The Best Writing on Mathematics 2014 / Mircea Pitici.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Pitici, Mircea, editor.

Series:

The Best Writing on Mathematics

The Best Writing on Mathematics ; 5

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Mathematics--Study and teaching.

Mathematics.

Mathematics--Study and teaching--Activity programs.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (377 p.)

Place of Publication:

Princeton, NJ : Princeton University Press, [2014]

Language Note:

English

Summary:

This annual anthology brings together the year's finest mathematics writing from around the world. Featuring promising new voices alongside some of the foremost names in the field, The Best Writing on Mathematics 2014 makes available to a wide audience many articles not easily found anywhere else-and you don't need to be a mathematician to enjoy them. These writings offer surprising insights into the nature, meaning, and practice of mathematics today. They delve into the history, philosophy, teaching, and everyday occurrences of math, and take readers behind the scenes of today's hottest mathematical debates. Here John Conway presents examples of arithmetical statements that are almost certainly true but likely unprovable; Carlo Séquin explores, compares, and illustrates distinct types of one-sided surfaces known as Klein bottles; Keith Devlin asks what makes a video game good for learning mathematics and shows why many games fall short of that goal; Jordan Ellenberg reports on a recent breakthrough in the study of prime numbers; Stephen Pollard argues that mathematical practice, thinking, and experience transcend the utilitarian value of mathematics; and much, much more.In addition to presenting the year's most memorable writings on mathematics, this must-have anthology includes an introduction by editor Mircea Pitici. This book belongs on the shelf of anyone interested in where math has taken us-and where it is headed.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

Introduction / Pitici, Mircea

Mathematics and the Good Life / Pollard, Stephen

The Rise of Big Data: How It's Changing the Way We Think about the World / Cukier, Kenneth / Mayer-Schönberger, Viktor

Conway's Wizards / Khovanova, Tanya

On Unsettleable Arithmetical Problems / Conway, John H.

Crinkly Curves / Hayes, Brian

Why Do We Perceive Logarithmically? / Varshney, Lav R. / Sun, John Z.

The Music of Math Games / Devlin, Keith

The Fundamental Theorem of Algebra for Artists / Kalantari, Bahman / Torrence, Bruce

The Arts-Digitized, Quantified, and Analyzed / Lazar, Nicole

On the Number of Klein Bottle Types / Séquin, Carlo H.

Adventures in Mathematical Knitting / Belcastro, Sarah-Marie

The Mathematics of Fountain Design: A Multiple-Centers Activity / Gordon, Marshall

Food for (Mathematical) Thought / Dunham, Penelope

Wondering about Wonder in Mathematics / Zazkis, Dov / Zazkis, Rina

The Lesson of Grace in Teaching / Su, Francis Edward

Generic Proving: Reflections on Scope and Method / Leron, Uri / Zaslavsky, Orit

Extreme Proofs I: The Irrationality of √2 / Conway, John H. / Shipman, Joseph

Stuck in the Middle: Cauchy's Intermediate Value Theorem and the History of Analytic Rigor / Barany, Michael J.

Plato, Poincaré, and the Enchanted Dodecahedron: Is the Universe Shaped Like the Poincaré Homology Sphere? / Brenton, Lawrence

Computing with Real Numbers, from Archimedes to Turing and Beyond / Braverman, Mark

Chaos at Fifty / Motter, Adilson E. / Campbell, David K.

Twenty-Five Analogies for Explaining Statistical Concepts / Behar, Roberto / Grima, Pere / Marco-Almagro, Lluís

College Admissions and the Stability of Marriage / Gale, David / Shapley, Lloyd S.

The Beauty of Bounded Gaps / Ellenberg, Jordan

Contributors

Notable Writings

Acknowledgments

Credits

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Pilot project,eBook available to selected US libraries only

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 23. Mai 2019)

ISBN:

9781400865307

1400865301

OCLC:

894169899