Beautifully illustrated with old engravings as well as contemporary imagery, Sacred Number introduces basic counting systems; significant numbers from major religious texts; the importance of astronomy, geometry, and music to number quality; how numbers affect architecture. Lundy explains why the ideas of Pythagoras still resonate, and she profiles each number from one to ten to show its distinct qualities: why, for example, the golden section is associated with five, and seven with the Virgin Mary.

    Republished in book form shortly thereafter, it has since gone through four hardcover and sixteen paperback printings. It is a revolutionary work, astounding in its foresight and contemporaneity. The University of Illinois Press is pleased and honored to issue this commemorative reprinting of a classic.

    The calculus is not a hard subject and I prove this through an easy to read and obvious approach spanning only 100 pages. I have written this book with the following type of student in mind; the non-traditional student returning to college after a long break, a notoriously weak student in math who just needs to get past calculus to obtain a degree, and the garage tinkerer who wishes to understand a little more about the technical subjects. This book is meant to address the many fundamental thought-blocks that keep the average 'mathaphobe' (or just an interested person who doesn't have the time to enroll in a course) from excelling in mathematics in a clear and concise manner. It is my sincerest hope that this book helps you with your needs.Show more Show less

    Grayling answers the most important question - How do we live a good life?One of the most fundamental questions in our life is to find out what we value - what principles we want to live by and which codes we will use to guide our behaviour. Most of us want to live a good life. But what, in today's secular society, does 'good' actually mean?To classical Greeks, the acquisition of knowledge, the enjoyment of the senses, creativity and beauty were all aspects of life to strive for. Then came the volcanic declarations of St Paul and his fundamentalist ideas on sin and human nature. In WHAT IS GOOD?, A.C. Grayling examines these and other proposals on how to live a good life, from the 'heroic' ideals of the Greek poets to Kant's theories on freedom and the UN Declaration on Human Rights.

    Using the data they are constantly collecting about where we travel, where we shop, what we buy, and what interests us, they can begin to predict our daily habits, and increasingly we are relinquishing our decision-making to algorithms. Are we giving this up too easily?Without understanding what mathematics can and can't do it is impossible to get a handle on how it is changing our lives. Outnumbered is a journey to the dark side of mathematics, from how it dictates our social media activities to our travel routes. David Sumpter investigates whether mathematics is crossing dangerous lines when it comes to what we can make decisions about.This book will show how math impacts all parts of our lives: from the algorithms that decide whom we interact with to the statistical methods that categorize us as potential criminals. It tests financial algorithms that purport to generate money from nothing, and reveals that we are constantly manipulated by the math used by others, from algorithms choosing the news we hear to automated hospital waiting lists deciding whether we receive treatment.Using interviews with those people working at the cutting edge of mathematical and data research, Outnumbered will explain how math and stats work in the real world, and what we should and shouldn't worry about.

    Reveals the important contributions of mathematics to the physical and social sciences, philosophy, religion, literature, and art.

    . .he believes these ideas to be accessible to the audience he wantsto reach, and he writes so that they are. -- NatureIf you want to encourage anyone's interest in math, get them TheMathematical Universe. * New Scientist

    Topics include the development of counting and numbers systems, the emergence of zero, cultures that don’t have numbers, algebra, solid geometry, symmetry and beauty, perspective, riddles and problems, calculus, mathematical logic, friction force and displacement, subatomic particles, and the expansion of the universe. Great mathematical thinkers covered include Napier, Liu Hui, Aryabhata, Galileo, Newton, Russell, Einstein, Riemann, Euclid, Carl Friedrich Gauss, Charles Babbage, Montmort, Wittgenstein, and many more. The book is beautifully illustrated throughout in full color.

    The Computer Revolution may be even more life-changing than the Industrial Revolution. We can do things with computers that could never be done before, and computers can do things for us that could never be done before.But our love of computers should not cloud our thinking about their limitations.We are told that computers are smarter than humans and that data mining can identify previously unknown truths, or make discoveries that will revolutionize our lives. Our lives may well be changed, but not necessarily for the better. Computers are very good at discovering patterns, but are uselessin judging whether the unearthed patterns are sensible because computers do not think the way humans think.We fear that super-intelligent machines will decide to protect themselves by enslaving or eliminating humans. But the real danger is not that computers are smarter than us, but that we think computers are smarter than us and, so, trust computers to make important decisions for us.The AI Delusion explains why we should not be intimidated into thinking that computers are infallible, that data-mining is knowledge discovery, and that black boxes should be trusted.

    But your pleasure and prowess at games, gambling, and other numerically related pursuits can be heightened with this entertaining volume, in which the authors offer a fascinating view of some of the lesser-known and more imaginative aspects of mathematics.A brief and breezy explanation of the new language of mathematics precedes a smorgasbord of such thought-provoking subjects as the googolplex (the largest definite number anyone has yet bothered to conceive of); assorted geometries — plane and fancy; famous puzzles that made mathematical history; and tantalizing paradoxes. Gamblers receive fair warning on the laws of chance; a look at rubber-sheet geometry twists circles into loops without sacrificing certain important properties; and an exploration of the mathematics of change and growth shows how calculus, among its other uses, helps trace the path of falling bombs.Written with wit and clarity for the intelligent reader who has taken high school and perhaps college math, this volume deftly progresses from simple arithmetic to calculus and non-Euclidean geometry. It “lives up to its title in every way [and] might well have been merely terrifying, whereas it proves to be both charming and exciting." — Saturday Review of Literature.

    To understand the universe in the far future, we must first describe its present state and structure on the grand scale, and how its present properties arose. Dr Islam explains these topics in an accessible way in the first part of the book. From this background he speculates about the future evolution of the universe and predicts the major changes that will occur. The author has largely avoided mathematical formalism and therefore the book is well suited to general readers with a modest background knowledge of physics and astronomy.

    But in this fascinating book, Annemarie Schimmel shows that numbers have been filled with mystery and meaning since the earliest times, and across every society.In The Mystery of Numbers Annemarie Schimmel conducts an illuminating tour of the mysteries attributed to numbers over the centuries. She begins with an informative and often surprising introduction to the origins of number systems: pre-Roman Europeans, for example, may have had one based on twenty, not ten (as suggested by the English word "score" and the French word for 80, quatrevingt—four times twenty), while the Mayans had a system more sophisticated than our own. Schimmel also reveals how our fascination with numbers has led to a rich cross-fertilization of mathematical knowledge: "Arabic" numerals, for instance, were picked up by Europe from the Arabs, who had earlier adopted them from Indian sources ("Algorithm" and "algebra" are corruptions of the Arabic author and title names of a mathematical text prized in medieval Europe). But the heart of the book is an engrossing guide to the symbolism of numbers. Number symbolism, she shows, has deep roots in Western culture, from the philosophy of the Pythagoreans and Platonists, to the religious mysticism of the Cabala and the Islamic Brethren of Purity, to Kepler's belief that the laws of planetary motion should be mathematically elegant, to the unlucky thirteen. After exploring the sources of number symbolism, Schimmel examines individual numbers ranging from one to ten thousand, discussing the meanings they have had for Judaic, Christian, and Islamic traditions, with examples from Indian, Chinese, and Native American cultures as well. Two, for instance, has widely been seen as a number of contradiction and polarity, a number of discord and antithesis. And six, according to ancient and neo-platonic thinking, is the most perfect number because it is both the sum and the product of its parts (1+2+3=6 and 1x2x3=6). Using examples ranging from the Bible to the Mayans to Shakespeare, she shows how numbers have been considered feminine and masculine, holy and evil, lucky and unlucky.A highly respected scholar of Islamic culture, Annemarie Schimmel draws on her vast knowledge to paint a rich, cross-cultural portrait of the many meanings of numbers. Engaging and accessible, her account uncovers the roots of a phenomenon we all feel every Friday the thirteenth.

    What began more than sixty years ago as a modest proposal that a mathematician and an economist write a short paper together blossomed, in 1944, when Princeton University Press published Theory of Games and Economic Behavior. In it, John von Neumann and Oskar Morgenstern conceived a groundbreaking mathematical theory of economic and social organization, based on a theory of games of strategy. Not only would this revolutionize economics, but the entirely new field of scientific inquiry it yielded--game theory--has since been widely used to analyze a host of real-world phenomena from arms races to optimal policy choices of presidential candidates, from vaccination policy to major league baseball salary negotiations. And it is today established throughout both the social sciences and a wide range of other sciences.This sixtieth anniversary edition includes not only the original text but also an introduction by Harold Kuhn, an afterword by Ariel Rubinstein, and reviews and articles on the book that appeared at the time of its original publication in the New York Times, tthe American Economic Review, and a variety of other publications. Together, these writings provide readers a matchless opportunity to more fully appreciate a work whose influence will yet resound for generations to come.

    Purchasers are entitled to a free trial membership in the General Books Club where they can select from more than a million books without charge. Subjects: Astronomy; History / General; Juvenile Nonfiction / Science

    By 1949, Godel had produced a remarkable proof: In any universe described by the Theory of Relativity, time cannot exist. Einstein endorsed this result reluctantly but he could find no way to refute it, since then, neither has anyone else. Yet cosmologists and philosophers alike have proceeded as if this discovery was never made. In A World Without Time, Palle Yourgrau sets out to restore Godel to his rightful place in history, telling the story of two magnificent minds put on the shelf by the scientific fashions of their day, and attempts to rescue the brilliant work they did together.