BOOKWATCH "This popularization of number theory looks like another classic." -LIBRARY JOURNAL
Author: Asok Kumar Mallik
Publisher: #N/A
Published: 2017-07-27
Total Pages: 197
ISBN-13: 9813222948
DOWNLOAD EBOOK'… this could make an ideal end-of-year prize for a high-school student who is fascinated by all aspects of number. The subsections provide ideas and opportunities for mathematical exploration. This book might also be deemed a suitable resource for first-year undergraduates in that, via independent study, it would allow such students to broaden their knowledge of various number-theoretic ideas. I would recommend it for the purposes given above.'The Mathematical GazetteThis book is more than a mathematics textbook. It discusses various kinds of numbers and curious interconnections between them. Without getting into hardcore and difficult mathematical technicalities, the book lucidly introduces all kinds of numbers that mathematicians have created. Interesting anecdotes involving great mathematicians and their marvelous creations are included. The reader will get a glimpse of the thought process behind the invention of new mathematics. Starting from natural numbers, the book discusses integers, real numbers, imaginary and complex numbers and some special numbers like quaternions, dual numbers and p-adic numbers.Real numbers include rational, irrational and transcendental numbers. Iterations on real numbers are shown to throw up some unexpected behavior, which has given rise to the new science of 'Chaos'. Special numbers like e, pi, golden ratio, Euler's constant, Gauss's constant, amongst others, are discussed in great detail.The origin of imaginary numbers and the use of complex numbers constitute the next topic. It is shown why modern mathematics cannot even be imagined without imaginary numbers. Iterations on complex numbers are shown to generate a new mathematical object called 'Fractal', which is ubiquitous in nature. Finally, some very special numbers, not mentioned in the usual textbooks, and their applications, are introduced at an elementary level.The level of mathematics discussed in this book is easily accessible to young adults interested in mathematics, high school students, and adults having some interest in basic mathematics. The book concentrates more on the story than on rigorous mathematics.
Author: Daniel Tammet
Publisher: Little, Brown Spark
Published: 2013-07-30
Total Pages: 240
ISBN-13: 0316250805
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThe irresistibly engaging book that "enlarges one's wonder at Tammet's mind and his all-embracing vision of the world as grounded in numbers" (Oliver Sacks, MD). Thinking in Numbers is the book that Daniel Tammet, mathematical savant and bestselling author, was born to write. In Tammet's world, numbers are beautiful and mathematics illuminates our lives and minds. Using anecdotes, everyday examples, and ruminations on history, literature, and more, Tammet allows us to share his unique insights and delight in the way numbers, fractions, and equations underpin all our lives. Inspired variously by the complexity of snowflakes, Anne Boleyn's eleven fingers, and his many siblings, Tammet explores questions such as why time seems to speed up as we age, whether there is such a thing as an average person, and how we can make sense of those we love. His provocative and inspiring new book will change the way you think about math and fire your imagination to view the world with fresh eyes.
Author: Chip Heath
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Published: 2022-01-11
Total Pages: 208
ISBN-13: 1982165456
DOWNLOAD EBOOKA clear, practical, first-of-its-kind guide to communicating and understanding numbers and data—from bestselling business author Chip Heath. How much bigger is a billion than a million? Well, a million seconds is twelve days. A billion seconds is…thirty-two years. Understanding numbers is essential—but humans aren’t built to understand them. Until very recently, most languages had no words for numbers greater than five—anything from six to infinity was known as “lots.” While the numbers in our world have gotten increasingly complex, our brains are stuck in the past. How can we translate millions and billions and milliseconds and nanometers into things we can comprehend and use? Author Chip Heath has excelled at teaching others about making ideas stick and here, in Making Numbers Count, he outlines specific principles that reveal how to translate a number into our brain’s language. This book is filled with examples of extreme number makeovers, vivid before-and-after examples that take a dry number and present it in a way that people click in and say “Wow, now I get it!” You will learn principles such as: -SIMPLE PERSPECTIVE CUES: researchers at Microsoft found that adding one simple comparison sentence doubled how accurately users estimated statistics like population and area of countries. -VIVIDNESS: get perspective on the size of a nucleus by imagining a bee in a cathedral, or a pea in a racetrack, which are easier to envision than “1/100,000th of the size of an atom.” -CONVERT TO A PROCESS: capitalize on our intuitive sense of time (5 gigabytes of music storage turns into “2 months of commutes, without repeating a song”). -EMOTIONAL MEASURING STICKS: frame the number in a way that people already care about (“that medical protocol would save twice as many women as curing breast cancer”). Whether you’re interested in global problems like climate change, running a tech firm or a farm, or just explaining how many Cokes you’d have to drink if you burned calories like a hummingbird, this book will help math-lovers and math-haters alike translate the numbers that animate our world—allowing us to bring more data, more naturally, into decisions in our schools, our workplaces, and our society.
Author: Georges De Schrijver
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
Published: 2016-09-30
Total Pages: 253
ISBN-13: 1532610157
DOWNLOAD EBOOKEver since it was demonstrated in the 1920s that the universe, with its trillions of galaxies, is caught up in a process of steady expansion, it became evident that it must have originated from an "initial singularity," a "Big Bang," which gave rise to the formation of subatomic parts, atoms, molecules, clouds of gas, and finally, stars and galaxies. Running this expansion back in time, scientists began to reckon with the miracle of an evolving universe of which we are the outcome: the iron in our blood has been formed in the stars. This book gives an overview of the cosmologies that were in vogue in antiquity--the Jewish and Christian concepts of Creation, and the classical thinkers in Greek cosmology: Plato, Aristotle, and Ptolemy--and in modern times, Copernicus, Galileo, Kepler, and Newton. The book brings us right down to the present day with a careful and readable treatment of the scientific innovations inaugurated by Einstein and the specialists in quantum physics, and to recent developments in astrophysics. This path of exploration opens the avenue for imagining a Creator God who is so generous that he invites creation to share in his own creativity.
Author: Alberto A. Martínez
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Published: 2006
Total Pages: 288
ISBN-13: 9780691123097
DOWNLOAD EBOOKExplores controversies in the history of numbers, especially the so-called negative and ''impossible'' numbers. This book uses history, puzzles, and lively debates to demonstrate how it is possible to devise new artificial systems of mathematical rules. It contends that departures from traditional rules can even be the basis for new applications.
