Catalogue Search | MBRL
Are you sure you want to remove the book from the shelf?
{{itemTitle}}
25,628
result(s) for
"Mathematics History"
Sort by:
Count us in : how to make maths real for all of us
\"Mathematics, like language, is a universal experience. Every society counts and is empowered by its ability to count and to measure. The mathematical processes developed within various cultures differ widely, and Count Us In explores these cultural links, drawing examples from the author's personal experiences. The process of counting, like the process of communicating with words, is common to all societies worldwide but, just as there is a rich variety of languages, so too is there a rich variety in methods of counting and of recording numbers methods that have developed over centuries to meet the needs of various groups of people. The narrative of this book takes the form of a collection of short stories based on the author's personal experience, linked together by a number of sub-themes\" --page 4 of cover.
Book
When Computers Were Human
Before Palm Pilots and iPods, PCs and laptops, the term \"computer\" referred to the people who did scientific calculations by hand. These workers were neither calculating geniuses nor idiot savants but knowledgeable people who, in other circumstances, might have become scientists in their own right. When Computers Were Human represents the first in-depth account of this little-known, 200-year epoch in the history of science and technology. Beginning with the story of his own grandmother, who was trained as a human computer, David Alan Grier provides a poignant introduction to the wider world of women and men who did the hard computational labor of science. His grandmother's casual remark, \"I wish I'd used my calculus,\" hinted at a career deferred and an education forgotten, a secret life unappreciated; like many highly educated women of her generation, she studied to become a human computer because nothing else would offer her a place in the scientific world. The book begins with the return of Halley's comet in 1758 and the effort of three French astronomers to compute its orbit. It ends four cycles later, with a UNIVAC electronic computer projecting the 1986 orbit. In between, Grier tells us about the surveyors of the French Revolution, describes the calculating machines of Charles Babbage, and guides the reader through the Great Depression to marvel at the giant computing room of the Works Progress Administration. When Computers Were Human is the sad but lyrical story of workers who gladly did the hard labor of research calculation in the hope that they might be part of the scientific community. In the end, they were rewarded by a new electronic machine that took the place and the name of those who were, once, the computers.
eBook
The secret lives of numbers
From building rockets to the handheld technology that governs our day-to-day lives, we are all in debt to the mathematical geniuses of the past. But the history of mathematics is warped; it looks like a sixteenth-century map that enlarges Europe at the expense of Africa, Asia and the Americas. This book introduces readers to a new group of mathematical boundary-smashers, those who have been erased by history because of their race, gender or nationality. Kitagawa and Revell bring to vivid life the stories and struggles of mathematicians from every continent: from the brilliant Arabic scholars of the ninth century 'House of Wisdom'; to the pioneering African-American mathematicians of the twentieth century; the first female mathematics professor (from Russia); and the 'lady computers' around the world who revolutionised our knowledge of the night sky.
Book
Plato's ghost
Plato's Ghost is the first book to examine the development of mathematics from 1880 to 1920 as a modernist transformation similar to those in art, literature, and music. Jeremy Gray traces the growth of mathematical modernism from its roots in problem solving and theory to its interactions with physics, philosophy, theology, psychology, and ideas about real and artificial languages. He shows how mathematics was popularized, and explains how mathematical modernism not only gave expression to the work of mathematicians and the professional image they sought to create for themselves, but how modernism also introduced deeper and ultimately unanswerable questions.
eBook
The Evolution of Mathematics
There is a growing awareness among researchers in the humanities
and social sciences of the rhetorical force of mathematical
discourse-whether in regard to gerrymandering, facial recognition
technologies, or racial biases in algorithmic automation. This book
proposes a novel way to engage with and understand mathematics via
a theoretical framework that highlights how math transforms the
social-material world.
In this study, G. Mitchell Reyes applies contemporary rhetorical
analysis to mathematical discourse, calling into question the
commonly held view that math equals truth. Examining mathematics in
historical context, Reyes traces its development from Plato's
teaching about abstract numbers to Euclidian geometry and the
emergence of calculus and infinitesimals, imaginary numbers, and
algorithms. This history reveals that mathematical innovation has
always relied on rhetorical practices of making meaning, such as
analogy, metaphor, and invention. Far from expressing truth hidden
deep in reality, mathematics is dynamic and evolving, shaping
reality and our experience of it.
By bringing mathematics back down to the material-social world,
Reyes makes it possible for scholars of the rhetoric and sociology
of science, technology, and math to collaborate with mathematicians
themselves in order to better understand our material world and
public culture.
eBook
Reverse mathematics : proofs from the inside out
\"This book presents reverse mathematics to a general mathematical audience for the first time. Reverse mathematics is a new field that answers some old questions. In the two thousand years that mathematicians have been deriving theorems from axioms, it has often been asked: which axioms are needed to prove a given theorem? Only in the last two hundred years have some of these questions been answered, and only in the last forty years has a systematic approach been developed. In Reverse Mathematics, John Stillwell gives a representative view of this field, emphasizing basic analysis--finding the \"right axioms\" to prove fundamental theorems--and giving a novel approach to logic. Stillwell introduces reverse mathematics historically, describing the two developments that made reverse mathematics possible, both involving the idea of arithmetization. The first was the nineteenth-century project of arithmetizing analysis, which aimed to define all concepts of analysis in terms of natural numbers and sets of natural numbers. The second was the twentieth-century arithmetization of logic and computation. Thus arithmetic in some sense underlies analysis, logic, and computation. Reverse mathematics exploits this insight by viewing analysis as arithmetic extended by axioms about the existence of infinite sets. Remarkably, only a small number of axioms are needed for reverse mathematics, and, for each basic theorem of analysis, Stillwell finds the \"right axiom\" to prove it. By using a minimum of mathematical logic in a well-motivated way, Reverse Mathematics will engage advanced undergraduates and all mathematicians interested in the foundations of mathematics. \"-- Provided by publisher.
Book
Mathematics in India
Based on extensive research in Sanskrit sources, Mathematics in India chronicles the development of mathematical techniques and texts in South Asia from antiquity to the early modern period. Kim Plofker reexamines the few facts about Indian mathematics that have become common knowledge--such as the Indian origin of Arabic numerals--and she sets them in a larger textual and cultural framework. The book details aspects of the subject that have been largely passed over in the past, including the relationships between Indian mathematics and astronomy, and their cross-fertilizations with Islamic scientific traditions. Plofker shows that Indian mathematics appears not as a disconnected set of discoveries, but as a lively, diverse, yet strongly unified discipline, intimately linked to other Indian forms of learning.
eBook
Sourcebook in the mathematics of medieval Europe and North Africa /
Medieval Europe was a meeting place for the Christian, Jewish, and Islamic civilizations, and the fertile intellectual exchange of these cultures can be seen in the mathematical developments of the time. This sourcebook presents original Latin, Hebrew, and Arabic sources of medieval mathematics, and shows their cross-cultural influences. Most of the Hebrew and Arabic sources appear here in translation for the first time. Readers will discover key mathematical revelations, foundational texts, and sophisticated writings by Latin, Hebrew, and Arabic-speaking mathematicians, including Abner of Burgos's elegant arguments providing results on the conchoid--a curve previously unknown in medieval Europe; Levi ben Gershon's use of mathematical induction in combinatorial proofs; Al-Muʹtaman Ibn Hūd's extensive survey of mathematics, which included proofs of Heron's Theorem and Ceva's Theorem; and Muhyī al-Dīn al-Maghribī's interesting proof of Euclid's parallel postulate. This book includes a general introduction, section introductions, footnotes, and references. The Sourcebook in the Mathematics of Medieval Europe and North Africa will be indispensable to anyone seeking out the important historical sources of premodern mathematics. -- Inside jacket flap.
Book
Fuzzy logic and mathematics : a historical perspective
The term “fuzzy logic” (FL) is a generic one, which stands for a broad variety of logical systems. Their common ground is the rejection of the most fundamental principle of classical logic—the principle of bivalence—according to which each declarative sentence has exactly two possible truth values—true and false. Each logical system subsumed under FL allows for additional, intermediary truth values, which are interpreted as degrees of truth. These systems are distinguished from one another by the set of truth degrees employed, its algebraic structure, truth functions chosen for logical connectives, and other properties. The book examines from the historical perspective two areas of research on fuzzy logic known as fuzzy logic in the narrow sense (FLN) and fuzzy logic in the broad sense (FLB), which have distinct research agendas. The agenda of FLN is the development of propositional, predicate, and other fuzzy logic calculi. The agenda of FLB is to emulate commonsense human reasoning in natural language and other unique capabilities of human beings. In addition to FL, the book also examines mathematics based on FL. One chapter in the book is devoted to overviewing successful applications of FL and the associated mathematics in various areas of human affairs. The principal aim of the book is to assess the significance of FL and especially its significance for mathematics. For this purpose, the notions of paradigms and paradigm shifts in science, mathematics, and other areas are introduced and employed as useful metaphors.
eBook