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By Parker, Matt
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- RRP: $28.00
- $21.00
- Save $7.00
- Pub Date
17 Mar 20
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What makes a bridge wobble when it's not meant to? How do billions of dollars mysteriously vanish into thin air? How does a building rock when its resonant frequency matches a gym class leaping to Snap's 1990 hit I've Got The Power? The answer is maths. Or, to be precise, what ha...ppens when maths goes wrong in the real world. As Matt Parker shows us, our modern lives are built on maths: computer programmes, finance, engineering. And most of the time this maths works quietly behind the scenes, until ... it doesn't. Exploring and explaining a litany of glitches, near-misses and mishaps involving the internet, big data, elections, street signs, lotteries, the Roman empire and a hapless Olympic shooting team, Matt Parker shows us the bizarre ways maths trips us up, and what this reveals about its essential place in our world. This book shows how, by making maths our friend, we can learn from its pitfalls. It also contains puzzles, challenges, geometric socks, jokes about binary code and three deliberate mistakes. Getting it wrong has never been more fun.
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In this Very Short Introduction, Jacqueline Stedall explores the rich historical and cultural diversity of mathematical endeavour from the distant past to the present day, using illustrative case studies drawn from a range of times and places; including early imperial China, the ...medieval Islamic world, and nineteenth-century Britain.
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Smart, hilarious, and engaging, MATH WITH BAD DRAWINGS is a delightful re-education in math that empowers readers with a joyful appreciation and powerful understanding of how math works in our daily lives.
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A comprehensive look at four of the most famous problems in mathematics Tales of Impossibility recounts the intriguing story of the so-called problems of antiquity, four of the most famous and studied questions in the history of mathematics. First posed by the ancient Greeks, the...se compass and straightedge problems-squaring the circle, trisecting an angle, doubling the cube, and inscribing regular polygons in a circle-have served as ever-present muses for mathematicians for more than two millennia. David Richeson follows the trail of these problems to show that ultimately, their proofs-demonstrating the impossibility of solving them using only a compass and straightedge-depended upon and resulted in the growth of mathematics. Richeson explores how celebrated luminaries, including Euclid, Archimedes, Viete, Descartes, Newton, and Gauss labored to understand the problems of antiquity, and how many major mathematical discoveries were related to these explorations. Though the problems were based in geometry, their resolutions were not, and had to wait until the nineteenth century, when mathematicians had developed the theory of real and complex numbers, analytic geometry, algebra, and calculus. A little-known mathematician named Pierre Wantzel and Ferdinand von Lindemann, through his work on , finally determined the problems were impossible to solve. Along the way, Richeson provides entertaining anecdotes connected to the problems, such as how the Indiana legislature passed a bill setting an incorrect value for , and how Leonardo da Vinci made elegant contributions to the puzzles. Taking readers from the classical period to the present, Tales of Impossibility demonstrates how four unsolvable problems captivated mathematical thinking for centuries.
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A magisterial history of calculus (and the people behind it) from one of the world's foremost popularisers of mathematics.
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THE INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER Most people enjoy maths - the problem is they don't know that they do. This revolutionary and accessible exploration of the role of mathematics as an historical aide to human activity will change the general public's relationship to numbers for the be...tter.
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Leads us on a journey through five revolutions in geometry, from the Greek concept of parallel lines to the notions of hyperspace. This title reveals how simple questions anyone might ask about space in the living room or in some other galaxy have been the hidden engine of scienc...e's highest achievements.
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A magisterial history of calculus (and the people behind it) from one of the world's foremost mathematicians.
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Boolean algebra, also called Boolean logic, is at the heart of the electronic circuitry in everything we use - from our computers and cars, to our kitchen gadgets and home appliances. This title examines the history of Boole's ideas, and considers how they led to Shannon's work o...n electrical relay circuits and information theory.
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Dazzling popular maths for the curious reader...from Britain's cleverest schoolboy!
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