What's Happening in the Mathematical Sciences, Volume 4

What's Happening in the Mathematical Sciences, Volume 4
Author: Barry Cipra
Publisher: American Mathematical Soc.
Total Pages: 140
Release: 1999
Genre: Mathematics
ISBN: 9780821807668

This volume is fourth in the series "What's Happening in the Mathematical Sciences". As the 20th century draws to a close, it presents the state of modern mathematics and its world-wide significance. It includes "Beetlemania: Chaos in Ecology", on evidence for chaotic dynamics in a population.

What's Happening in the Mathematical Sciences

What's Happening in the Mathematical Sciences
Author: Barry Cipra
Publisher: American Mathematical Soc.
Total Pages: 108
Release:
Genre: Science
ISBN: 9780821890431

Mathematicians like to point out that mathematics is universal. In spite of this, most people continue to view it as either mundane (balancing a checkbook) or mysterious (cryptography). This fifth volume of the What's Happening series contradicts that view by showing that mathematics is indeed found everywhere-in science, art, history, and our everyday lives. Here is some of what you'll find in this volume: Mathematics and Science Mathematical biology: Mathematics was key tocracking the genetic code. Now, new mathematics is needed to understand the three-dimensional structure of the proteins produced from that code. Celestial mechanics and cosmology: New methods have revealed a multitude of solutions to the three-body problem. And other new work may answer one of cosmology'smost fundamental questions: What is the size and shape of the universe? Mathematics and Everyday Life Traffic jams: New models are helping researchers understand where traffic jams come from-and maybe what to do about them! Small worlds: Researchers have found a short distance from theory to applications in the study of small world networks. Elegance in Mathematics Beyond Fermat's Last Theorem: Number theorists are reaching higher ground after Wiles' astounding 1994 proof: new developments inthe elegant world of elliptic curves and modular functions. The Millennium Prize Problems: The Clay Mathematics Institute has offered a million dollars for solutions to seven important and difficult unsolved problems. These are just some of the topics of current interest that are covered in thislatest volume of What's Happening in the Mathematical Sciences. The book has broad appeal for a wide spectrum of mathematicians and scientists, from high school students through advanced-level graduates and researchers.

What's Happening in the Mathematical Sciences

What's Happening in the Mathematical Sciences
Author: Dana Mackenzie
Publisher: American Mathematical Soc.
Total Pages: 140
Release:
Genre: Mathematics
ISBN: 9780821885970

A new twist in knot theory -- Error-term roulette and the Sato-Tate conjecture -- The fifty-one percent solution -- Dominos, anyone? -- No seeing is believing -- Getting with the (Mori) program -- The book that time couldn't erase -- Charting a 248-dimensional world -- Compressed sensing makes every pixel count.

What's Happening in the Mathematical Sciences, Volume 3

What's Happening in the Mathematical Sciences, Volume 3
Author: Barry Cipra
Publisher: American Mathematical Soc.
Total Pages: 124
Release: 1993
Genre: Mathematics
ISBN: 9780821803554

Beautifully produced and marvelously written this volume contains 10 articles on recent developments in the field. In an engaging, reader-friendly style, Cipra explores topics ranging from Fermat's Last Theorem to Computational Fluid Dynamics. The volumes in this series are intended to highlight the many roles mathematics plays in the modern world. Volume 3 includes articles on: a new mathematical methods that's taking Wall Street by storm, "Ultra-parallel" supercomputing with DNA, and how a mathematician found the famous flaw in the Pentium chip. Unique in kind, lively in style, Volume 3 of What's Happening in the Mathematical Sciences is a delight to read and a valuable source of information.

What's Happening in the Mathematical Sciences, Volume 10

What's Happening in the Mathematical Sciences, Volume 10
Author: Dana Mackenzie
Publisher: American Mathematical Soc.
Total Pages: 119
Release: 2015-12-18
Genre: Mathematics
ISBN: 1470422042

What's Happening in the Mathematical Sciences is a collection of articles highlighting some of the most recent developments in mathematics. These include important achievements in pure mathematics, as well as its fascinating applications. On the pure mathematics side, "Prime Clusters and Gaps: Out-Experting the Experts" talks about new insights into the distribution of prime numbers, the perpetual source of new problems, and new results. Recently, several mathematicians (including Yitang Zhang and James Maynard) significantly improved our knowledge of the distribution of prime numbers. Advances in the so-called Kadison-Singer problem and its applications in signal processing algorithms used to analyze and synthesize signals are described in "The Kadison-Singer Problem: A Fine Balance". "Quod Erat Demonstrandum" presents two examples of perseverance in mathematicians' pursuit of truth using, in particular, computers to verify their arguments. And "Following in Sherlock Holmes' Bike Tracks" shows how an episode in one of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's stories about Sherlock Holmes naturally led to very interesting problems and results in the theory of completely integrable systems. On the applied side, "Climate Past, Present, and Future" shows the importance of mathematics in the study of climate change and global warming phenomena. Mathematical models help researchers to understand the past, present, and future changes of climate, and to analyze their consequences. "The Truth Shall Set Your Fee" talks about algorithms of information exchange in cyberspace. Economists have known for a long time that trust is a cornerstone of commerce, and this becomes even more important nowadays when a lot of transactions, big and small, are done over the Internet. Recent efforts of theoretical computer scientists led to the development of so-called "rational protocols" for information exchange, where the parties in the information exchange process find that lies do not pay off. Over the last 100 years many professional mathematicians and devoted amateurs contributed to the problem of finding polygons that can tile the plane, e.g., used as floor tiles in large rooms and walls. Despite all of these efforts, the search is not yet complete, as the very recent discovery of a new plane-tiling pentagon shows in "A Pentagonal Search Pays Off". Mathematics can benefit coaches and players in some of the most popular team sports as shown in "The Brave New World of Sports Analytics". The increased ability to collect and process statistics, big data, or "analytics" has completely changed the world of sports analytics. The use of modern methods of statistical modeling allows coaches and players to create much more detailed game plans as well as create many new ways of measuring a player's value. Finally, "Origami: Unfolding the Future" talks about the ancient Japanese paper-folding art and origami's unexpected connections to a variety of areas including mathematics, technology, and education.

Excursions in the History of Mathematics

Excursions in the History of Mathematics
Author: Israel Kleiner
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Total Pages: 362
Release: 2012-02-02
Genre: Mathematics
ISBN: 0817682686

This book comprises five parts. The first three contain ten historical essays on important topics: number theory, calculus/analysis, and proof, respectively. Part four deals with several historically oriented courses, and Part five provides biographies of five mathematicians who played major roles in the historical events described in the first four parts of the work. Excursions in the History of Mathematics was written with several goals in mind: to arouse mathematics teachers’ interest in the history of their subject; to encourage mathematics teachers with at least some knowledge of the history of mathematics to offer courses with a strong historical component; and to provide an historical perspective on a number of basic topics taught in mathematics courses.

Deduction, Computation, Experiment

Deduction, Computation, Experiment
Author: Rossella Lupacchini
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Total Pages: 285
Release: 2008-09-25
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 8847007844

This volume is located in a cross-disciplinary ?eld bringing together mat- matics, logic, natural science and philosophy. Re?ection on the e?ectiveness of proof brings out a number of questions that have always been latent in the informal understanding of the subject. What makes a symbolic constr- tion signi?cant? What makes an assumption reasonable? What makes a proof reliable? G ̈ odel, Church and Turing, in di?erent ways, achieve a deep und- standing of the notion of e?ective calculability involved in the nature of proof. Turing’s work in particular provides a “precise and unquestionably adequate” de?nition of the general notion of a formal system in terms of a machine with a ?nite number of parts. On the other hand, Eugene Wigner refers to the - reasonable e?ectiveness of mathematics in the natural sciences as a miracle. Where should the boundary be traced between mathematical procedures and physical processes? What is the characteristic use of a proof as a com- tation, as opposed to its use as an experiment? What does natural science tell us about the e?ectiveness of proof? What is the role of mathematical proofs in the discovery and validation of empirical theories? The papers collected in this book are intended to search for some answers, to discuss conceptual and logical issues underlying such questions and, perhaps, to call attention to other relevant questions.

The Rainbow of Mathematics

The Rainbow of Mathematics
Author: Ivor Grattan-Guinness
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Total Pages: 836
Release: 2000
Genre: Mathematics
ISBN: 9780393320305

"For Ivor Grattan-Guinness . . . the story of how numbers were invented and harnessed is a passionate, physical saga."--"The New Yorker." The author charts the growth of mathematics through the centuries and describes the evolution of arithmetic and geometry, trigonometry, and other disciplines.

Analytic Projective Geometry

Analytic Projective Geometry
Author: John Bamberg
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 475
Release: 2023-10-31
Genre: Mathematics
ISBN: 1009260596

This book introduces students to projective geometry from an analytic perspective, mixing recent results from the past 100 years with the history of the field in one of the most comprehensive surveys of the subject. The subject is taught conceptually, with worked examples and diagrams to aid in understanding.