Download or read book The Calculus Wars written by Jason Socrates Bardi and published by Basic Books. This book was released on 2009-04-29 with total page 226 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Now regarded as the bane of many college students' existence, calculus was one of the most important mathematical innovations of the seventeenth century. But a dispute over its discovery sewed the seeds of discontent between two of the greatest scientific giants of all time -- Sir Isaac Newton and Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz. Today Newton and Leibniz are generally considered the twin independent inventors of calculus, and they are both credited with giving mathematics its greatest push forward since the time of the Greeks. Had they known each other under different circumstances, they might have been friends. But in their own lifetimes, the joint glory of calculus was not enough for either and each declared war against the other, openly and in secret. This long and bitter dispute has been swept under the carpet by historians -- perhaps because it reveals Newton and Leibniz in their worst light -- but The Calculus Wars tells the full story in narrative form for the first time. This vibrant and gripping scientific potboiler ultimately exposes how these twin mathematical giants were brilliant, proud, at times mad and, in the end, completely human.
Download or read book The Calculus of Violence written by Aaron Sheehan-Dean and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2018-11-05 with total page 481 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of the Jefferson Davis Award Winner of the Johns Family Book Award Winner of the Army Historical Foundation Distinguished Writing Award “A work of deep intellectual seriousness, sweeping and yet also delicately measured, this book promises to resolve longstanding debates about the nature of the Civil War.” —Gregory P. Downs, author of After Appomattox Shiloh, Chancellorsville, Gettysburg—tens of thousands of soldiers died on these iconic Civil War battlefields, and throughout the South civilians suffered terrible cruelty. At least three-quarters of a million lives were lost during the American Civil War. Given its seemingly indiscriminate mass destruction, this conflict is often thought of as the first “total war.” But Aaron Sheehan-Dean argues for another interpretation. The Calculus of Violence demonstrates that this notoriously bloody war could have been much worse. Military forces on both sides sought to contain casualties inflicted on soldiers and civilians. In Congress, in church pews, and in letters home, Americans debated the conditions under which lethal violence was legitimate, and their arguments differentiated carefully among victims—women and men, black and white, enslaved and free. Sometimes, as Sheehan-Dean shows, these well-meaning restraints led to more carnage by implicitly justifying the killing of people who were not protected by the laws of war. As the Civil War raged on, the Union’s confrontations with guerrillas and the Confederacy’s confrontations with black soldiers forced a new reckoning with traditional categories of lawful combatants and raised legal disputes that still hang over military operations around the world today. In examining the agonizing debates about the meaning of a just war in the Civil War era, Sheehan-Dean discards conventional abstractions—total, soft, limited—as too tidy to contain what actually happened on the ground.
Download or read book The Tangled Origins of the Leibnizian Calculus written by Richard C. Brown and published by World Scientific. This book was released on 2012 with total page 333 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 1. Evolution or revolution in mathematics -- 2. Issues in seventeenth century mathematics -- 3. Isaac Barrow: a foil to Leibniz -- 4. A young central European polymath -- 5. First steps in mathematics -- 6. The creation of calculus -- 7. Logic -- 8. The universal characteristic -- 9. The baroque cultural context -- 10. Epilogue -- 11. Some concluding remarks on mathematical change -- Appendices.
Download or read book Mathematics and War written by Bernhelm Booß-Bavnbek and published by Birkhäuser. This book was released on 2012-12-06 with total page 418 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Mathematics has for centuries been stimulated, financed and credited by military purposes. Some mathematical thoughts and mathematical technology have also been vital in war. During World War II mathematical work by the Anti-Hitler coalition was part of an aspiration to serve humanity and not help destroy it. At present, it is not an easy task to view the bellicose potentials of mathematics in a proper perspective. The book presents historical evidence and recent changes in the interaction between mathematics and the military. It discusses the new mathematically enhanced development of military technology which seems to have changed the very character of modern warfare.
Download or read book The Math Myth written by Andrew Hacker and published by New Press, The. This book was released on 2010-05-25 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A New York Times–bestselling author looks at mathematics education in America—when it’s worthwhile, and when it’s not. Why do we inflict a full menu of mathematics—algebra, geometry, trigonometry, even calculus—on all young Americans, regardless of their interests or aptitudes? While Andrew Hacker has been a professor of mathematics himself, and extols the glories of the subject, he also questions some widely held assumptions in this thought-provoking and practical-minded book. Does advanced math really broaden our minds? Is mastery of azimuths and asymptotes needed for success in most jobs? Should the entire Common Core syllabus be required of every student? Hacker worries that our nation’s current frenzied emphasis on STEM is diverting attention from other pursuits and even subverting the spirit of the country. Here, he shows how mandating math for everyone prevents other talents from being developed and acts as an irrational barrier to graduation and careers. He proposes alternatives, including teaching facility with figures, quantitative reasoning, and understanding statistics. Expanding upon the author’s viral New York Times op-ed, The Math Myth is sure to spark a heated and needed national conversation—not just about mathematics but about the kind of people and society we want to be. “Hacker’s accessible arguments offer plenty to think about and should serve as a clarion call to students, parents, and educators who decry the one-size-fits-all approach to schooling.” —Publishers Weekly, starred review
Download or read book Math Wars written by Carmen Latterell and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2004-12-30 with total page 200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is written for parents and other interested parties so that they can understand the great debate taking place in many states in this country about how to teach basic math. The debate centers around the standards written by the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM), which call for a radically different approach to mathematics education. Because the issues are so heated between the NCTM-oriented curricula and traditional curricula (the curricula that NCTM-oriented replaced), the term Math Wars was coined to describe them. Parents are concerned about their children's math learning. Teachers are concerned about math teaching. When parents see what children are bringing home under the new curriculum, it is clear that their children are not working on the same mathematics that parents remember from the time when they were in school. But, the problem goes beyond grades K-12. Post-secondary mathematics courses are the fear of many students. The standards created by the NCTM do not necessarily prepare students for success, either on SATs or in college. Besides lack of knowledge about mathematics education, many parents have an additional problem in that they feel they lack knowledge in mathematics itself. This is very intimidating; thus it is difficult for parents to do anything about the confusing state of mathematics education. This book provides some answers.
Download or read book Calculus written by David Warren Cohen and published by Jones & Bartlett Learning. This book was released on 2005 with total page 1014 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Adaptable to courses for non-engineering majors, this textbook illustrates the meaning of a curve through graphs and tests predictions through numerical values of change, before formally defining the limit of a sequence and function, the derivative, and the integral. The second half of the book develops techniques for integrating functions, approxi
Download or read book Infinite Powers written by Steven Strogatz and published by Mariner Books. This book was released on 2019 with total page 389 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the captivating story of mathematics' greatest ever idea: calculus. Without it, there would be no computers, no microwave ovens, no GPS, and no space travel. But before it gave modern man almost infinite powers, calculus was behind centuries of controversy, competition, and even death. Taking us on a thrilling journey through three millennia, professor Steven Strogatz charts the development of this seminal achievement from the days of Aristotle to today's million-dollar reward that awaits whoever cracks Reimann's hypothesis. Filled with idiosyncratic characters from Pythagoras to Euler, Infinite Powers is a compelling human drama that reveals the legacy of calculus on nearly every aspect of modern civilization, including science, politics, ethics, philosophy, and much besides.
Download or read book Philosophers at War written by Alfred Rupert Hall and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2002-09-12 with total page 358 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A blow-by-blow account of the celebrated controversy over the invention of the calculus.
Download or read book The Blocksize War written by Jonathan Bier and published by . This book was released on 2021-03-14 with total page 220 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book covers Bitcoin's blocksize war, which was waged from August 2015 to November 2017. On the surface the battle was about the amount of data allowed in each Bitcoin block, however it exposed much deeper issues, such as who controls Bitcoin's protocol rules. It is not possible to cover every twist and turn in the labyrinthine conflict or all the arguments, but I have provided a chronology of the most significant events. This book explores some of the major characters in the conflict and includes coverage, from both the front lines and behind the scenes, during some of the most acute phases of the struggle. The account in this book includes discussions with the key players from both sides during the war, exploring their motivations, strategy and thought processes as the exhausting campaign progressed and developed.
Download or read book A Tour of the Calculus written by David Berlinski and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2011-04-27 with total page 353 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Were it not for the calculus, mathematicians would have no way to describe the acceleration of a motorcycle or the effect of gravity on thrown balls and distant planets, or to prove that a man could cross a room and eventually touch the opposite wall. Just how calculus makes these things possible and in doing so finds a correspondence between real numbers and the real world is the subject of this dazzling book by a writer of extraordinary clarity and stylistic brio. Even as he initiates us into the mysteries of real numbers, functions, and limits, Berlinski explores the furthest implications of his subject, revealing how the calculus reconciles the precision of numbers with the fluidity of the changing universe. "An odd and tantalizing book by a writer who takes immense pleasure in this great mathematical tool, and tries to create it in others."--New York Times Book Review
Download or read book Cultural Foundations of Mathematics written by C. K. Raju and published by Pearson Education India. This book was released on 2007 with total page 536 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Volume Examines, In Depth, The Implications Of Indian History And Philosophy For Contemporary Mathematics And Science. The Conclusions Challenge Current Formal Mathematics And Its Basis In The Western Dogma That Deduction Is Infallible (Or That It Is Less Fallible Than Induction). The Development Of The Calculus In India, Over A Thousand Years, Is Exhaustively Documented In This Volume, Along With Novel Insights, And Is Related To The Key Sources Of Wealth-Monsoon-Dependent Agriculture And Navigation Required For Overseas Trade - And The Corresponding Requirement Of Timekeeping. Refecting The Usual Double Standard Of Evidence Used To Construct Eurocentric History, A Single, New Standard Of Evidence For Transmissions Is Proposed. Using This, It Is Pointed Out That Jesuits In Cochin, Following The Toledo Model Of Translation, Had Long-Term Opportunity To Transmit Indian Calculus Texts To Europe. The European Navigational Problem Of Determining Latitude, Longitude, And Loxodromes, And The 1582 Gregorian Calendar-Reform, Provided Ample Motivation. The Mathematics In These Earlier Indian Texts Suddenly Starts Appearing In European Works From The Mid-16Th Century Onwards, Providing Compelling Circumstantial Evidence. While The Calculus In India Had Valid Pramana, This Differed From Western Notions Of Proof, And The Indian (Algorismus) Notion Of Number Differed From The European (Abacus) Notion. Hence, Like Their Earlier Difficulties With The Algorismus, Europeans Had Difficulties In Understanding The Calculus, Which, Like Computer Technology, Enhanced The Ability To Calculate, Albeit In A Way Regarded As Epistemologically Insecure. Present-Day Difficulties In Learning Mathematics Are Related, Via Phylogeny Is Ontogeny , To These Historical Difficulties In Assimilating Imported Mathematics. An Appendix Takes Up Further Contemporary Implications Of The New Philosophy Of Mathematics For The Extension Of The Calculus, Which Is Needed To Handle The Infinities Arising In The Study Of Shock Waves And The Renormalization Problem Of Quantum Field Theory.
Download or read book The Nature of War in the Information Age written by David J. Lonsdale and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2004-06 with total page 285 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Much of today's Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA) literature subscribes to the idea that the information age will witness a transformation in the very nature of war. In this book, David Lonsdale puts that notion to the test.
Download or read book How Wars End written by Gideon Rose and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2011-12-20 with total page 434 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first comprehensive treatment of how the United States has handled the final stages of its conflicts-from World War I to Iraq-spoiled repeatedly by leaders' failures to plan clearly for what to do when the guns fall silent. Concerned with not repeating past errors, our leaders miscalculate and prolong the conflict or invite unwelcome results. In his penetrating analysis of past, present, and future wars, Rose suggests how to break this cycle.
Download or read book Against the Tide written by John Ringo and published by Baen Books. This book was released on 2005-02 with total page 285 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the distant future, the world was a paradise-and then, in a moment, it was ended by the first war in centuries.
Download or read book Before Voltaire written by J.B. Shank and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2018-06-08 with total page 457 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: We have grown accustomed to the idea that scientific theories are embedded in their place and time. But in the case of the development of mathematical physics in eighteenth-century France, the relationship was extremely close. In Before Voltaire, J.B. Shank shows that although the publication of Isaac Newton’s Principia in 1687 exerted strong influence, the development of calculus-based physics is better understood as an outcome that grew from French culture in general. Before Voltaire explores how Newton’s ideas made their way not just through the realm of French science, but into the larger world of society and culture of which Principia was an intertwined part. Shank also details a history of the beginnings of calculus-based mathematical physics that integrates it into the larger intellectual currents in France at the time, including the Battle of the Ancients and the Moderns, the emergence of wider audiences for science, and the role of the newly reorganized Royal Academy of Sciences. The resulting book offers an unprecedented cultural history of one the most important and influential elements of Enlightenment science.
Download or read book In Pursuit of the Unknown written by Ian Stewart and published by Basic Books. This book was released on 2012-03-13 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The seventeen equations that form the basis for life as we know it. Most people are familiar with history's great equations: Newton's Law of Gravity, for instance, or Einstein's theory of relativity. But the way these mathematical breakthroughs have contributed to human progress is seldom appreciated. In In Pursuit of the Unknown, celebrated mathematician Ian Stewart untangles the roots of our most important mathematical statements to show that equations have long been a driving force behind nearly every aspect of our lives. Using seventeen of our most crucial equations -- including the Wave Equation that allowed engineers to measure a building's response to earthquakes, saving countless lives, and the Black-Scholes model, used by bankers to track the price of financial derivatives over time -- Stewart illustrates that many of the advances we now take for granted were made possible by mathematical discoveries. An approachable, lively, and informative guide to the mathematical building blocks of modern life, In Pursuit of the Unknown is a penetrating exploration of how we have also used equations to make sense of, and in turn influence, our world.