San Francisco Public Library

A brief history of mathematical thought, Luke Heaton

eng

Includes bibliographical references and index

index present

non fiction

A brief history of mathematical thought

bibliography

942885049

Luke Heaton

"Emblazoned on many advertisements for the wildly popular game of Sudoku are the reassuring words, "no mathematical knowledge required." Anxiety about math plagues many of us, and school memories can still summon intense loathing. In A Brief History of Mathematical Thought, Luke Heaton shows that much of what many think-and fear-about mathematics is misplaced, and to overcome our insecurities we need to understand its history. To help, he offers a lively guide into and through the world of mathematics and mathematicians, one in which patterns and arguments are traced through logic in a language grounded in concrete experience. Heaton reveals how Greek and Roman mathematicians like Pythagoras, Euclid, and Archimedes helped shaped the early logic of mathematics; how the Fibonacci sequence, the rise of algebra, and the invention of calculus are connected; how clocks, coordinates, and logical padlocks work mathematically; and how, in the twentieth century, Alan Turing's revolutionary work on the concept of computation laid the groundwork for the modern world. A Brief History of Mathematical Thought situates mathematics as part of, and essential to, lived experience. Understanding it requires not abstract thought or numbing memorization but an historical imagination and a view to its origins" --, Provided by publisher

Beginnings -- From Greece to Rome -- Ratio and proportion -- The rise of algebra -- Mechanics and the calculus -- Leonhard Euler and the bridges of Königsberg -- Euclid's fifth and the reinvention of geometry -- Working with the infinite -- The structures of logical form -- Alan Turing and the concept of computation -- Kurt Gödel and the power of polynomials -- Modelling the world -- Lived experience and the nature of facts