As we enter the year 2000, zero is once again making its presence felt. Nothing itself, it makes possible a myriad of calculations. Indeed, without zero mathematicsas we know it would not exist. And without mathematics our understanding of the universe would be vastly impoverished. But where did this nothing, this hollow circle, come from? Who created it? And what, exactly, does it mean? Robert Kaplan's The Nothing That Is: A Natural History of Zero begins as a mystery story, taking us back to Sumerian times, and then to Greece and India, piecing together the way the idea of a symbol for nothing evolved. Kaplan shows us just how handicapped our ancestors were in trying to figurelarge sums without the aid of the zero. (Try multiplying CLXIV by XXIV). Remarkably, even the Greeks, mathematically brilliant as they were, didn't have a zero--or did they? We follow the trail to the East where, a millennium or two ago, Indian mathematicians took another crucial step. By treatingzero for the first time like any other number, instead of a unique symbol, they allowed huge new leaps forward in computation, and also in our understanding of how mathematics itself works. In the Middle Ages, this mathematical knowledge swept across western Europe via Arab traders. At first it was called dangerous Saracen magic and considered the Devil's work, but it wasn't long before merchants and bankers saw how handy this magic was, and used it to develop tools likedouble-entry bookkeeping. Zero quickly became an essential part of increasingly sophisticated equations, and with the invention of calculus, one could say it was a linchpin of the scientific revolution. And now even deeper layers of this thing that is nothing are coming to light: our computers speakonly in zeros and ones, and modern mathematics shows that zero alone can be made to generate everything.Robert Kaplan serves up all this history with immense zest and humor; his writing is full of anecdotes and asides, and quotations from Shakespeare to Wallace Stevens extend the book's context far beyond the scope of scientific specialists. For Kaplan, the history of zero is a lens for looking notonly into the evolution of mathematics but into very nature of human thought. He points out how the history of mathematics is a process of recursive abstraction: how once a symbol is created to represent an idea, that symbol itself gives rise to new operations that in turn lead to new ideas. Thebeauty of mathematics is that even though we invent it, we seem to be discovering something that already exists.The joy of that discovery shines from Kaplan's pages, as he ranges from Archimedes to Einstein, making fascinating connections between mathematical insights from every age and culture. A tour de force of science history, The Nothing That Is takes us through the hollow circle that leads to infinity.

    Several things make this one stand out. Here's the most important: Linux Administration Handbook is designed for administrators working in industrial-strength production environments. It never glosses over the "subtleties" that can get you in big trouble. It doesn't stint on technical detail. It's never satisfied with restating the man pages. And it's full of war stories from folks who've been there. Evi Nemeth and her coauthors: Boy, have they ever been there. (Just ask any gray-bearded Unix sysadmin about their earlier, legendary Unix System Administration Handbook.) There's only been one downside to Linux Administration Handbook: It's been nearly five years since it was written. Well, that flaw's just been remedied. The new Second Edition has been systematically revised for the latest administration tools (think Nagios and LVM). It's carefully targeted at today's five most widely used distributions: Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4.3, Fedora Core 5, SUSE Linux 10.2, Debian 3.2 "Etch," and Ubuntu 6.06. The result: a book you can rely on for the next five years. Rely on to do what? Just about everything. You'll find chapters on booting and shutting down; "rootly" powers; controlling processes; the Linux filesystem; on adding new users. You'll learn the most efficient ways to perform backups. How to make sense of syslogs and log files. Everything you need to know about drivers, the kernel, networking, NFS -- and Internet services, from web hosting to email. Nemeth & Company bring their experience to bear on troubleshooting, performance optimization, print management, security, Windows interoperability, even "policies and politics." Whatever Linux books you already own, if you depend on Linux to run efficiently and reliably, you need this one, too. Bill Camarda, from the December 2006 href="http://www.barnesandnoble.com/newslet... Only

    This introductory text is suitable for use in a course on the subject or for self-study, featuring broad coverage and a readable exposition, with many examples and exercises. The four main chapters present the basics: fundamental group and covering spaces, homology and cohomology, higher homotopy groups, and homotopy theory generally. The author emphasizes the geometric aspects of the subject, which helps students gain intuition. A unique feature is the inclusion of many optional topics not usually part of a first course due to time constraints: Bockstein and transfer homomorphisms, direct and inverse limits, H-spaces and Hopf algebras, the Brown representability theorem, the James reduced product, the Dold-Thom theorem, and Steenrod squares and powers.

    An extremely clever account.--The New Yorker.

    Since its publication in 1908, it has been a classic work to which successive generations of budding mathematicians have turned at the beginning of their undergraduate courses. In its pages, Hardy combines the enthusiasm of a missionary with the rigor of a purist in his exposition of the fundamental ideas of the differential and integral calculus, of the properties of infinite series and of other topics involving the notion of limit.

    It is the complex dynamics of flow that structures our atmosphere, land, and oceans.Part of a trilogy of books exploring the science of patterns in nature by acclaimed science writer Philip Ball, this volume explores the elusive rules that govern flow - the science of chaotic behavior.

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    This edition contains NEW tables on Properties of Ionic Liquids, Solubilities of Hydrocarbons in Sea Water, Solubility of Organic Compounds in Superheated Water, and Nutritive Value of Foods. It also updates many tables including Critical Constants, Heats of Vaporization, Aqueous Solubility of Organic Compounds, Vapor Pressure of Mercury, Scientific Abbreviations and Symbols, and Bond Dissociation Energies. The 88th Edition also presents a new Foreword written by Dr. Harold Kroto, a 1996 Nobel Laureate in Chemistry.

    In studying number theory from such a perspective, mathematics majors are spared repetition and provided with new insights, while other students benefit from the consequent simplicity of the proofs for many theorems.Among the topics covered in this accessible, carefully designed introduction are multiplicativity-divisibility, including the fundamental theorem of arithmetic, combinatorial and computational number theory, congruences, arithmetic functions, primitive roots and prime numbers. Later chapters offer lucid treatments of quadratic congruences, additivity (including partition theory) and geometric number theory.Of particular importance in this text is the author's emphasis on the value of numerical examples in number theory and the role of computers in obtaining such examples. Exercises provide opportunities for constructing numerical tables with or without a computer. Students can then derive conjectures from such numerical tables, after which relevant theorems will seem natural and well-motivated..

    Theory has been provided in points between each chapter for clarifying relevant basic concepts. The book consist four parts algebra and trigonometry, fundamentals of analysis, geometry and vector algebra and the problems and questions set during oral examinations. Each chapter consist topic wise problems. Sample examples are provided after each text for understanding the topic well. The fourth part "oral examination problems and question" includes samples suggested by the higher schools for the help of students. Answers and hints are given at the end of the book for understanding the concept well. About the Book: Problems in Mathematics with Hints and Solutions Contents: Preface Part 1. Algebra, Trigonometry and Elementary Functions Problems on Integers. Criteria for Divisibility Real Number, Transformation of Algebraic Expressions Mathematical Induction. Elements of Combinatorics. BinomialTheorem Equations and Inequalities of the First and the SecondDegree Equations of Higher Degrees, Rational Inequalities Irrational Equations and Inequalities Systems of Equations and Inequalities The Domain of Definition and the Range of a Function Exponential and Logarithmic Equations and Inequalities Transformations of Trigonometric Expressions. InverseTrigonometric Functions Solutions of Trigonometric Equations, Inequalities and Systemsof Equations Progressions Solutions of Problems on Derivation of Equations Complex Numbers Part 2. Fundamentals of Mathematical Analysis Sequences and Their Limits. An Infinitely Decreasing GeometricProgression. Limits of Functions The Derivative. Investigating the Behaviors of Functions withthe Aid of the Derivative Graphs of Functions The Antiderivative. The Integral. The Area of a CurvilinearTrapezoid Part 3. Geometry and Vector Algebra Vector Algebra Plane Geometry. Problems on Proof Plane Geometry. Construction Problems Plane Geometry. C

    Intriguing, witty, paradoxical productions of one of the world's foremost creators of puzzles.This book was converted from its physical edition to the digital format by a community of volunteers. You may find it for free on the web. Purchase of the Kindle edition includes wireless delivery.

    Volume 1 looks at the discipline's origins in Babylon and Egypt, the creation of geometry and trigonometry by the Greeks, and the role of mathematics in the medieval and early modern periods. Volume 2 focuses on calculus, the rise of analysis in the 19th century, and the number theories of Dedekind and Dirichlet. The concluding volume covers the revival of projective geometry, the emergence of abstract algebra, the beginnings of topology, and the influence of Godel on recent mathematical study.

    First exposed by Marx and Engels, Dialectical Materialism is a comprehensive methodology explaining the unity of the laws that govern nature, science and society, from evolution to chaos theory, nuclear physics to childhood development. First published in 1995 to coincide with Engel's centenary, Reason in Revolt has had a great success around the world. It has been published in Spanish, Italian, Greek, Turkish, Urdu, and is now being translated into German and Flemish. The Spanish edition recently went into its second edition. To date, no one has found serious fault with the science of the book. And every new discovery of science serves to confirm the statement of Engels, that "in the last analysis, Nature works dialectically."

    Amazingly, the story unveiled in it is true.In the world of math, the Poincaré Conjecture was a holy grail. Decade after decade the theorem that informs how we understand the shape of the universe defied every effort to prove it. Now, after more than a century, an eccentric Russian recluse has found the solution to one of the seven greatest math problems of our time, earning the right to claim the first one-million-dollar Millennium math prize.George Szpiro begins his masterfully told story in 1904 when Frenchman Henri Poincaré formulated a conjecture about a seemingly simple problem. Imagine an ant crawling around on a large surface. How would it know whether the surface is a flat plane, a round sphere, or a bagel- shaped object? The ant would need to lift off into space to observe the object. How could you prove the shape was spherical without actually seeing it? Simply, this is what Poincaré sought to solve.In fact, Poincaré thought he had solved it back at the turn of the twentieth century, but soon realized his mistake. After four more years' work, he gave up. Across the generations from China to Texas, great minds stalked the solution in the wilds of higher dimensions. Among them was Grigory Perelman, a mysterious Russian who seems to have stepped out of a Dostoyevsky novel. Living in near poverty with his mother, he has refused all prizes and academic appointments, and rarely talks to anyone, including fellow mathematicians. It seemed he had lost the race in 2002, when the conjecture was widely but, again, falsely reported as solved. A year later, Perelman dropped three papers onto the Internet that not only proved the Poincaré Conjecture but enlightened the universe of higher dimensions, solving an array of even more mind-bending math with implications that will take an age to unravel. After years of review, his proof has just won him a Fields Medal--the 'Nobel of math'--awarded only once every four years. With no interest in fame, he refused to attend the ceremony, did not accept the medal, and stayed home to watch television.Perelman is a St. Petersburg hero, devoted to an ascetic life of the mind. The story of the enigma in the shape of space that he cracked is part history, part math, and a fascinating tale of the most abstract kind of creativity.

    Since the publication of the First Edition over thirty years ago, Div, Grad, Curl, and All That has been widely renowned for its clear and concise coverage of vector calculus, helping science and engineering students gain a thorough understanding of gradient, curl, and Laplacian operators without required knowledge of advanced mathematics.