Book Description
This inexpensive paperback uses lively language to put mathematics in an interesting, historical context and points out the many links to art, philosophy, music, computers, navigation, science, and technology. The arithmetic, algebra, and geometry are presented in a way that makes them relevant to daily life as well as larger issues.Topics include: Oh So Mysterious Egyptian Mathematics; Mesopotamia Here We Come; Those Incredible Greeks; Greeks Bearing Gifts; Must All Good Things Come to an End?; Europe Smells the Coffee; Mathematics Marches On; A Few Good Men; A Most Amazing Century of Mathematical Marvels!; The Age of Euler; A Century of Surprises; Ones and Zeros; Some More Math Before You Go. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

easy read, but be wary of the "history" of civilizations
I enjoyed reading this book until I got to Chapter 5 which I found to be inaccurate about Islamic history, not to mention extremely offensive.It would be different if the statements were true, but they're untrue and unneccesarily harsh.Other than that, this book is easy to understand and is quite humorous.I would recommend it for people who would like to learn the history of math, but I feel there are better resources out there to learn about the history of civilizations.

I finally understand math
I never appreciated my math courses in school. As a returning adult, I really found this book easily explains the concepts it is trying to get across. I especially liked the Chinese numbers. It is nice to learn about math fromother cultures. I now want to learn more math. Thank You, Lewinter and Widulski, I hope you guys write more math books.

An Excellent Book!!!!
This book covers Egyptian mathematics through to todays computers. It takes you on a journey through "mathematics" time. But the best part is even I understood it which says quite alot. I especially enjoyed the humor (Yes, a math book with humor) and the historical tidbits. I love this book!!

math affects everything!
fun to read; full of history; math was easy to follow; showed
impact of math on science, music, art, navigation, computers and philosophy; every parent should read this for when their kid says, "i hate math"...i loved the picture proof that the first n
odd numbers add up to n squared (like 1 + 3 + 5 + 7 = 16 which is 4 squared)...i envy the authors' students! ... Read more

Book Description
Hardbound. ... Read more

Book Description
Readings for Calculus
MAA Notes

Presents readings on the history of calculus and of mathematics, on the nature of mathematics and its applications, on the learning of calculus, and on the place of calculus and mathematics in society. Can be used as a supplement to any calculus text. ... Read more

Book Description
Guicciardini presents a comprehensive survey of both the research and teaching of Newtonian calculus, the calculus of "fluxions", over the period between 1700 and 1810.Although Newton was one of the inventors of calculus, the developments in Britain remained separate from the rest of Europe for over a century.While it is usually maintained that after Newton there was a period of decline in British mathematics, the author's research demonstrates that the methods used by researchers of the period yielded considerable success in laying the foundations and investigating the applications of the calculus.Even when "decline" set in, in mid century, the foundations of the reform were being laid, which were to change the direction and nature of the mathematics community. The book considers the importance of Isaac Newton, Roger Cotes, Brook Taylor, James Stirling, Abraham de Moivre, Colin Maclaurin, Thomas Bayes, John Landen and Edward Waring.This will be a useful book for students and researchers in the history of science, philosophers of science and undergraduates studying the history of mathematics. ... Read more

Product Description
This volume is produced from digital images created through the University of Michigan University Library's preservation reformatting program. ... Read more

Product Description
This volume is produced from digital images created through the University of Michigan University Library's preservation reformatting program. ... Read more

Book Description
This book is a collection of small essays containing the history and the proofs of some important and interesting theorems of analysis and partial differential operators in this century. Most of the results in the book are associated with Swedish mathematicians. Also included are the Tarski-Seidenberg theorem and Wiener's classical results in harmonic analysis and a delightful essay on the impact of distributions in analysis. All mathematical points are fully explained, but some require a certain mature understanding from the reader. This book is a well-written, simple work that offers full mathematical treatment, along with insight and fresh points of view. ... Read more

Product Description
This volume is produced from digital images created through the University of Michigan University Library's preservation reformatting program. ... Read more

Product Description
This volume is produced from digital images created through the University of Michigan University Library's preservation reformatting program. ... Read more

Product Description
This volume is produced from digital images created through the University of Michigan University Library's preservation reformatting program. ... Read more

Book Description

Silvestre François Lacroix (Paris, 1765 - ibid., 1843) was a most influential mathematical book author. His most famous work is the three-volume Traité du calcul différentiel et du calcul intégral (1797-1800; 2^nd ed. 1810-1819)an encyclopedic appraisal of 18th-century calculus which remained the standard reference on the subject through much of the 19^th century, in spite of Cauchy's reform of the subject in the 1820's.

Book Description
The book discusses the main interpretations of the classicaldistinction between analysis and synthesis with respect tomathematics. In the first part, this is discussed from a historicalpoint of view, by considering different examples from the history ofmathematics. In the second part, the question is considered from aphilosophical point of view, and some new interpretations areproposed. Finally, in the third part, one of the editors discussessome common aspects of the different interpretations. ... Read more

Amazon.com
At the very beginning of his book on i, the square root of minus one, Paul Nahin warns his readers: "An Imaginary Tale has a very strong historical component to it, but that does not mean it is a mathematical lightweight. But don't read too much into that either. It is *not* a scholarly tome meant to be read only by some mythical, elite group.... Large chunks of this book can, in fact, be read and understood by a high school senior who has paid attention to his or her teachers in the standard fare of pre-college courses. Still, it will be most accessible to the million or so who each year complete a college course in freshman calculus.... But when I need to do an integral, let me assure you I have not fallen to my knees in dumbstruck horror. And neither should you."

Nahin is a professor of electrical engineering at the University of New Hampshire; he has also written a number of science fiction short stories. His style is far more lively and humane than a mathematics textbook while covering much of the same ground. Readers will end up with a good sense for the mathematics of i and for its applications in physics and engineering. --Mary Ellen Curtin Book Description

Today complex numbers have such widespread practical use--from electrical engineering to aeronautics--that few people would expect the story behind their derivation to be filled with adventure and enigma. In An Imaginary Tale, Paul Nahin tells the 2000-year-old history of one of mathematics' most elusive numbers, the square root of minus one, also known as i. He recreates the baffling mathematical problems that conjured it up, and the colorful characters who tried to solve them.

In 1878, when two brothers stole a mathematical papyrus from the ancient Egyptian burial site in the Valley of Kings, they led scholars to the earliest known occurrence of the square root of a negative number. The papyrus offered a specific numerical example of how to calculate the volume of a truncated square pyramid, which implied the need for i. In the first century, the mathematician-engineer Heron of Alexandria encountered I in a separate project, but fudged the arithmetic; medieval mathematicians stumbled upon the concept while grappling with the meaning of negative numbers, but dismissed their square roots as nonsense. By the time of Descartes, a theoretical use for these elusive square roots--now called "imaginary numbers"--was suspected, but efforts to solve them led to intense, bitter debates. The notorious i finally won acceptance and was put to use in complex analysis and theoretical physics in Napoleonic times.

Addressing readers with both a general and scholarly interest in mathematics, Nahin weaves into this narrative entertaining historical facts and mathematical discussions, including the application of complex numbers and functions to important problems, such as Kepler's laws of planetary motion and ac electrical circuits. This book can be read as an engaging history, almost a biography, of one of the most evasive and pervasive "numbers" in all of mathematics.

Customer Reviews (40)

calculus required
I thought this book would touch on the philosophical implications of the imaginary number.I was quite surprised to see the calculus level equations on pretty much every page of the book.If you are an accomplished math genius and want to know about the history of imaginary numbers, then this might be a great book.However, if you are a mere mortal and looking for an interesting read about math, this one might be a bit much.

Defective Copy
Many unprinted pages (114, 115, 118, 119,122, 123,126,127,130,131, 134,135, 138, 139, 142, 143) that neither Princeton Paperbacks (not sold directly by them) or Amazon (more that 30 days) would stand behind.

This is a book that gave me additional prspestives to i.

What a stupid review system Amazon has
I would give this 5 stars but your review system won't allow me to.Every time I move the cursor ot 5 stars, it blanks out.This is studid.
Who made up your WEB site? A trained chimpanze?

imaginary reality
The book fascinated me.It brought to life what I'd anticipated as dry, boring dates and theorems.I don't follow all the calculations in the book, yet.But it has stretched my brain with the reading.

packed with math andworth the effort
There is a lot to be learned from An Imaginary Tale.However, it will take some effort on part of the reader.Overall, I think it is a worthwhile read, but I do have the following criticisms.

1.In my opinion, the book is a bit deceptive about the level of mathematics required by the reader. It states that a freshman calculus student could follow the math, but even those students will probably get stuck on the problems the author presents that uses differential equations and multi-variable calculus.One section tackling a topic from electrical engineering was far too technical.Either you are already familiar with this material or you would do best to just skip it as I did.

2.I caught a few typos in the math equations that could confuse less astute readers and some (but not most) of the diagrams are crude, like they were drawn hastily.I found that a little insulting, considering the mathematical sophistication expected of the reader.

3.In the section entitled Wizard Mathematics, I became a little tired of seeing different ways to produceexpressions with pi using complex numbers.The author gave at least one too many of these, in my opinion.

4.There are ALOT of equations and it would have been easier to follow everything if they had been numbered. In one derivation, he plugs an expression from about three pages back into an equation presently used, with no reference or warning, leaving the reader to wonder for a minute, where did that come from?

I doubt most people could passively read this book and fully appreciate it.You should be prepared to scribble calculations at some parts.I would not have appreciated this booknearly as much if I didn't have pencil and paper ready to make sure I understood the intermediate steps he left out in his various derivations.That's how I caught some typos. Fortunately, I was able fill in most of the blanks so the material was meaningful.For the few places where I couldn't figure out how he got from step A to step B, I was able to keep going without loss of continuity.Reading this book definitely sharpened my math skills and I learned some genuinely interesting uses for complex numbers so it was worth the time and effort.
... Read more

Book Description
Shortly after the invention of differential and integralcalculus, the calculus of variations was developed. The newcalculus looks for functions that minimize or maximize somequantity, such as the brachistochrone problem, which was solvedby Johann Bernoulli, Leibniz, Newton, Jacob Bernoulli andl'Hôpital and is sometimes considered as the startingpoint of the calculus of variations. In Woodhouse's book, firstpublished in 1810, he has interwoven the historical progresswith the scientific development of the subject.

The reader will have the opportunity to see how calculus, duringits first one hundred years, developed by seemingly tinyincrements to become the highly polished subject that we knowtoday. Here, Woodhouse's interweaving of history and sciencegives his special point of view on the mathematics. As he statesin his preface: "Indeed the authors who write near thebeginnings of science are, in general, the most instructive;they take the reader more along with them, show him the realdifficulties and, which is the main point, teach him thesubject, the way they themselves learned it." ... Read more