Foolproof, and Other Mathematical Meditations - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook Foolproof, and Other Mathematical Meditations write by Brian Hayes. This book was released on 2018-10-30. Foolproof, and Other Mathematical Meditations available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. A non-mathematician explores mathematical terrain, reporting accessibly and engagingly on topics from Sudoku to probability. Brian Hayes wants to convince us that mathematics is too important and too much fun to be left to the mathematicians. Foolproof, and Other Mathematical Meditations is his entertaining and accessible exploration of mathematical terrain both far-flung and nearby, bringing readers tidings of mathematical topics from Markov chains to Sudoku. Hayes, a non-mathematician, argues that mathematics is not only an essential tool for understanding the world but also a world unto itself, filled with objects and patterns that transcend earthly reality. In a series of essays, Hayes sets off to explore this exotic terrain, and takes the reader with him. Math has a bad reputation: dull, difficult, detached from daily life. As a talking Barbie doll opined, “Math class is tough.” But Hayes makes math seem fun. Whether he's tracing the genealogy of a well-worn anecdote about a famous mathematical prodigy, or speculating about what would happen to a lost ball in the nth dimension, or explaining that there are such things as quasirandom numbers, Hayes wants readers to share his enthusiasm. That's why he imagines a cinematic treatment of the discovery of the Riemann zeta function (“The year: 1972. The scene: Afternoon tea in Fuld Hall at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey”), explains that there is math in Sudoku after all, and describes better-than-average averages. Even when some of these essays involve a hike up the learning curve, the view from the top is worth it.
Programming for the Puzzled
Programming for the Puzzled - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook Programming for the Puzzled write by Srini Devadas. This book was released on 2017-11-16. Programming for the Puzzled available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Learning programming with one of “the coolest applications around”: algorithmic puzzles ranging from scheduling selfie time to verifying the six degrees of separation hypothesis. This book builds a bridge between the recreational world of algorithmic puzzles (puzzles that can be solved by algorithms) and the pragmatic world of computer programming, teaching readers to program while solving puzzles. Few introductory students want to program for programming's sake. Puzzles are real-world applications that are attention grabbing, intriguing, and easy to describe. Each lesson starts with the description of a puzzle. After a failed attempt or two at solving the puzzle, the reader arrives at an Aha! moment—a search strategy, data structure, or mathematical fact—and the solution presents itself. The solution to the puzzle becomes the specification of the code to be written. Readers will thus know what the code is supposed to do before seeing the code itself. This represents a pedagogical philosophy that decouples understanding the functionality of the code from understanding programming language syntax and semantics. Python syntax and semantics required to understand the code are explained as needed for each puzzle. Readers need only the rudimentary grasp of programming concepts that can be obtained from introductory or AP computer science classes in high school. The book includes more than twenty puzzles and more than seventy programming exercises that vary in difficulty. Many of the puzzles are well known and have appeared in publications and on websites in many variations. They range from scheduling selfie time with celebrities to solving Sudoku problems in seconds to verifying the six degrees of separation hypothesis. The code for selected puzzle solutions is downloadable from the book's website; the code for all puzzle solutions is available to instructors.
Sleight of Mind
Sleight of Mind - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook Sleight of Mind write by Matt Cook. This book was released on 2021-08-03. Sleight of Mind available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. This “fun, brain-twisting book . . . will make you think” as it explores more than 75 paradoxes in mathematics, philosophy, physics, and the social sciences (Sean Carroll, New York Times–bestselling author of Something Deeply Hidden). Paradox is a sophisticated kind of magic trick. A magician’s purpose is to create the appearance of impossibility, to pull a rabbit from an empty hat. Yet paradox doesn’t require tangibles, like rabbits or hats. Paradox works in the abstract, with words and concepts and symbols, to create the illusion of contradiction. There are no contradictions in reality, but there can appear to be. In Sleight of Mind, Matt Cook and a few collaborators dive deeply into more than 75 paradoxes in mathematics, physics, philosophy, and the social sciences. As each paradox is discussed and resolved, Cook helps readers discover the meaning of knowledge and the proper formation of concepts—and how reason can dispel the illusion of contradiction. The journey begins with “a most ingenious paradox” from Gilbert and Sullivan’s Pirates of Penzance. Readers will then travel from Ancient Greece to cutting-edge laboratories, encounter infinity and its different sizes, and discover mathematical impossibilities inherent in elections. They will tackle conundrums in probability, induction, geometry, and game theory; perform “supertasks”; build apparent perpetual motion machines; meet twins living in different millennia; explore the strange quantum world—and much more.
The Raven's Hat
The Raven's Hat - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook The Raven's Hat write by Jonas Peters. This book was released on 2021-02-02. The Raven's Hat available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Games that show how mathematics can solve the apparently unsolvable. This book presents a series of engaging games that seem unsolvable--but can be solved when they are translated into mathematical terms. How can players find their ID cards when the cards are distributed randomly among twenty boxes? By applying the theory of permutations. How can a player guess the color of her own hat when she can only see other players' hats? Hamming codes, which are used in communication technologies. Like magic, mathematics solves the apparently unsolvable. The games allow readers, including university students or anyone with high school-level math, to experience the joy of mathematical discovery.
Greek Mathematical Thought and the Origin of Algebra
Greek Mathematical Thought and the Origin of Algebra - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook Greek Mathematical Thought and the Origin of Algebra write by Jacob Klein. This book was released on 2013-04-22. Greek Mathematical Thought and the Origin of Algebra available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Important study focuses on the revival and assimilation of ancient Greek mathematics in the 13th-16th centuries, via Arabic science, and the 16th-century development of symbolic algebra. 1968 edition. Bibliography.
