Download or read book Travelling Mathematics The Fate of Diophantos Arithmetic written by Ad Meskens and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2010-09-24 with total page 214 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this book the author presents a comprehensive study of Diophantos’ monumental work known as Arithmetika, a highly acclaimed and unique set of books within the known Greek mathematical corpus. Its author, Diophantos, is an enigmatic figure of whom we know virtually nothing. Starting with Egyptian, Babylonian and early Greek mathematics the author paints a picture of the sources the Arithmetika may have had. Life in Alexandria, where Diophantos lived, is described and, on the basis of the limited available evidence, his biography is outlined. Of Arithmetika’s 13 books only 6 survive in Greek. It was not until 1971 that these were complemented by the discovery of 4 other books in an Arab translation. This allows the author to describe the structure, the contents and the mathematics of the Arithmetika in detail. Furthermore it is shown that Diophantos had a remarkable skill to solve higher degree equations. In the second part, the author draws our attention to the survival of Diophantos’ work in both Arab and European mathematical cultures. Once Xylander’s critical 1575 edition reached its European public, the fame of the Arithmetika grew. It was studied, translated and modified by such authors as Bombelli, Stevin and Viète. It reached its pinnacle of fame in 1621 with the publication of Bachet’s translation into Latin. The marginal notes by Fermat in his copy of Diophantos, including his famous “Last Theorem”, were the starting point of a whole new research subject: the theory of numbers.
Download or read book Algorithmic Modernity written by Morgan G. Ames and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2023-01-24 with total page 313 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The rhetoric of algorithmic neutrality is more alive than ever-why? This volume explores key moments in the historical emergence of algorithmic practices and in the constitution of their credibility and authority since 1500. If algorithms are historical objects and their associated meanings and values are situated and contingent-and if we are to push back against rhetorical claims of otherwise-then the genealogical investigation this book offers is essential to understand the power of the algorithm. The fact that algorithms create the conditions for many of our encounters with social reality contrasts starkly with their relative invisibility. More than other artifacts, algorithms are easily black-boxed. Rather than contingent and modifiable, they are widely seen as obvious and unproblematic-without context and without history. As an antidote, this volume keeps a clear focus on the emergence and continuous reconstitution of algorithmic practices alongside the ascendance of modernity. Its essays highlight the trajectory of an algorithmic modernity, one characterized by attitudes and practices that are best emblematized by the modernist aesthetic and inhuman efficacy of the algorithm. The volume moves from early modern algorithmic practices, centered on heuristics for arithmetic operations, emphasizing ruptures, shifts, and variations across times and cultures. By the age of Enlightenment, the term algorithm had come to signify any process of systematic calculation that could be carried out mechanically, but its meaning and implications are still distant from those familiar to us . It's in the nineteenth and twentieth century that the meaning of algorithm is sharpened through a new discipline and by adding sets of specific conditions-such as the condition of finiteness-which acquire new and crucial significance in the age of digital computing. Throughout, the connection between algorithms and modernity is one of our central concerns. Through detailed historical reconstructions of specific moments, thinkers, and cultural phenomena over the last five hundred years, these essays lead us to the definitions of algorithm most legible today and to the pervasiveness of both algorithmic procedures and rhetoric. This volume contributes a multi-faceted exploration of the genealogies of algorithms, of algorithmic thinking, and of the distinctly modernist faith in algorithms as neutral tools that merely illuminate the natural and social world"--
Download or read book The Oxford Dictionary of Late Antiquity written by Oliver Nicholson and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2018-04-19 with total page 1743 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Oxford Dictionary of Late Antiquity is the first comprehensive reference book covering every aspect of history, culture, religion, and life in Europe, the Mediterranean, and the Near East (including the Persian Empire and Central Asia) between the mid-3rd and the mid-8th centuries AD, the era now generally known as Late Antiquity. This period saw the re-establishment of the Roman Empire, its conversion to Christianity and its replacement in the West by Germanic kingdoms, the continuing Roman Empire in the Eastern Mediterranean, the Persian Sassanian Empire, and the rise of Islam. Consisting of over 1.5 million words in more than 5,000 A-Z entries, and written by more than 400 contributors, it is the long-awaited middle volume of a series, bridging a significant period of history between those covered by the acclaimed Oxford Classical Dictionary and The Oxford Dictionary of the Middle Ages. The scope of the Dictionary is broad and multi-disciplinary; across the wide geographical span covered (from Western Europe and the Mediterranean as far as the Near East and Central Asia), it provides succinct and pertinent information on political history, law, and administration; military history; religion and philosophy; education; social and economic history; material culture; art and architecture; science; literature; and many other areas. Drawing on the latest scholarship, and with a formidable international team of advisers and contributors, The Oxford Dictionary of Late Antiquity aims to establish itself as the essential reference companion to a period that is attracting increasing attention from scholars and students worldwide.
Download or read book The Arithmetica of Diophantus written by Jean Christianidis and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2022-11-01 with total page 891 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume offers an English translation of all ten extant books of Diophantus of Alexandria’s Arithmetica, along with a comprehensive conceptual, historical, and mathematical commentary. Before his work became the inspiration for the emerging field of number theory in the seventeenth century, Diophantus (ca. 3rd c. CE) was known primarily as an algebraist. This volume explains how his method of solving arithmetical problems agrees both conceptually and procedurally with the premodern algebra later practiced in Arabic, Latin, and European vernaculars, and how this algebra differs radically from the modern algebra initiated by François Viète and René Descartes. It also discusses other surviving traces of ancient Greek algebra and follows the influence of the Arithmetica in medieval Islam, Byzantium, and the European Renaissance down to the 1621 publication of Claude-Gaspard Bachet’s edition. After the English translation the book provides a problem-by-problem commentary explaining the solutions in a manner compatible with Diophantus’s mode of thought. The Arithmetica of Diophantus provides an invaluable resource for historians of mathematics, science, and technology, as well as those studying ancient Greek, medieval Islamic and Byzantine, and Renaissance history. In addition, the volume is also suitable for mathematicians and mathematics educators.
Download or read book Ancient Mathematics written by Dietmar Herrmann and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2023-01-01 with total page 462 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The volume contains a comprehensive and problem-oriented presentation of ancient Greek mathematics from Thales to Proklos Diadochos. Exemplarily, a cross-section of Greek mathematics is offered, whereby also such works of scientists are appreciated in detail, of which no German translation is available. Numerous illustrations and the inclusion of the cultural, political and literary environment provide a great spectrum of the history of mathematical science and a real treasure trove for those seeking biographical and contemporary background knowledge or suggestions for lessons or lectures. The presentation is up-to-date and realizes tendencies of recent historiography. In the new edition, the central chapters on Plato, Aristotle and Alexandria have been updated. The explanations of Greek calculus, mathematical geography and mathematics of the early Middle Ages have been expanded and show new points of view. A completely new addition is a unique illustrated account of Roman mathematics. Also newly included are several color illustrations that successfully illustrate the book's subject matter. With more than 280 images, this volume represents a richly illustrated history book on ancient mathematics.
Download or read book Unknown Quantity written by John Derbyshire and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 2006-06-02 with total page 391 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Prime Obsession taught us not to be afraid to put the math in a math book. Unknown Quantity heeds the lesson well. So grab your graphing calculators, slip out the slide rules, and buckle up! John Derbyshire is introducing us to algebra through the ages-and it promises to be just what his die-hard fans have been waiting for. "Here is the story of algebra." With this deceptively simple introduction, we begin our journey. Flanked by formulae, shadowed by roots and radicals, escorted by an expert who navigates unerringly on our behalf, we are guaranteed safe passage through even the most treacherous mathematical terrain. Our first encounter with algebraic arithmetic takes us back 38 centuries to the time of Abraham and Isaac, Jacob and Joseph, Ur and Haran, Sodom and Gomorrah. Moving deftly from Abel's proof to the higher levels of abstraction developed by Galois, we are eventually introduced to what algebraists have been focusing on during the last century. As we travel through the ages, it becomes apparent that the invention of algebra was more than the start of a specific discipline of mathematics-it was also the birth of a new way of thinking that clarified both basic numeric concepts as well as our perception of the world around us. Algebraists broke new ground when they discarded the simple search for solutions to equations and concentrated instead on abstract groups. This dramatic shift in thinking revolutionized mathematics. Written for those among us who are unencumbered by a fear of formulae, Unknown Quantity delivers on its promise to present a history of algebra. Astonishing in its bold presentation of the math and graced with narrative authority, our journey through the world of algebra is at once intellectually satisfying and pleasantly challenging.
Download or read book Journey into Mathematics written by Joseph J. Rotman and published by Courier Corporation. This book was released on 2013-01-18 with total page 386 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Students learn how to read and write proofs by actually reading and writing them, asserts author Joseph J. Rotman, adding that merely reading about mathematics is no substitute for doing mathematics. In addition to teaching how to interpret and construct proofs, Professor Rotman's introductory text imparts other valuable mathematical tools and illustrates the intrinsic beauty and interest of mathematics. Journey into Mathematics offers a coherent story, with intriguing historical and etymological asides. The three-part treatment begins with the mechanics of writing proofs, including some very elementary mathematics--induction, binomial coefficients, and polygonal areas--that allow students to focus on the proofs without the distraction of absorbing unfamiliar ideas at the same time. Once they have acquired some geometric experience with the simpler classical notion of limit, they proceed to considerations of the area and circumference of circles. The text concludes with examinations of complex numbers and their application, via De Moivre's theorem, to real numbers.
Download or read book From Five Fingers to Infinity written by Frank J. Swetz and published by . This book was released on 1994 with total page 810 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collection of 114 articles presents an entertaining and user- friendly history of human thought by way of the discipline of mathematics. Suitable for readers with no mathematical background beyond balancing a checkbook, as well as those more mathematically inclined. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR
Download or read book A Mathematical Bridge written by Stephen Hewson and published by World Scientific Publishing Company. This book was released on 2009-01-20 with total page 672 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Although higher mathematics is beautiful, natural and interconnected, to the uninitiated it can feel like an arbitrary mass of disconnected technical definitions, symbols, theorems and methods. An intellectual gulf needs to be crossed before a true, deep appreciation of mathematics can develop. This book bridges this mathematical gap. It focuses on the process of discovery as much as the content, leading the reader to a clear, intuitive understanding of how and why mathematics exists in the way it does. The narrative does not evolve along traditional subject lines: each topic develops from its simplest, intuitive starting point; complexity develops naturally via questions and extensions. Throughout, the book includes levels of explanation, discussion and passion rarely seen in traditional textbooks. The choice of material is similarly rich, ranging from number theory and the nature of mathematical thought to quantum mechanics and the history of mathematics. It rounds off with a selection of thought-provoking and stimulating exercises for the reader.
Download or read book Descartes s Mathematical Thought written by C. Sasaki and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2013-03-09 with total page 502 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Covering both the history of mathematics and of philosophy, Descartes's Mathematical Thought reconstructs the intellectual career of Descartes most comprehensively and originally in a global perspective including the history of early modern China and Japan. Especially, it shows what the concept of "mathesis universalis" meant before and during the period of Descartes and how it influenced the young Descartes. In fact, it was the most fundamental mathematical discipline during the seventeenth century, and for Descartes a key notion which may have led to his novel mathematics of algebraic analysis.
Download or read book An Adventurer s Guide to Number Theory written by Richard Friedberg and published by Courier Corporation. This book was released on 2012-07-06 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This witty introduction to number theory deals with the properties of numbers and numbers as abstract concepts. Topics include primes, divisibility, quadratic forms, and related theorems.
Download or read book Figurate Numbers written by Elena Deza and published by World Scientific. This book was released on 2012 with total page 475 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Plane figurate numbers -- Space figurate numbers -- Multidimensional figurate members -- Areas of number theory including figurate numbers -- Fermat's polygonal number theorem.
Download or read book Figurate Numbers written by Elena Deza and published by World Scientific. This book was released on 2012-01-20 with total page 476 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Figurate numbers have a rich history with many applications. The main purpose of this book is to provide a thorough and complete presentation of the theory of figurate numbers, giving much of their properties, facts and theorems with full proofs. This book is the first of this topic written in unified systematic way. It also contains many exercises with solutions. Contents:Plane Figurate NumbersSpace Figurate NumbersMultidimensional Figurate NumbersAreas of Number Theory including Figurate NumbersFermat's Polygonal Number TheoremZoo of Figurate-related Numbers Readership: Advanced undergraduate, graduate students and researchers in number theory. Keywords:Figurate Numbers;Polygonal Numbers;Diophantine Equations;Recurrence RelationsKey Features:It is the first on the subject containing all theory with full proofsContains many exercises with solutionsReviews: “The variety of questions addressed, which offers an opportunity for every reader's taste, together with the multiple levels of difficulty in the statements and proofs of results, makes this book just as adequate for researchers as well as for amateurs. It is also a source of intellectual pleasure for all.” Professor Capi Corrales Rodrigáñez Department of Algebra, Mathematics, UCM, Madrid
Download or read book A Journey through the History of Numerical Linear Algebra written by Claude Brezinski and published by SIAM. This book was released on 2022-12-06 with total page 813 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This expansive volume describes the history of numerical methods proposed for solving linear algebra problems, from antiquity to the present day. The authors focus on methods for linear systems of equations and eigenvalue problems and describe the interplay between numerical methods and the computing tools available at the time. The second part of the book consists of 78 biographies of important contributors to the field. A Journey through the History of Numerical Linear Algebra will be of special interest to applied mathematicians, especially researchers in numerical linear algebra, people involved in scientific computing, and historians of mathematics.
Download or read book Yearning for the Impossible written by John Stillwell and published by CRC Press. This book was released on 2006-05-23 with total page 249 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores the history of mathematics from the perspective of the creative tension between common sense and the "impossible" as the author follows the discovery or invention of new concepts that have marked mathematical progress: - Irrational and Imaginary Numbers - The Fourth Dimension - Curved Space - Infinity and others The author puts t
Download or read book Diophantine Discoveries Fundamentals written by N.B. Singh and published by N.B. Singh. This book was released on with total page 63 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Diophantine Discoveries Fundamentals" is a beginner-friendly exploration of the captivating world of Diophantine equations, designed for those with no prior mathematical background. Delving into the realm of mathematical puzzles, this book offers clear and accessible explanations of Diophantine equations, starting from the basics and gradually building up the reader's understanding. Through engaging examples and straightforward language, readers are introduced to the fascinating concepts of finding whole number solutions to polynomial equations. From the historical significance of Diophantine equations to their applications in various fields such as number theory, algebra, and cryptography, this book serves as an inviting gateway for curious minds to unravel the mysteries of mathematics. Whether you're a student eager to expand your mathematical knowledge or simply someone with a passion for learning, "Diophantine Discoveries Fundamentals" provides an enjoyable and educational journey into the heart of mathematical exploration.
Download or read book A Mathematical Journey written by Stanley Gudder and published by McGraw-Hill Companies. This book was released on 1994 with total page 648 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
