Mathematical Constants
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Word Count
155,500 words, Guess
Page Count
622 pages
Physical Format
Hardcover
Identifiers
- Open LibraryOL7764799M
- ISBN-139780521818056
- ISBN-100521818052
- OCLC Control Number50235126
- OCLC Control Numbermathematicalcons00finc
and 3 more
- Library of Congress Control Number2002074058
- LibraryThing1150736
- Goodreads207842
Classifications
- LCCQA41 .F54 2003
Description
Famous mathematical constants include the ratio of circular circumference to diameter, pi=3.14 ..., and the natural logarithmic base, e=2.178 ... Students and professionals usually can name at most a few others, but there are many more buried in the literature and awaiting discovery. How do such constants arise, and why are they important? Here Steven Finch provides 136 essays, each devoted to a mathematical constant or a class of constants, from the well known to the highly exotic. Topics covered include the statistics of continued fractions, chaos in nonlinear systems, prime numbers, sum-free sets, isoperimetric problems, approximation theory, self-avoiding walks and the Ising model (from statistical physics), binary and digital search trees (from theoretical computer science), the Prouhet-Thue-Morse sequence, complex analysis, geometric probability and the traveling salesman problem. This book will be helpful both to readers seeking information about a specific constant, and to readers who desire a panoramic view of all constants coming from a particular field, for example combinatorial enumeration or geometric optimization. Unsolved problems appear virtually everywhere as well. This is an outstanding scholarly attempt to bring together all significant mathematical constants in one place.
First Sentence
The diagonal of a unit square has length 2 = 1.4142135623....A theory, proposed by the Pythagorean school of philosophy, maintained that all geometric magnitudes could be expressed by rational numbers.
Subjects
Topics
Other Editions
- Mathematical Constants
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