Download or read book Nature s Numbers written by Ian Stewart and published by Basic Books. This book was released on 2008-08-04 with total page 179 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "It appears to us that the universe is structured in a deeply mathematical way. Falling bodies fall with predictable accelerations. Eclipses can be accurately forecast centuries in advance. Nuclear power plants generate electricity according to well-known formulas. But those examples are the tip of the iceberg. In Nature's Numbers, Ian Stewart presents many more, each charming in its own way.. Stewart admirably captures compelling and accessible mathematical ideas along with the pleasure of thinking of them. He writes with clarity and precision. Those who enjoy this sort of thing will love this book."—Los Angeles Times
Download or read book The Golden Ratio written by Mario Livio and published by Headline Review. This book was released on 2003 with total page 294 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What do the Parthenon in Greece, crosses in graveyards, the ratio of the height of a woman's navel to a woman's height, sunflowers and Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa have in common? The answer is that these disparate elements share a geometrical proportion of ancient origin commonly known as the golden ratio, or expressed numerically as phi. fractals and DNA on the way, the author takes us into the heart of this extraordinary number. He gives an account of the phi-obsessed individuals who devoted their lives to discovering its secrets - from the Pythagoreans who believed that the study of the Golden Ratio would reveal the hand of God, to the astronomer Johannes Kepler who felt that phi was the greatest treasure of geometry, to the modern day scientists who are discovering ever more remarkable ramifications of this strange, almost mystical, number.
Download or read book Nature s Numbers written by National Research Council and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 1999-06-28 with total page 262 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In order to really see the forest, what's the best way to count the trees? Understanding how the economy interacts with the environment has important implications for policy, regulatory, and business decisions. How should our national economic accounts recognize the increasing interest in and importance of the environment? Nature's Numbers responds to concerns about how the United States should make these measurements. The book recommends how to incorporate environmental and other non-market measures into the nation's income and product accounts. The panel explores alternative approaches to environmental accounting, including those used in other countries, and addresses thorny issues such as how to measure the stocks of natural resources and how to value non-market activities and assets. Specific applications to subsoil minerals, forests, and clean air show how the general principles can be applied. The analysis and insights provided in this book will be of interest to economists, policymakers, environmental advocates, economics faculty, businesses based on natural resources, and managers concerned with the role of the environment in our economic affairs.
Download or read book Finding Fibonacci written by Keith Devlin and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2017-03-07 with total page 251 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A compelling firsthand account of Keith Devlin's ten-year quest to tell Fibonacci's story In 2000, Keith Devlin set out to research the life and legacy of the medieval mathematician Leonardo of Pisa, popularly known as Fibonacci, whose book Liber abbaci has quite literally affected the lives of everyone alive today. Although he is most famous for the Fibonacci numbers—which, it so happens, he didn't invent—Fibonacci's greatest contribution was as an expositor of mathematical ideas at a level ordinary people could understand. In 1202, Liber abbaci—the "Book of Calculation"—introduced modern arithmetic to the Western world. Yet Fibonacci was long forgotten after his death, and it was not until the 1960s that his true achievements were finally recognized. Finding Fibonacci is Devlin's compelling firsthand account of his ten-year quest to tell Fibonacci's story. Devlin, a math expositor himself, kept a diary of the undertaking, which he draws on here to describe the project's highs and lows, its false starts and disappointments, the tragedies and unexpected turns, some hilarious episodes, and the occasional lucky breaks. You will also meet the unique individuals Devlin encountered along the way, people who, each for their own reasons, became fascinated by Fibonacci, from the Yale professor who traced modern finance back to Fibonacci to the Italian historian who made the crucial archival discovery that brought together all the threads of Fibonacci's astonishing story. Fibonacci helped to revive the West as the cradle of science, technology, and commerce, yet he vanished from the pages of history. This is Devlin's search to find him.
Download or read book Mathematics and Art written by Lynn Gamwell and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2016 with total page 576 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is a cultural history of mathematics and art, from antiquity to the present. Mathematicians and artists have long been on a quest to understand the physical world they see before them and the abstract objects they know by thought alone. Taking readers on a tour of the practice of mathematics and the philosophical ideas that drive the discipline, Lynn Gamwell points out the important ways mathematical concepts have been expressed by artists. Sumptuous illustrations of artworks and cogent math diagrams are featured in Gamwell's comprehensive exploration. Gamwell begins by describing mathematics from antiquity to the Enlightenment, including Greek, Islamic, and Asian mathematics. Then focusing on modern culture, Gamwell traces mathematicians' search for the foundations of their science, such as David Hilbert's conception of mathematics as an arrangement of meaning-free signs, as well as artists' search for the essence of their craft, such as Aleksandr Rodchenko's monochrome paintings. She shows that self-reflection is inherent to the practice of both modern mathematics and art, and that this introspection points to a deep resonance between the two fields: Kurt Gödel posed questions about the nature of mathematics in the language of mathematics and Jasper Johns asked "What is art?" in the vocabulary of art. Throughout, Gamwell describes the personalities and cultural environments of a multitude of mathematicians and artists, from Gottlob Frege and Benoît Mandelbrot to Max Bill and Xu Bing. Mathematics and Art demonstrates how mathematical ideas are embodied in the visual arts and will enlighten all who are interested in the complex intellectual pursuits, personalities, and cultural settings that connect these vast disciplines.
Download or read book Base 12 Numerology written by Michael Smith and published by Llewellyn Worldwide. This book was released on 2019-12-08 with total page 145 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Master Your Vibrational Life with the Natural Power of Base-12 Discover your higher purpose and empower your life in profound ways with Base-12 Numerology, a unique system designed around the vibration of prime numbers and base-12. This approachable book adapts traditional numerology to the cycles of twelve through which nature speaks, creating a powerful system that helps you take control of your life, both personally and at work. Beginners and established numerologists will find amazing insights that are explained in straightforward, non-technical ways. Michael Smith walks you through your own numerology reading and reveals how your days are full of vibrational potential and growth. Discover the base-12 blueprint of nature and how the numbers guide you physically and spiritually. Explore sample profiles of famous figures and the numerical meanings of letters and words. Providing many clarifying examples and charts, this book makes it easy to put the numbers to work for you.
Download or read book Fibonacci s Liber Abaci written by Laurence Sigler and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-12-06 with total page 736 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: First published in 1202, Fibonacci’s Liber Abaci was one of the most important books on mathematics in the Middle Ages, introducing Arabic numerals and methods throughout Europe. This is the first translation into a modern European language, of interest not only to historians of science but also to all mathematicians and mathematics teachers interested in the origins of their methods.
Download or read book Uncountable written by David Nirenberg and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2021-10-20 with total page 429 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "From the time of Pythagoras, we have been tempted to treat numbers as the ultimate or only truth. This book tells the history of that habit of thought. But more, it argues that the logic of counting sacrifices much of what makes us human, and that we have a responsibility to match the objects of our attention to the forms of knowledge that do them justice. Humans have extended the insights and methods of number and mathematics to more and more aspects of the world, even to their gods and their religions.Today those powers are greater than ever, as computation is applied to virtually every aspect of human activity.But the rules of mathematics do not strictly apply to many things-from elementary particles to people-in the world.By subjecting such things to the laws of logic and mathematics, we gain some kinds of knowledge, but we also lose others. How do our choices about what parts of the world to subject to the logics of mathematics affect how we live and how we die?This question is rarely asked, but it is urgent, because the sciences built upon those laws now govern so much of our knowledge, from physics to psychology.Number and Knowledge sets out to ask it. In chapters proceeding chronologically from Ancient Greek philosophy and the rise of monotheistic religions to the emergence of modern physics and economics, the book traces how ideals, practices, and habits of thought formed over millennia have turned number into the foundation-stone of human claims to knowledge and certainty.But the book is also a philosophical and poetic exhortation to take responsibility for that history, for the knowledge it has produced, and for the many aspects of the world and of humanity that it ignores or endangers.To understand what can be counted and what can't is to embrace the ethics of purposeful knowing"--
Download or read book Introduction to Analytic Number Theory written by Tom M. Apostol and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2013-06-29 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "This book is the first volume of a two-volume textbook for undergraduates and is indeed the crystallization of a course offered by the author at the California Institute of Technology to undergraduates without any previous knowledge of number theory. For this reason, the book starts with the most elementary properties of the natural integers. Nevertheless, the text succeeds in presenting an enormous amount of material in little more than 300 pages."-—MATHEMATICAL REVIEWS
Download or read book What is Mathematics written by Richard Courant and published by . This book was released on 1996 with total page 596 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The teaching and learning of mathematics has degenerated into the realm of rote memorization, the outcome of which leads to satisfactory formal ability but not real understanding or greater intellectual independence. The new edition of this classic work seeks to address this problem. Its goal is to put the meaning back into mathematics. "Lucid . . . easily understandable".--Albert Einstein. 301 linecuts.
Download or read book Natural Image Statistics written by Aapo Hyvärinen and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2009-04-21 with total page 450 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Aims and Scope This book is both an introductory textbook and a research monograph on modeling the statistical structure of natural images. In very simple terms, “natural images” are photographs of the typical environment where we live. In this book, their statistical structure is described using a number of statistical models whose parameters are estimated from image samples. Our main motivation for exploring natural image statistics is computational m- eling of biological visual systems. A theoretical framework which is gaining more and more support considers the properties of the visual system to be re?ections of the statistical structure of natural images because of evolutionary adaptation processes. Another motivation for natural image statistics research is in computer science and engineering, where it helps in development of better image processing and computer vision methods. While research on natural image statistics has been growing rapidly since the mid-1990s, no attempt has been made to cover the ?eld in a single book, providing a uni?ed view of the different models and approaches. This book attempts to do just that. Furthermore, our aim is to provide an accessible introduction to the ?eld for students in related disciplines.
Download or read book Naked Statistics Stripping the Dread from the Data written by Charles Wheelan and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2013-01-07 with total page 307 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A New York Times bestseller "Brilliant, funny…the best math teacher you never had." —San Francisco Chronicle Once considered tedious, the field of statistics is rapidly evolving into a discipline Hal Varian, chief economist at Google, has actually called "sexy." From batting averages and political polls to game shows and medical research, the real-world application of statistics continues to grow by leaps and bounds. How can we catch schools that cheat on standardized tests? How does Netflix know which movies you’ll like? What is causing the rising incidence of autism? As best-selling author Charles Wheelan shows us in Naked Statistics, the right data and a few well-chosen statistical tools can help us answer these questions and more. For those who slept through Stats 101, this book is a lifesaver. Wheelan strips away the arcane and technical details and focuses on the underlying intuition that drives statistical analysis. He clarifies key concepts such as inference, correlation, and regression analysis, reveals how biased or careless parties can manipulate or misrepresent data, and shows us how brilliant and creative researchers are exploiting the valuable data from natural experiments to tackle thorny questions. And in Wheelan’s trademark style, there’s not a dull page in sight. You’ll encounter clever Schlitz Beer marketers leveraging basic probability, an International Sausage Festival illuminating the tenets of the central limit theorem, and a head-scratching choice from the famous game show Let’s Make a Deal—and you’ll come away with insights each time. With the wit, accessibility, and sheer fun that turned Naked Economics into a bestseller, Wheelan defies the odds yet again by bringing another essential, formerly unglamorous discipline to life.
Download or read book Multiplicative Number Theory written by H. Davenport and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2013-06-29 with total page 188 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Although it was in print for a short time only, the original edition of Multiplicative Number Theory had a major impact on research and on young mathematicians. By giving a connected account of the large sieve and Bombieri's theorem, Professor Davenport made accessible an important body of new discoveries. With this stimula tion, such great progress was made that our current understanding of these topics extends well beyond what was known in 1966. As the main results can now be proved much more easily. I made the radical decision to rewrite §§23-29 completely for the second edition. In making these alterations I have tried to preserve the tone and spirit of the original. Rather than derive Bombieri's theorem from a zero density estimate tor L timctions, as Davenport did, I have chosen to present Vaughan'S elementary proof of Bombieri's theorem. This approach depends on Vaughan's simplified version of Vinogradov's method for estimating sums over prime numbers (see §24). Vinogradov devised his method in order to estimate the sum LPH e(prx); to maintain the historical perspective I have inserted (in §§25, 26) a discussion of this exponential sum and its application to sums of primes, before turning to the large sieve and Bombieri's theorem. Before Professor Davenport's untimely death in 1969, several mathematicians had suggested small improvements which might be made in Multiplicative Number Theory, should it ever be reprinted.
Download or read book The Nature of Code written by Daniel Shiffman and published by No Starch Press. This book was released on 2024-09-03 with total page 642 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: All aboard The Coding Train! This beginner-friendly creative coding tutorial is designed to grow your skills in a fun, hands-on way as you build simulations of real-world phenomena with “The Coding Train” YouTube star Daniel Shiffman. What if you could re-create the awe-inspiring flocking patterns of birds or the hypnotic dance of fireflies—with code? For over a decade, The Nature of Code has empowered countless readers to do just that, bridging the gap between creative expression and programming. This innovative guide by Daniel Shiffman, creator of the beloved Coding Train, welcomes budding and seasoned programmers alike into a world where code meets playful creativity. This JavaScript-based edition of Shiffman’s groundbreaking work gently unfolds the mysteries of the natural world, turning complex topics like genetic algorithms, physics-based simulations, and neural networks into accessible and visually stunning creations. Embark on this extraordinary adventure with projects involving: A physics engine: Simulate the push and pull of gravitational attraction. Flocking birds: Choreograph the mesmerizing dance of a flock. Branching trees: Grow lifelike and organic tree structures. Neural networks: Craft intelligent systems that learn and adapt. Cellular automata: Uncover the magic of self-organizing patterns. Evolutionary algorithms: Play witness to natural selection in your code. Shiffman’s work has transformed thousands of curious minds into creators, breaking down barriers between science, art, and technology, and inviting readers to see code not just as a tool for tasks but as a canvas for boundless creativity. Whether you’re deciphering the elegant patterns of natural phenomena or crafting your own digital ecosystems, Shiffman’s guidance is sure to inform and inspire. The Nature of Code is not just about coding; it’s about looking at the natural world in a new way and letting its wonders inspire your next creation. Dive in and discover the joy of turning code into art—all while mastering coding fundamentals along the way. NOTE: All examples are written with p5.js, a JavaScript library for creative coding, and are available on the book's website.
Download or read book Pearls of Functional Algorithm Design written by Richard Bird and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2010-09-16 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Richard Bird takes a radical approach to algorithm design, namely, design by calculation. These 30 short chapters each deal with a particular programming problem drawn from sources as diverse as games and puzzles, intriguing combinatorial tasks, and more familiar areas such as data compression and string matching. Each pearl starts with the statement of the problem expressed using the functional programming language Haskell, a powerful yet succinct language for capturing algorithmic ideas clearly and simply. The novel aspect of the book is that each solution is calculated from an initial formulation of the problem in Haskell by appealing to the laws of functional programming. Pearls of Functional Algorithm Design will appeal to the aspiring functional programmer, students and teachers interested in the principles of algorithm design, and anyone seeking to master the techniques of reasoning about programs in an equational style.
Download or read book The Beauty of Numbers in Nature written by Ian Stewart and published by . This book was released on 2017-03-29 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Think of a zebra's stripes, the complexities of a spider's web, the uniformity of desert dunes, or the spirals in a sunflower head ... think of a snowflake. The Beauty of Numbers in Nature shows how life on Earth forms the principles of mathematics. Starting with the simplest patterns, each chapter looks at a different kind of patterning system and the mathematics that underlies it. In doing so the book also uncovers some universal patterns, both in nature and man-made, from the basic geometry of ancient Greece to the visually startling fractals that we are familiar with today. Elegantly illustrated, The Beauty of Numbers in Nature is an illuminating and engaging vision of how the apparently cold laws of mathematics find expression in the beauty of nature.
Download or read book A Course in Computational Algebraic Number Theory written by Henri Cohen and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2013-04-17 with total page 556 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A description of 148 algorithms fundamental to number-theoretic computations, in particular for computations related to algebraic number theory, elliptic curves, primality testing and factoring. The first seven chapters guide readers to the heart of current research in computational algebraic number theory, including recent algorithms for computing class groups and units, as well as elliptic curve computations, while the last three chapters survey factoring and primality testing methods, including a detailed description of the number field sieve algorithm. The whole is rounded off with a description of available computer packages and some useful tables, backed by numerous exercises. Written by an authority in the field, and one with great practical and teaching experience, this is certain to become the standard and indispensable reference on the subject.
