A History of Mathematical Notations

A History of Mathematical Notations

Author: Florian Cajori

Publisher: Courier Corporation

Published: 2013-09-26

Total Pages: 865

ISBN-13: 0486161161

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This classic study notes the origin of a mathematical symbol, the competition it encountered, its spread among writers in different countries, its rise to popularity, and its eventual decline or ultimate survival. 1929 edition.


Numerical Notation

Numerical Notation

Author: Stephen Chrisomalis

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2010-01-18

Total Pages: 497

ISBN-13: 0521878187

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This book is a cross-cultural reference volume of all attested numerical notation systems, encompassing more than 100 such systems used over the past 5,500 years. Using a typology that defies unilinear evolutionary models, Stephen Chrisomalis identifies five basic types of numerical notation systems, tracks relationships between systems, and creates a general model of change that incorporates social, historical, and cognitive factors.


100 Great Problems of Elementary Mathematics

100 Great Problems of Elementary Mathematics

Author: Heinrich Dörrie

Publisher: Courier Corporation

Published: 2013-04-09

Total Pages: 418

ISBN-13: 0486318478

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Problems that beset Archimedes, Newton, Euler, Cauchy, Gauss, Monge, Steiner, and other great mathematical minds. Features squaring the circle, pi, and similar problems. No advanced math is required. Includes 100 problems with proofs.


Sourcebook in the Mathematics of Medieval Europe and North Africa

Sourcebook in the Mathematics of Medieval Europe and North Africa

Author: Victor J. Katz

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2016-11-01

Total Pages: 592

ISBN-13: 0691156859

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Medieval Europe was a meeting place for the Christian, Jewish, and Islamic civilizations, and the fertile intellectual exchange of these cultures can be seen in the mathematical developments of the time. This sourcebook presents original Latin, Hebrew, and Arabic sources of medieval mathematics, and shows their cross-cultural influences. Most of the Hebrew and Arabic sources appear here in translation for the first time. Readers will discover key mathematical revelations, foundational texts, and sophisticated writings by Latin, Hebrew, and Arabic-speaking mathematicians, including Abner of Burgos's elegant arguments proving results on the conchoid—a curve previously unknown in medieval Europe; Levi ben Gershon’s use of mathematical induction in combinatorial proofs; Al-Mu’taman Ibn Hūd’s extensive survey of mathematics, which included proofs of Heron’s Theorem and Ceva’s Theorem; and Muhyī al-Dīn al-Maghribī’s interesting proof of Euclid’s parallel postulate. The book includes a general introduction, section introductions, footnotes, and references. The Sourcebook in the Mathematics of Medieval Europe and North Africa will be indispensable to anyone seeking out the important historical sources of premodern mathematics.


Making up Numbers: A History of Invention in Mathematics

Making up Numbers: A History of Invention in Mathematics

Author: Ekkehard Kopp

Publisher: Open Book Publishers

Published: 2020-10-23

Total Pages: 280

ISBN-13: 1800640978

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Making up Numbers: A History of Invention in Mathematics offers a detailed but accessible account of a wide range of mathematical ideas. Starting with elementary concepts, it leads the reader towards aspects of current mathematical research. The book explains how conceptual hurdles in the development of numbers and number systems were overcome in the course of history, from Babylon to Classical Greece, from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance, and so to the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The narrative moves from the Pythagorean insistence on positive multiples to the gradual acceptance of negative numbers, irrationals and complex numbers as essential tools in quantitative analysis. Within this chronological framework, chapters are organised thematically, covering a variety of topics and contexts: writing and solving equations, geometric construction, coordinates and complex numbers, perceptions of ‘infinity’ and its permissible uses in mathematics, number systems, and evolving views of the role of axioms. Through this approach, the author demonstrates that changes in our understanding of numbers have often relied on the breaking of long-held conventions to make way for new inventions at once providing greater clarity and widening mathematical horizons. Viewed from this historical perspective, mathematical abstraction emerges as neither mysterious nor immutable, but as a contingent, developing human activity. Making up Numbers will be of great interest to undergraduate and A-level students of mathematics, as well as secondary school teachers of the subject. In virtue of its detailed treatment of mathematical ideas, it will be of value to anyone seeking to learn more about the development of the subject.


The Historical Roots of Elementary Mathematics

The Historical Roots of Elementary Mathematics

Author: Lucas N. H. Bunt

Publisher: Courier Corporation

Published: 2012-12-11

Total Pages: 337

ISBN-13: 0486139689

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Exciting, hands-on approach to understanding fundamental underpinnings of modern arithmetic, algebra, geometry and number systems examines their origins in early Egyptian, Babylonian, and Greek sources.


The History of Mathematical Proof in Ancient Traditions

The History of Mathematical Proof in Ancient Traditions

Author: Karine Chemla

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2012-07-05

Total Pages: 522

ISBN-13: 1139510584

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This radical, profoundly scholarly book explores the purposes and nature of proof in a range of historical settings. It overturns the view that the first mathematical proofs were in Greek geometry and rested on the logical insights of Aristotle by showing how much of that view is an artefact of nineteenth-century historical scholarship. It documents the existence of proofs in ancient mathematical writings about numbers and shows that practitioners of mathematics in Mesopotamian, Chinese and Indian cultures knew how to prove the correctness of algorithms, which are much more prominent outside the limited range of surviving classical Greek texts that historians have taken as the paradigm of ancient mathematics. It opens the way to providing the first comprehensive, textually based history of proof.