Mathematical Explorations

Provides readers with experience of working on difficult unsolved problems. No deep mathematical background is required.

Mathematical Explorations follows on from the author's previous book, Creative Mathematics, in the same series, and gives the reader experience in working on problems requiring a little more mathematical maturity. The author's main aim is to show that problems are often solved by using mathematics that is not obviously connected to the problem, and readers are encouraged to consider as wide a variety of mathematical ideas as possible. In each case, the emphasis is placed on the important underlying ideas rather than on the solutions for their own sake. To enhance understanding of how mathematical research is conducted, each problem has been chosen not for its mathematical importance, but because it provides a good illustration of how arguments can be developed. While the reader does not require a deep mathematical background to tackle these problems, they will find their mathematical understanding is enriched by attempting to solve them.

How does mathematics enable us to send pictures from space back to Earth? Where does the bell-shaped curve come from? Why do you need only 23 people in a room for a 50/50 chance of two of them sharing the same birthday? In Strange Curves, Counting Rabbits, and Other Mathematical Explorations, Keith Ball highlights how ideas, mostly from pure math, can answer these questions and many more. Drawing on areas of mathematics from probability theory, number theory, and geometry, he explores a wide range of concepts, some more light-hearted, others central to the development of the field and used daily by mathematicians, physicists, and engineers. Each of the book's ten chapters begins by outlining key concepts and goes on to discuss, with the minimum of technical detail, the principles that underlie them. Each includes puzzles and problems of varying difficulty. While the chapters are self-contained, they also reveal the links between seemingly unrelated topics. For example, the problem of how to design codes for satellite communication gives rise to the same idea of uncertainty as the problem of screening blood samples for disease. Accessible to anyone familiar with basic calculus, this book is a treasure trove of ideas that will entertain, amuse, and bemuse students, teachers, and math lovers of all ages.

This book presents teachers with a sound theoretical framework for encouraging children to explore mathematical concepts and become numerate in the 21st century. It shows that mathematical learning can occur in a variety of ways, including when children explore ideas through play, problem solving and problem posing, engage in a rich variety of multimodal learning experiences, pursue self-directed activities and cooperate with others, and make connections between ideas and experiences in their everyday worlds. - Back cover

Popular account ranges from counting to mathematical logic and covers many concepts related to infinity: graphic representation of functions; pairings, other combinations; prime numbers; logarithms, circular functions; more. 216 illustrations.

The stories of five mathematical journeys into new realms, pieced together from the writings of the explorers themselves. Some were guided by mere curiosity and the thrill of adventure, others by more practical motives. In each case the outcome was a vast expansion of the known mathematical world and the realisation that still greater vistas remain to be explored. The authors tell these stories by guiding readers through the very words of the mathematicians at the heart of these events, providing an insightinto the art of approaching mathematical problems. The five chapters are completely independent, with varying levels of mathematical sophistication, and will attract students, instructors, and the intellectually curious reader. By working through some of the original sources and supplementary exercises, which discuss and solve -- or attempt to solve -- a great problem, this book helps readers discover the roots of modern problems, ideas, and concepts, even whole subjects. Students will also see the obstacles that earlier thinkers had to clear in order to make their respective contributions to five central themes in the evolution of mathematics.

Have you ever wondered why the language of modern physics centres on geometry? Or how quantum operators and Dirac brackets work? What a convolution really is? What tensors are all about? Or what field theory and lagrangians are, and why gravity is described as curvature? This book takes you on a tour of the main ideas forming the language of modern mathematical physics. Here you will meet novel approaches to concepts such as determinants and geometry, wave function evolution, statistics, signal processing, and three-dimensional rotations. You will see how the accelerated frames of special relativity tell us about gravity. On the journey, you will discover how tensor notation relates to vector calculus, how differential geometry is built on intuitive concepts, and how variational calculus leads to field theory. You will meet quantum measurement theory, along with Green functions and the art of complex integration, and finally general relativity and cosmology. The book takes a fresh approach to tensor analysis built solely on the metric and vectors, with no need for one-forms. This gives a much more geometrical and intuitive insight into vector and tensor calculus, together with general relativity, than do traditional, more abstract methods. Don Koks is a physicist at the Defence Science and Technology Organisation in Adelaide, Australia. His doctorate in quantum cosmology was obtained from the Department of Physics and Mathematical Physics at Adelaide University. Prior work at the University of Auckland specialised in applied accelerator physics, along with pure and applied mathematics.

What does it mean to learn math from a Christian perspective? This book is ideally suited for a Christian audience who wishes to significantly extend his or her knowledge of mathematics while developing biblical perspectives on the mathematical-philosophical questions posed in each section. Among other compelling issues, readers will wrestle with questions as to the relationships between God, nature, mathematics, and humans. The integration of Christian thought is weaved throughout the text.[**Note: there are two versions of this book. Read below for more details.]Through the mathematics content presented in this book, you will broaden your understanding of geometry by investigating dimensions, fractals, topological equivalence, and other geometries. You will develop your reasoning skills through identifying deception in statistics, discriminating between cause and correlation, evaluating various voting methods, and exploring chaos theory. Finally, you will refine your understanding of numbers and systems through studying prime, figurate, vampire, narcissistic, powerful, abundant, and transcendental numbers.After studying each mathematical topic, you will consider how the topic informs your answers to questions like: Who are we? What is the nature of reality? How do we know if something is true? What is good? What is beautiful? These questions and their related sub-questions have been part of the human experience from the dawn of human history. Considering how mathematics helps to inform these questions provides for a deeper, more meaningful understanding of mathematics and our world.This book is ideal for:- An undergraduate “Mathematics for Liberal Arts” course at a Christian college- A half-year senior mathematics elective as part of a focus on worldview at a Christian high school - A Christian homeschool family that wishes to extend their children's learning beyond the standard curriculum in a Christian centered context- Anyone interested in extending his or her own understanding of the scope and depth of mathematicsEach section features:- Introductory exercises that prompt the reader to recall relevant information or skills- Concept development sections that explain the mathematics for even the math-phobic student- Content sections that connect the mathematics to literature, art, music, science, and other subjects- A “Something to Consider” section that asks the reader to think about related enduring questions from a Christian perspective- “Covering the Reading” questions that help to process the text- “Problems” that require the reader to research and consider the topic more thoroughly[** There is another version of this book titled "The Mathematical Expanse: Excursions into the Enduring Questions." That version asks many similar questions but is appropriate for a public school setting.]

"A collection of over 500 culturally and historically diverse mathematical problems carefully chosen to enrich mathematics teaching from middle school through the college level."--Provided by publisher.

This is an excellent sampling of mathematical, statistical, and computer techniques used by anthropologists to tackle a wide range of substantive problems.The scope of topics considered in this volume is so wide and various as to be an impressive indication of a strong future for mathematics in anthropology. Briefly, such topics include interinformant reliability, cultural distinctiveness in conceptual areas, cultural systems as mental systems of identification, classification, evaluation and action, diffusional versus functional explanations, general interaction theory, kinship terminologies as logical systems, folklore, cultural systems as systems of knowledge and belief, systemic culture patterns, endogamy/exogamy, genealogy, relation of social structure to relational terminology, cultural continuity, and cultural change.