Language Is Not Mathematics

'Language is Not Mathematics' is a natural and easier way to understand and use the English verb. As language is, of course, used for both general and business purposes, to say what we mean, this course focuses on the thoughts of the speaker. Instead of following dozens of rules, you will, therefore, have to choose only one personal 'aspect' for each tense or other form of the verb to express your meaning in any particular situation. This approach is now being used in classrooms and companies around the world, enabling students and business employees to speak English more fluently and accurately.

The book emerges from several contemporary concerns in mathematics, language, and mathematics education. However, the book takes a different stance with respect to language by combining discussion of linguistics and mathematics using examples from each to illustrate the other. The picture that emerges is of a subject that is much more contingent, much more relative, much more subject to human experience than is usually accepted. Another way of expressing this, is that the thesis of the book takes the idea of mathematics as a human creation, and, using the evidence from language, comes to more radical conclusions than most writers allow.

A new and unique way of understanding the translation of concepts and natural language into mathematical expressions Transforming a body of text into corresponding mathematical expressions and models is traditionally viewed and taught as a mathematical problem; it is also a task that most find difficult. The Language of Mathematics: Utilizing Math in Practice reveals a new way to view this process—not as a mathematical problem, but as a translation, or language, problem. By presenting the language of mathematics explicitly and systematically, this book helps readers to learn mathematics¿and improve their ability to apply mathematics more efficiently and effectively to practical problems in their own work. Using parts of speech to identify variables and functions in a mathematical model is a new approach, as is the insight that examining aspects of grammar is highly useful when formulating a corresponding mathematical model. This book identifies the basic elements of the language of mathematics, such as values, variables, and functions, while presenting the grammatical rules for combining them into expressions and other structures. The author describes and defines different notational forms for expressions, and also identifies the relationships between parts of speech and other grammatical elements in English and components of expressions in the language of mathematics. Extensive examples are used throughout that cover a wide range of real-world problems and feature diagrams and tables to facilitate understanding. The Language of Mathematics is a thought-provoking book of interest for readers who would like to learn more about the linguistic nature and aspects of mathematical notation. The book also serves as a valuable supplement for engineers, technicians, managers, and consultants who would like to improve their ability to apply mathematics effectively, systematically, and efficiently to practical problems.

Taking the reader on a wondrous journey through the invisible universe that surrounds us--a universe made visible by mathematics--Devlin shows us what keeps a jumbo jet in the air, explains how we can see and hear a football game on TV, and allows us to predict the weather, the behavior of the stock market, and the outcome of elections. Microwave ovens, telephone cables, children's toys, pacemakers, automobiles, and computers--all operate on mathematical principles. Far from a dry and esoteric subject, mathematics is a rich and living part of our culture.

Teaching K-12 math becomes an easier task when everyone understands the language, symbolism, and representation of math concepts Published in partnership with SEDL, The Problem with Math Is English illustrates how students often understand fundamental mathematical concepts at a superficial level. Written to inspire ?aha? moments, this book enables teachers to help students identify and comprehend the nuances and true meaning of math concepts by exploring them through the lenses of language and symbolism, delving into such essential topics as multiplication, division, fractions, place value, proportional reasoning, graphs, slope, order of operations, and the distributive property. Offers a new way to approach teaching math content in a way that will improve how all students, and especially English language learners, understand math Emphasizes major attributes of conceptual understanding in mathematics, including simple yet deep definitions of key terms, connections among key topics, and insightful interpretation This important new book fills a gap in math education by illustrating how a deeper knowledge of math concepts can be developed in all students through a focus on language and symbolism.

Covers all areas, including operations on languages, context-sensitive languages, automata, decidability, syntax analysis, derivation languages, and more. Numerous worked examples, problem exercises, and elegant mathematical proofs. 1983 edition.

“Witty, compelling, and just plain fun to read . . ." —Evelyn Lamb, Scientific American The Freakonomics of math—a math-world superstar unveils the hidden beauty and logic of the world and puts its power in our hands The math we learn in school can seem like a dull set of rules, laid down by the ancients and not to be questioned. In How Not to Be Wrong, Jordan Ellenberg shows us how terribly limiting this view is: Math isn’t confined to abstract incidents that never occur in real life, but rather touches everything we do—the whole world is shot through with it. Math allows us to see the hidden structures underneath the messy and chaotic surface of our world. It’s a science of not being wrong, hammered out by centuries of hard work and argument. Armed with the tools of mathematics, we can see through to the true meaning of information we take for granted: How early should you get to the airport? What does “public opinion” really represent? Why do tall parents have shorter children? Who really won Florida in 2000? And how likely are you, really, to develop cancer? How Not to Be Wrong presents the surprising revelations behind all of these questions and many more, using the mathematician’s method of analyzing life and exposing the hard-won insights of the academic community to the layman—minus the jargon. Ellenberg chases mathematical threads through a vast range of time and space, from the everyday to the cosmic, encountering, among other things, baseball, Reaganomics, daring lottery schemes, Voltaire, the replicability crisis in psychology, Italian Renaissance painting, artificial languages, the development of non-Euclidean geometry, the coming obesity apocalypse, Antonin Scalia’s views on crime and punishment, the psychology of slime molds, what Facebook can and can’t figure out about you, and the existence of God. Ellenberg pulls from history as well as from the latest theoretical developments to provide those not trained in math with the knowledge they need. Math, as Ellenberg says, is “an atomic-powered prosthesis that you attach to your common sense, vastly multiplying its reach and strength.” With the tools of mathematics in hand, you can understand the world in a deeper, more meaningful way. How Not to Be Wrong will show you how.

By mathematics of language is meant the mathematical properties that may, under certain assumptions about modeling, be attributed to human languages and related symbolic systems, as well as the increasingly active and autonomous scholarly discipline that studies such things. More specifically, the use of techniques developed in a variety of pure and applied mathematics, including logic and the theory of computation, in the discovery and articulation of insights into the structure of language. Some of the contributions to this volume deal primarily with foundational issues, others with specific models and theoretical issues. A few are concerned with semantics, but most focus on syntax. The papers in this volume reveal applications of the several fields of the theory of computation (formal languages, automata, complexity), formal logic, topology, set theory, graph theory, and statistics. The book also shows a keen interest in developing mathematical models that are especially suited to natural languages.

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The Language of Mathematics was awarded the E.W. Beth Dissertation Prize for outstanding dissertations in the fields of logic, language, and information. It innovatively combines techniques from linguistics, philosophy of mathematics, and computation to give the first wide-ranging analysis of mathematical language. It focuses particularly on a method for determining the complete meaning of mathematical texts and on resolving technical deficiencies in all standard accounts of the foundations of mathematics. "The thesis does far more than is required for a PhD: it is more like a lifetime's work packed into three years, and is a truly exceptional achievement." Timothy Gowers