Making up Numbers
A History of Invention in Mathematics
Our rough guess is there are 70,000 words in this book.
At a pace averaging 250 words per minute, this book will take 4 hours and 40 minutes to read. With a half hour per day, this will take 10 days to read.
How long will it take you?
This book will take an estimated to read at a reading speed averaging words per minute. With 30 minutes per day, this will take to read.
Enter your reading speedYou can take one of our WPM reading speed tests to find your reading speed.
Create a free account to track your reading progress, build your reading list, and set reading goals.
Author
Publication
2020 - Open Book Publishers
Word Count
70,000 words, Guess
Page Count
280 pages
Identifiers
- ISBN-100236
- ISBN-130236
- Open LibraryOL31375285M
Description
"Making up Numbers: A History of Invention in Mathematics offers a detailed but accessible account of a wide range of mathematical ideas. Starting with elementary concepts, it leads the reader towards aspects of current mathematical research. The book explains how conceptual hurdles in the development of numbers and number systems were overcome in the course of history, from Babylon to Classical Greece, from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance, and so to the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The narrative moves from the Pythagorean insistence on positive multiples to the gradual acceptance of negative numbers, irrationals and complex numbers as essential tools in quantitative analysis. Within this chronological framework, chapters are organised thematically, covering a variety of topics and contexts: writing and solving equations, geometric construction, coordinates and complex numbers, perceptions of ‘infinity’ and its permissible uses in mathematics, number systems, and evolving views of the role of axioms. Through this approach, the author demonstrates that changes in our understanding of numbers have often relied on the breaking of long-held conventions to make way for new inventions at once providing greater clarity and widening mathematical horizons. Viewed from this historical perspective, mathematical abstraction emerges as neither mysterious nor immutable, but as a contingent, developing human activity. Making up Numbers will be of great interest to undergraduate and A-level students of mathematics, as well as secondary school teachers of the subject. In virtue of its detailed treatment of mathematical ideas, it will be of value to anyone seeking to learn more about the development of the subject."
Subjects
Topics
Other Editions
- Making up Numbers
Reader Reviews
No reviews yet for this book.
Be the first to share your thoughts!