The Secret Life of Numbers

George G. Szpiro

220 pages, parution le 30/03/2006

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Résumé

Most of us picture mathematicians laboring before a chalkboard, scribbling numbers and obscure symbols as they mutter unintelligibly. This lighthearted (but realistic) sneak-peak into the everyday world of mathematicians turns that stereotype on its head.Most people have little idea what mathematicians do or how they think. It s often difficult to see how their seemingly arcane and esoteric work applies to our own everyday lives. But mathematics also holds a special allure for many people. We are drawn to its inherent beauty and fascinated by its complexity but often intimidated by its presumed difficulty.

The Secret Life of Numbers opens our eyes to the joys of mathematics, introducing us to the charming, often whimsical side, of the discipline. Divided into several parts, the book looks at interesting and largely unknown historical tidbits, introduces the largerthan- life practitioners of mathematics through the ages, profiles some of the most significant unsolved conjectures, and describes problems and puzzles that have already been solved. Rounding out the table of contents is a host of mathematical miscellany all of which add up to 50 fun, sometimes cheeky, shorttakes on the field.

Chock full of stories, anecdotes, and entertaining vignettes, The Secret Life of Numbers shows us how mathematics really does affect almost every aspect of life from the law to geography, elections to botany and we come to appreciate the delight and gratification that mathematics holds for all of us.

L'auteur - George G. Szpiro

George Szpiro est mathématicien. Il a enseigné à l'université de Wharton, à Zurich et à Jérusalem. Son livre précédent, La Conjecture de Kepler a été traduit dans de nombreux pays.

Sommaire

Lopping leap years
Is the world coming to an end soon?
Cozy Zurich
Daniel Bernoulli and his difficult family
The mathematicians' million dollar baby
A puzzle by any other name
Twins, cousins, and sexy primes
Hilbert's elusive problem number 16
The tile layer's efficiency problem
The Catalanian rabbi's problem
Even infinite series end sometimes
Proving the proof
Has Poincare's conjecture finally been solved?
Late tribute to a tragic hero
The unpaid professor
Genius from a different planet
The resurrection of geometry
God's gift to science?
Vice-president of imagineering
The demoted pensioner
A grand master becomes permanent visiting professor
Knots and "unknots"
Knots and tangles with real ropes
Small mistakes may have large consequences
Ignorant gamblers
Tetris is hard
Groups, monster groups, and baby monsters
Fermat's incorrect conjecture
The crash of catastrophe theory
Deceptive simplicity
The beauty of dissymmetry
Random and not so random
How can one be sure it's prime?
A mathematician judges the judges (law)
Elections aren't decided by the voters alone (political science)
A dollar isn't always worth a dollar (insurance)
Compressing the divine comedy (linguistics)
Nature's fundamental formula (botany)
Stacking words like oranges and tomatoes (computer science)
The fractal dimension of Israel's security barrier (geography)
Calculated in cold ice (physics)
Built on sand (physics)
Buzzing around corners (biology)
Inexperienced traders make the market efficient (economics)
The waggle dance of Internet servers (computer science, biology)
Turbulent liquids and stock markets (finance, economics)
Encrypting messages with candles and hot plates (cryptography)
Fighting for survival (evolutionary theory, finance)
Insults stink (neurosciences, economics)
Bible codes : the not so final report (theology)

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Caractéristiques techniques

	PAPIER
Éditeur(s)	Joseph Henry Press
Auteur(s)	George G. Szpiro
Parution	30/03/2006
Nb. de pages	220
Format	15 x 22,5
Couverture	Relié
Poids	430g
Intérieur	Noir et Blanc
EAN13	9780309096584
ISBN13	978-0-309-09658-4