 Cover of the first edition | |
| Author | David Darling |
|---|---|
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Subject | Mathematics |
| Publisher | Wiley |
Publication date | August 11, 2004 |
| Media type | Print (Hardcover and Paperback) and audio-CD |
| Pages | 400 |
| ISBN | 0471270474 |
The Universal Book of Mathematics: From Abracadabra to Zeno's Paradoxes (2004) is a book by British author David Darling.
The book is presented in a dictionary format. The book is divided into headwords, which, as the title suggests, run from Abracadabra to Zeno's paradoxes.
The book also provides diagrams and illustrations.
The first edition of the book had several errors which were fixed in later editions. Several famous scientists have sent in corrections to the author of the book. These include Warren Johnson and Freeman Dyson. [1]
The book has been praised by BoingBoing [2] and British newspaper The Independent . [3]
Problems and Puzzles mentioned in the book have been discussed and debated several times by several major mathematicians. [4]
Zeno's paradoxes are a series of philosophical arguments presented by the ancient Greek philosopher Zeno of Elea, primarily known through the works of Plato, Aristotle, and later commentators like Simplicius of Cilicia. Zeno devised these paradoxes to support his teacher Parmenides's philosophy of monism, which posits that despite our sensory experiences, reality is singular and unchanging. The paradoxes famously challenge the notions of plurality, motion, space, and time by suggesting they lead to logical contradictions.
Robert Berger is an applied mathematician, known for discovering the first aperiodic tiling using a set of 20,426 distinct tile shapes.
In mathematics, a square-free element is an element r of a unique factorization domain R that is not divisible by a non-trivial square. This means that every s such that is a unit of R.
In mathematics the Padovan cuboid spiral is the spiral created by joining the diagonals of faces of successive cuboids added to a unit cube. The cuboids are added sequentially so that the resulting cuboid has dimensions that are successive Padovan numbers.
In English and related languages, several terms involving the words "great" or "gross" relate to numbers involving a multiple of exponents of twelve (dozen):
David Darling is an English astronomer, freelance science writer, and musician. Darling has published numerous popular science works, including Life Everywhere: The Maverick Science of Astrobiology in 2001 and The Universal Book of Mathematics in 2004. He maintains the online Internet Encyclopedia of Science.
The lute of Pythagoras is a self-similar geometric figure made from a sequence of pentagrams.
In number theory, an extravagant number (also known as a wasteful number) is a natural number in a given number base that has fewer digits than the number of digits in its prime factorization in the given number base (including exponents). For example, in base 10, 4 = 22, 6 = 2×3, 8 = 23, and 9 = 32 are extravagant numbers (sequence A046760 in the OEIS).
In number theory, an equidigital number is a natural number in a given number base that has the same number of digits as the number of digits in its prime factorization in the given number base, including exponents but excluding exponents equal to 1. For example, in base 10, 1, 2, 3, 5, 7, and 10 are equidigital numbers. All prime numbers are equidigital numbers in any base.
In number theory, a frugal number is a natural number in a given number base that has more digits than the number of digits in its prime factorization in the given number base (including exponents). For example, in base 10, 125 = 53, 128 = 27, 243 = 35, and 256 = 28 are frugal numbers (sequence A046759 in the OEIS). The first frugal number which is not a prime power is 1029 = 3 × 73. In base 2, thirty-two is a frugal number, since 32 = 25 is written in base 2 as 100000 = 10101.
In ancient Greek geometry, the Ostomachion, also known as loculus Archimedius or syntomachion, is a mathematical treatise attributed to Archimedes. This work has survived fragmentarily in an Arabic version and a copy, the Archimedes Palimpsest, of the original ancient Greek text made in Byzantine times.
Remo Camerota, is an English-Australian visual artist and film director. He has been exhibiting in the arts since 1992, when he also started a fine art degree at Swinburne University, Melbourne.
Willow Dawson, originally from Vancouver, British Columbia, is an illustrator and writer working out of Toronto, Canada. Her stand-alone illustrations are rendered in ink and acrylic on cardboard. She also works sequentially in ink as a comics artist. Some of Dawson’s clients include Kids Can Press, Owl Magazine, Shameless Magazine, Feathertale Review, Filmblanc, Sumach Press, Kiss Machine, Locust Mount Records, Tightrope Books and Omni TV.
An alphamagic square is a magic square that remains magic when its numbers are replaced by the number of letters occurring in the name of each number. Hence 3 would be replaced by 5, the number of letters in "three". Since different languages will have a different number of letters for the spelling of the same number, alphamagic squares are language-dependent. Alphamagic squares were invented by Lee Sallows in 1986.
The Altekruse Puzzle is a type of burr puzzle invented by Austrian inventor William Altekruse.
The Math Book is a book by American author Clifford A. Pickover.
The potato paradox is a mathematical calculation that has a counter-intuitive result. The Universal Book of Mathematics states the problem as such:
Fred brings home 100 kg of potatoes, which consist of 99% water. He then leaves them outside overnight so that they consist of 98% water. What is their new weight?
In geometry, Cayley's sextic is a plane curve, a member of the sinusoidal spiral family, first discussed by Colin Maclaurin in 1718. Arthur Cayley was the first to study the curve in detail and it was named after him in 1900 by Raymond Clare Archibald.
Edward Mann Langley was a British mathematician, author of mathematical textbooks and founder of the Mathematical Gazette. He created the mathematical problem known as Langley’s Adventitious Angles.
Futility Closet is a blog, podcast, and database started in 2005 by editorial manager and publishing journalist Greg Ross. As of February 2021 the database totaled over 11,000 items. They range over the fields of history, literature, language, art, philosophy, and recreational mathematics.
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