Research Catalog

Title

The math book / Clifford A. Pickover.

Author

Pickover, Clifford A.

Publication

New York, NY : Sterling Pub., [2009], ©2009.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Description

527 pages, 1 unnumbered pages : color illustrations; 22 cm

Summary

This book covers 250 milestones in mathematical history, beginning millions of years ago with ancient "ant odometers" and moving through time to our modern-day quest for new dimensions.

Subjects

• Mathematics
• Mathematics > History
• History

Genre/Form

History.

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references (pages 518-525) and index.

Contents

c. 150 million B.C. Ant odometer -- c. 30 million B.C. Primates count -- c. 1 million B.C. Cicada-generated prime numbers -- c. 100,000 B.C. Knots -- c. 18,000 B.C. Ishango bone -- c. 3000 B.C. Quipu -- c. 3000 B.C. Dice -- c. 2200 B.C. Magic squares -- c. 1800 B.C. Plimpton -- c. 1650 B.C. Rhind papyrus -- c. 1300 B.C. Tic tac toe -- c. 600 B.C. Pythagorean theorem and triangles -- 548 B.C. Go -- c. 530 B.C. Pythagoras founds mathematical brotherhood -- c. 445 B.C. Zeno's paradoxes -- c. 440 B.C. Quadrature of the lune -- c. 350 B.C. Platonic solids -- c. 350 B.C. Aristotle's Organon -- c. 320 B.C. Aristotle's wheel paradox -- 300 B.C. Euclid's Elements -- c. 250 B.C. Archimedes : sand, cattle & stomachion -- c. 250 B.C. (pi) -- c. 240 B.C. Sieve of Eratosthenes -- c. 240 B.C. Archimedean semi-regular polyhedra -- 225 B.C. Archimedes' spiral -- c. 180 B.C. Cissoid of Diocles -- c. 150 Ptolemy's Almagest -- 250 Diophantus's Arithmetica -- c. 340 Pappus's hexegon theorem -- c. 350 Bakhshali manuscript -- 415 Death of Hypatia -- c. 650 Zero -- c. 800 Alcuin's Propositiones ad acuendos juvenes -- 830 Al-Khwarizmi's Algebra -- 834 Borromean rings -- 850 Ganita sara samgraha -- c. 850 Thabit formula for amicable numbers -- c. 953 Chapters in Indian mathematics -- 1070 Omar Khayyam's Treatise -- c. 1150 Al-Samawal's The dazzling -- c. 1200 Abacus -- 1202 Fibonacci's Liber abaci -- 1256 Wheat on a chessboard -- c. 1350 Harmonic series diverges -- c. 1427 Law of cosines -- 1478 Treviso arithmetic -- c. 1500 Discovery of series formula for (pi) -- 1509 Golden ratio -- 1518 Polygraphiae libri sex -- 1537 Loxodrome -- 1545 Cardano's Ars magna -- 1556 Sumario compendioso -- 1569 Mercator projection -- 1572 Imaginary numbers -- 1611 Kepler conjecture -- 1614 Logarithms -- 1621 Slide rule -- 1636 Fermat's spiral -- 1637 Fermat's last theorem -- 1637 Descartes' La géométrie -- 1637 Cardioid -- 1638 Logarithmic spiral -- 1639 Projective geometry -- 1641 Torricelli's trumpet -- 1654 Pascal's triangle -- 1657 The length of Neile's semicubical parabola -- 1659 Viviani's theorem -- c. 1665 Discovery of calculus -- 1669 Newton's method -- 1673 Tautochrone problem -- 1674 Astroid -- 1696 L'Hôpital's Analysis of the infinitely small -- 1702 Rope around the earth puzzle -- 1713 Law of large numbers -- 1727 Euler's number, e -- 1730 Stirling's formula -- 1733 Normal distribution curve -- 1735 Euler-Mascheroni constant -- 1736 Königsberg bridges -- 1738 St. Petersburg paradox -- 1742 Goldbach conjecture -- 1748 Agnesi's Instiuzioni analitiche -- 1751 Euler's formula for polyhedra -- 1751 Euler's polygon division problem -- 1759 Knight's tours -- 1761 Bayes' theorem -- 1769 Franklin magic square -- 1774 Minimal surface -- 1777 Buffon's needle -- 1779 Thirty-six officers problem -- c. 1789 Sangaku geometry -- 1795 Least squares -- 1796 Constructing a regular heptadecagon -- 1797 Fundamental theorem of algebra -- 1801 Gauss's Disquisitiones arithmeticae -- 1801 Three-armed protractor -- 1807 Fourier series -- 1812 Laplace's Théorie analytique des probabilités -- 1816 Prince Rupert's problem -- 1817 Bessel functions -- 1822 Babbage mechanical computer -- 1823 Cauchy's Le calcul infinitéstimal -- 1827 Barycentric calculus -- 1829 Non-Euclidean geometry -- 1831 Möbius function -- 1832 Group theory -- 1834 Pigeonhole principle -- 1843 Quaternions -- 1844 Transcendental numbers -- 1844 Catalan conjecture -- 1850 The matrices of Sylvester -- 1852 Four-color theorem -- 1854 Boolean algebra -- 1857 Icosian game -- 1857 Harmonograph -- 1858 The Möbius strip -- 1858 Holditch's theorem -- 1859 Riemann hypothesis -- 1868 Beltrami's pseudosphere -- 1872 Weierstrass function -- 1872 Gros's Théorie du baguenodier -- 1874 The doctorate of Kovalevskaya -- 1874 Fifteen puzzle -- 1874 Cantor's transfinite numbers -- 1875 Reuleaux triangle -- 1876 Harmonic analyzer -- 1879 Ritty model 1 cash register -- 1880 Venn diagrams -- 1881 Benford's law -- 1882 Klein bottle -- 1883 Tower of Hanoi -- 1884 Flatland -- 1888 Tesseract -- 1889 Peano axioms -- 1890 Peano curve -- 1891 Wallpaper groups -- 1893 Sylvester's line problem -- 1896 Proof of the prime number theorem -- 1899 Pick's theorem -- 1899 Morley's trisector theorem -- 1900 Hilbert's 23 problems -- 1900 Chi-square -- 1901 Boy's surface -- 1901 Barber paradox -- 1901 Jung's theorem -- 1904 Poincaré conjecture -- 1904 Koch snowflake -- 1904 Zermelo's axiom of choice -- 1905 Jordan curve theorem -- 1906 Thue-Morse sequence -- 1909 Brouwer fixed-point theorem -- 1909 Normal number -- 1909 Boole's Philosophy and fun of algebra -- 1910-1913 Principia mathematica -- 1912 Hairy ball theorem -- 1913 Infinite monkey theorem -- 1916 Bieberbach conjecture -- 1916 Johnson's theorem -- 1918 Hausdorff dimension -- 1919 Brun's constant -- c. 1920 Googol -- 1920 Antoine's necklace -- 1921 Noether's Idealtheorie -- 1921 Lost in hyperspace -- 1922 Geodesic dome -- 1924 Alexander's horned sphere -- 1924 Banach-Tarski paradox -- 1925 Squaring a rectangle -- 1925 Hilbert's Grand Hotel -- 1926 Menger sponge -- 1927 Differential analyzer -- 1928 Ramsey theory -- 1931 Gödel's theorem -- 1933 Champernowne's number -- 1935 Bourbaki : secret society -- 1936 Fields medal -- 1936 Turing machines -- 1936 Voderberg tilings -- 1937 Collatz conjecture -- 1938 Ford circles -- 1938 The rise of randomizing machines -- 1939 Birthday paradox -- c. 1940 Polygon circumscribing -- 1942 Hex -- 1945 Pig game strategy -- 1946 ENIAC -- 1946 Von Neumann's middle-square randomizer -- 1947 Gray code -- 1948 Information theory -- 1948 Curta calculator -- 1949 Császár polyhedron -- 1950 Nash equilibrium -- c. 1950 Coastline paradox -- 1950 Prisoner's dilemma -- 1952 Cellular automata -- 1957 Martin Gardner's mathematical recreations -- 1958 Gilbreath's conjecture -- 1958 Turning a sphere inside out -- 1958 Platonic billiards -- 1959 Outer billiards -- 1960 Newcomb's paradox -- 1960 Sierpiński numbers -- 1963 Chaos and the butterfly effect -- 1963 Ulam spiral -- 1963 Continuum hypothesis undecidability -- c. 1965 Superegg -- 1965 Fuzzy logic -- 1966 Instant insanity -- 1967 Langlands program -- 1967 Sprouts -- 1968 Catastrophe theory -- 1969 Tokarsky's unilluminable room -- 1970 Donald Knuth and Mastermind -- 1971 Erdös and extreme collaboration -- 1972 HP-35 : first scientific pocket calculator -- 1973 Penrose tiles -- 1973 Art gallery theorem -- 1974 Rubik's cube -- 1974 Chaitin's omega -- 1974 Surreal numbers -- 1974 Perko knots -- 1975 Fractals -- 1975 Feigenbaum constant -- 1977 Public-key cryptography -- 1977 Szilassi polyhedron -- 1979 Ikeda attractor -- 1979 Spidrons -- 1980 Mandelbrot set -- 1981 Monster group -- 1982 Ball triangle picking -- 1984 Jones polynomial -- 1985 Weeks manifold -- 1985 Andrica's conjecture -- 1985 The ABC conjecture -- 1986 Audioactive sequence -- 1988 Mathematica -- 1988 Murphy's law and knots -- 1989 Butterfly curve -- 1996 The on-line encyclopedia of integer sequences -- 1999 Eternity puzzle -- 1999 Perfect magic tesseract -- 1999 Parrondo's paradox -- 1999 Solving of the holyhedron -- 2001 Bed sheet problem -- 2002 Solving the game of Awari -- 2002 Tetris is NP-complete -- 2005 NUMB3RS -- 2007 Checkers is solved -- 2007 The quest for lie group É́8 -- 2007 Mathematical universe hypothesis.

ISBN

• 9781402757969
• 1402757964
• 9781402788291
• 1402788290

LCCN

2008043214

OCLC

• ocn262694306
• 262694306
• SCSB-9089659

Owning Institutions

Columbia University Libraries