Voltaire’s Riddle

Voltaire’s Riddle PDF Author: Andrew J. Simoson
Publisher: American Mathematical Soc.
ISBN: 1470458454
Category : Mathematics
Languages : en
Pages : 397

Get Book Here

Book Description

Voltaire’s Riddle

Voltaire’s Riddle PDF Author: Andrew J. Simoson
Publisher: American Mathematical Soc.
ISBN: 1470458454
Category : Mathematics
Languages : en
Pages : 397

Get Book Here

Book Description


Drawing Imagining Building

Drawing Imagining Building PDF Author: Paul Emmons
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317179528
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 340

Get Book Here

Book Description
Drawing Imagining Building focuses on the history of hand-drawing practices to capture some of the most crucial and overlooked parts of the process. Using 80 black and white images to illustrate the examples, it examines architectural drawing practices to elucidate the ways drawing advances the architect’s imagination. Emmons considers drawing practices in the Renaissance and up to the first half of the twentieth century. Combining systematic analysis across time with historical explication presents the development of hand-drawing, while also grounding early modern practices in their historical milieu. Each of the illustrated chapters considers formative aspects of architectural drawing practice, such as upright elevations, flowing lines and occult lines, and drawing scales to identify their roots in an embodied approach to show how hand-drawing contributes to the architect’s productive imagination. By documenting some of the ways of thinking through practices of architectural handdrawing, it describes how practices can enrich the ethical imagination of the architect. This book would be beneficial for academics, practitioners, and students of architecture, particularly those who are interested in the history and significance of hand-drawing and technical drawing.

Mountains and Megastructures

Mountains and Megastructures PDF Author: Martin Beattie
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 9811571104
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 336

Get Book Here

Book Description
This book explores the shared qualities of mountains as naturally-formed landscapes, and of megastructures as manmade landscapes, seeking to unravel how each can be understood as an open system of complex network relationships (human, natural and artificial). By looking at mountains and megastructures in an interchangeable way, the book negotiates the fixed boundaries of natural and artificial worlds, to suggest a more complex relationship between landscape and architecture. It suggests an ecological understanding of the interconnectedness of architecture and landscape, and an entangled network of relations. Urban, colonialist, fictional, rural and historical landscapes are interwoven into this fabric that also involves discontinuities, tensions and conflicts as parts of a system that is never linear, but rather fluid and organic as driven by human endeavor.

Voltaire: A Very Short Introduction

Voltaire: A Very Short Introduction PDF Author: Nicholas Cronk
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0191512761
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 194

Get Book Here

Book Description
Voltaire (1694-1778), best remembered as the author of Candide, is one of the central actors -- arguably the defining personality -- of the European Enlightenment. In this Very Short Introduction, Nicholas Cronk explores Voltaire's remarkable career and demonstrates how his thinking is pivotal to our notion and understanding of the Enlightenment. In a fresh and modern examination of his writings, Cronk examines the nature of Voltaire's literary celebrity, demonstrating the extent to which his work was reactive and practical, and therefore made sense within the broader context of the debates to which he responded. The most famous living author in Europe in the 18th century, Cronk emphasises Voltaire's skills of 'performance' as a writer and his continued relevance today. He concludes by looking not only at Voltaire's impact in literature and philosophy, but also his influence on French political values and modern French politics. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.

Exploring Continued Fractions: From the Integers to Solar Eclipses

Exploring Continued Fractions: From the Integers to Solar Eclipses PDF Author: Andrew J. Simoson
Publisher: American Mathematical Soc.
ISBN: 1470461285
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 480

Get Book Here

Book Description
There is a nineteen-year recurrence in the apparent position of the sun and moon against the background of the stars, a pattern observed long ago by the Babylonians. In the course of those nineteen years the Earth experiences 235 lunar cycles. Suppose we calculate the ratio of Earth's period about the sun to the moon's period about Earth. That ratio has 235/19 as one of its early continued fraction convergents, which explains the apparent periodicity. Exploring Continued Fractions explains this and other recurrent phenomena—astronomical transits and conjunctions, lifecycles of cicadas, eclipses—by way of continued fraction expansions. The deeper purpose is to find patterns, solve puzzles, and discover some appealing number theory. The reader will explore several algorithms for computing continued fractions, including some new to the literature. He or she will also explore the surprisingly large portion of number theory connected to continued fractions: Pythagorean triples, Diophantine equations, the Stern-Brocot tree, and a number of combinatorial sequences. The book features a pleasantly discursive style with excursions into music (The Well-Tempered Clavier), history (the Ishango bone and Plimpton 322), classics (the shape of More's Utopia) and whimsy (dropping a black hole on Earth's surface). Andy Simoson has won both the Chauvenet Prize and Pólya Award for expository writing from the MAA and his Voltaire's Riddle was a Choice magazine Outstanding Academic Title. This book is an enjoyable ramble through some beautiful mathematics. For most of the journey the only necessary prerequisites are a minimal familiarity with mathematical reasoning and a sense of fun.

A Mathematical Space Odyssey

A Mathematical Space Odyssey PDF Author: Claudi Alsina
Publisher: The Mathematical Association of America
ISBN: 0883853582
Category : Mathematics
Languages : en
Pages : 288

Get Book Here

Book Description
Solid geometry is the traditional name for what we call today the geometry of three-dimensional Euclidean space. Courses in solid geometry have largely disappeared from American high schools and colleges. The authors are convinced that a mathematical exploration of three-dimensional geometry merits some attention in today’s curriculum. A Mathematical Space Odyssey: Solid Geometry in the 21st Century is devoted to presenting techniques for proving a variety of mathematical results in three-dimensional space, techniques that may improve one’s ability to think visually. Special attention is given to the classical icons of solid geometry (prisms, pyramids, platonic solids, cones, cylinders, and spheres) and many new and classical results: Cavalieri’s principle, Commandino’s theorem, de Gua’s theorem, Prince Rupert’s cube, the Menger sponge, the Schwarz lantern, Euler’s rotation theorem, the Loomis-Whitney inequality, Pythagorean theorems in three dimensions, etc. The authors devote a chapter to each of the following basic techniques for exploring space and proving theorems: enumeration, representation, dissection, plane sections, intersection, iteration, motion, projection, and folding and unfolding. In addition to many figures illustrating theorems and their proofs, a selection of photographs of three-dimensional works of art and architecture are included. Each chapter includes a selection of Challenges for the reader to explore further properties and applications. It concludes with solutions to all the Challenges in the book, references, and a complete index. Readers should be familiar with high school algebra, plane and analytic geometry, and trigonometry. While brief appearances of calculus do occur, no knowledge of calculus is necessary to enjoy this book.

A Guide to Advanced Linear Algebra

A Guide to Advanced Linear Algebra PDF Author: Steven H. Weintraub
Publisher: American Mathematical Soc.
ISBN: 088385967X
Category : Mathematics
Languages : en
Pages : 267

Get Book Here

Book Description
"This book provides a rigorous and thorough development of linear algebra at an advanced level, and is directed at graduate students and professional mathematicians. It approaches linear algebra from an algebraic point of view, but its selection of topics is governed not only for their importance in linear algebra itself, but also for their applications throughout mathematics"--Cover p. [4].

Varieties of Integration

Varieties of Integration PDF Author: C. Ray Rosentrater
Publisher: American Mathematical Soc.
ISBN: 1614442177
Category : Mathematics
Languages : en
Pages : 343

Get Book Here

Book Description
Historical introduction -- The Riemann integral -- The Darboux integral -- A functional zoo -- Another approach : measure theory -- The Lebesgue integral -- The Gauge integral -- Stieltjes-type integrals and extensions -- A look back -- Afterword : L2 spaces and Fourier series

Icons of Mathematics: An Exploration of Twenty Key Images

Icons of Mathematics: An Exploration of Twenty Key Images PDF Author: Claudi Alsina
Publisher: American Mathematical Soc.
ISBN: 1470456168
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 347

Get Book Here

Book Description
The authors present twenty icons of mathematics, that is, geometrical shapes such as the right triangle, the Venn diagram, and the yang and yin symbol and explore mathematical results associated with them. As with their previous books (Charming Proofs, When Less is More, Math Made Visual) proofs are visual whenever possible. The results require no more than high-school mathematics to appreciate and many of them will be new even to experienced readers. Besides theorems and proofs, the book contains many illustrations and it gives connections of the icons to the world outside of mathematics. There are also problems at the end of each chapter, with solutions provided in an appendix. The book could be used by students in courses in problem solving, mathematical reasoning, or mathematics for the liberal arts. It could also be read with pleasure by professional mathematicians, as it was by the members of the Dolciani editorial board, who unanimously recommend its publication.

A Guide to Elementary Number Theory

A Guide to Elementary Number Theory PDF Author: Underwood Dudley
Publisher: MAA
ISBN: 9780883853474
Category : Mathematics
Languages : en
Pages : 156

Get Book Here

Book Description
An introductory guide to elementary number theory for advanced undergraduates and graduates.