The Mathematics of Juggling

The Mathematics of Juggling PDF Author: Burkard Polster
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 0387227482
Category : Mathematics
Languages : en
Pages : 240

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Book Description
As a juggler the author likes to finish his performances with a stunt that combines props and techniques from a variety of juggling disciplines. Imagine him idling on a giraffe unicycle, while balancing a spinning basketball on a mouth stick, and toss-juggling a sword, a toilet plunger, and a rubber chicken. As a mathematician he is also interested in the treasure trove of beautiful mathematics used to model the different activities in a juggler's repertoire. In this book he provides an intellectually stimulating collection of mostly self-contained mathematical essays that introduce the reader to many elegant results and techniques from a wide range of mathematical disciplines such as combinatorics, graph theory, knot theory, mechanics, differential equations, control theory, and robotics. "The Mathematics of Juggling" is the first comprehensive account summarizing and expanding the results in the literature on juggling tricks and skills, as well as the mathematics behind these tricks and skills. Anybody who is not put off by the word "mathematics" in the title of this book should have a good time reading it.

The Mathematics of Juggling

The Mathematics of Juggling PDF Author: Burkard Polster
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 0387227482
Category : Mathematics
Languages : en
Pages : 240

Get Book Here

Book Description
As a juggler the author likes to finish his performances with a stunt that combines props and techniques from a variety of juggling disciplines. Imagine him idling on a giraffe unicycle, while balancing a spinning basketball on a mouth stick, and toss-juggling a sword, a toilet plunger, and a rubber chicken. As a mathematician he is also interested in the treasure trove of beautiful mathematics used to model the different activities in a juggler's repertoire. In this book he provides an intellectually stimulating collection of mostly self-contained mathematical essays that introduce the reader to many elegant results and techniques from a wide range of mathematical disciplines such as combinatorics, graph theory, knot theory, mechanics, differential equations, control theory, and robotics. "The Mathematics of Juggling" is the first comprehensive account summarizing and expanding the results in the literature on juggling tricks and skills, as well as the mathematics behind these tricks and skills. Anybody who is not put off by the word "mathematics" in the title of this book should have a good time reading it.

Magical Mathematics

Magical Mathematics PDF Author: Persi Diaconis
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691169772
Category : Crafts & Hobbies
Languages : en
Pages : 258

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Book Description
"Magical Mathematics reveals the secrets of amazing, fun-to-perform card tricks--and the profound mathematical ideas behind them--that will astound even the most accomplished magician. Persi Diaconis and Ron Graham provide easy, step-by-step instructions for each trick, explaining how to set up the effect and offering tips on what to say and do while performing it. Each card trick introduces a new mathematical idea, and varying the tricks in turn takes readers to the very threshold of today's mathematical knowledge. For example, the Gilbreath principle--a fantastic effect where the cards remain in control despite being shuffled--is found to share an intimate connection with the Mandelbrot set. Other card tricks link to the mathematical secrets of combinatorics, graph theory, number theory, topology, the Riemann hypothesis, and even Fermat's last theorem. Diaconis and Graham are mathematicians as well as skilled performers with decades of professional experience between them. In this book they share a wealth of conjuring lore, including some closely guarded secrets of legendary magicians. Magical Mathematics covers the mathematics of juggling and shows how the I Ching connects to the history of probability and magic tricks both old and new. It tells the stories--and reveals the best tricks--of the eccentric and brilliant inventors of mathematical magic. Magical Mathematics exposes old gambling secrets through the mathematics of shuffling cards, explains the classic street-gambling scam of three-card monte, traces the history of mathematical magic back to the thirteenth century and the oldest mathematical trick--and much more"-

Juggling

Juggling PDF Author: Ruth Marie Gerber
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Juggling
Languages : en
Pages : 320

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Book Description
"Organic Mathematics : Proceedings of the Organic Mathematics Workshop contained the article, 'Juggling Drops and Descents' by Joe Buhler, David Eisenbud, Ron Graham, & Colin Wright, which explored the mathematics of juggling. The purpose of this thesis is to expound, explore and expand up on this article and to expose it to the local mathematical community. It begins with an examination of juggling diagrams. Numerous definitions with illustrative examples are given and key theorems are proved in detail. We establish a fundamental enumeration result by investigating how to fmd all juggling patterns with a specified permutation. This is done by closely examining the properties of the drop triangle, which is an analogue of Pascal's Triangle. This result leads to the conjecture that the number of juggling, period n, patterns using fewer than B balls is Bn. This 'Enumeration Theorem' is established first by using 'drops' and then by establishing a bijection between circular walks and juggling patterns. This later bijection is analyzed by converting circular walks to linear walks which can then be related to the line diagrams of juggling patterns. The thesis also explores site swaps, composition of juggling patterns and the reverse of a juggling sequence"--Document.

Math Goes to the Movies

Math Goes to the Movies PDF Author: Burkard Polster
Publisher: JHU Press
ISBN: 1421404842
Category : Mathematics
Languages : en
Pages : 301

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Book Description
Mel Gibson teaching Euclidean geometry, Meg Ryan and Tim Robbins acting out Zeno's paradox, Michael Jackson proving in three different ways that 7 x 13 = 28. These are just a few of the intriguing mathematical snippets that occur in hundreds of movies. Burkard Polster and Marty Ross pored through the cinematic calculus to create this thorough and entertaining survey of the quirky, fun, and beautiful mathematics to be found on the big screen. Math Goes to the Movies is based on the authors' own collection of more than 700 mathematical movies and their many years using movie clips to inject moments of fun into their courses. With more than 200 illustrations, many of them screenshots from the movies themselves, this book provides an inviting way to explore math, featuring such movies as: • Good Will Hunting • A Beautiful Mind • Stand and Deliver • Pi • Die Hard • The Mirror Has Two Faces The authors use these iconic movies to introduce and explain important and famous mathematical ideas: higher dimensions, the golden ratio, infinity, and much more. Not all math in movies makes sense, however, and Polster and Ross talk about Hollywood's most absurd blunders and outrageous mathematical scenes. Interviews with mathematical consultants to movies round out this engaging journey into the realm of cinematic mathematics. This fascinating behind-the-scenes look at movie math shows how fun and illuminating equations can be.

Organic Mathematics

Organic Mathematics PDF Author: Jonathan M. Borwein
Publisher: American Mathematical Soc.
ISBN: 9780821806685
Category : Mathematics
Languages : en
Pages : 426

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Book Description
This volume is the hardcopy version of the electronic manuscript, "Proceedings of the Organic Mathematics Workshop" held at Simon Fraser University in December 1995 (www.cecm.sfu.ca/organics). The book provides a fixed, easily referenced, and permanent version of what is otherwise an evolving document. Contained in this work is a collection of articles on experimental and computational mathematics contributed by leading mathematicians around the world. The papers span a variety of mathematical fields - from juggling to differential equations to prime number theory. The book also contains biographies and photos of the contributing mathematicians and an in-depth characterization of organic mathematics.

Concepts of Modern Mathematics

Concepts of Modern Mathematics PDF Author: Ian Stewart
Publisher: Courier Corporation
ISBN: 0486134954
Category : Mathematics
Languages : en
Pages : 367

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Book Description
In this charming volume, a noted English mathematician uses humor and anecdote to illuminate the concepts of groups, sets, subsets, topology, Boolean algebra, and other mathematical subjects. 200 illustrations.

The Best Writing on Mathematics 2015

The Best Writing on Mathematics 2015 PDF Author: Mircea Pitici
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691169659
Category : Mathematics
Languages : en
Pages : 391

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Book Description
The year's finest writing on mathematics from around the world This annual anthology brings together the year's finest mathematics writing from around the world. Featuring promising new voices alongside some of the foremost names in the field, The Best Writing on Mathematics 2015 makes available to a wide audience many articles not easily found anywhere else—and you don’t need to be a mathematician to enjoy them. These writings offer surprising insights into the nature, meaning, and practice of mathematics today. They delve into the history, philosophy, teaching, and everyday occurrences of math, and take readers behind the scenes of today’s hottest mathematical debates. Here David Hand explains why we should actually expect unlikely coincidences to happen; Arthur Benjamin and Ethan Brown unveil techniques for improvising custom-made magic number squares; Dana Mackenzie describes how mathematicians are making essential contributions to the development of synthetic biology; Steven Strogatz tells us why it’s worth writing about math for people who are alienated from it; Lisa Rougetet traces the earliest written descriptions of Nim, a popular game of mathematical strategy; Scott Aaronson looks at the unexpected implications of testing numbers for randomness; and much, much more. In addition to presenting the year’s most memorable writings on mathematics, this must-have anthology includes a bibliography of other notable writings and an introduction by the editor, Mircea Pitici. This book belongs on the shelf of anyone interested in where math has taken us—and where it is headed.

The Sociology of Mathematics Education

The Sociology of Mathematics Education PDF Author: Paul Dowling
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1135710023
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 360

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Book Description
Until the 1960s, maths was studied as an academic subject in a desire to have more mathematicians. The current trend, however, has moved away from viewing maths as a purely intellectual endeavour and towards developing a more mathematically competent workforce and citizenry. This trend has seen a large increase in the number of maths schemes being produced by the major educational publishers, which attempt to make maths easier and more approachable by using language instead of symbols. So why do so many children still fail at maths? The author contends that to understand this, teachers need to analyze and evaluate the maths textbooks they are currently using. The author shows the reader how to systematically analyze and evaluate these textbooks. This interrogation of classroom resources, should have important implications for teaching strategies and for textbook design and use.

Juggling

Juggling PDF Author: Stewart Lawrence Sinclair
Publisher: Duke University Press
ISBN: 1478024232
Category : Crafts & Hobbies
Languages : en
Pages : 105

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Book Description
In Juggling, Stewart Lawrence Sinclair explores the four-thousand-year history and practice of juggling as seen through his life as a juggler. Sinclair—who learned to juggle as a child and paid his way through college by busking—shares his experiences of taking up juggling after an episode of suicidal ideation, his time juggling on the streets, and ultimately finding comfort in juggling during the COVID-19 pandemic. In many ways, this is a book about loss and recovery. From his own juggling story to clowns braving military checkpoints in Bosnia and Rwanda to perform in refugee camps to contemporary avant-garde performances, Sinclair shows how the universal language of juggling provides joy as well as a respite from difficulties during hard times.

Connections in Discrete Mathematics

Connections in Discrete Mathematics PDF Author: Steve Butler
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108569544
Category : Mathematics
Languages : en
Pages : 367

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Book Description
Discrete mathematics has been rising in prominence in the past fifty years, both as a tool with practical applications and as a source of new and interesting mathematics. The topics in discrete mathematics have become so well developed that it is easy to forget that common threads connect the different areas, and it is through discovering and using these connections that progress is often made. For over fifty years, Ron Graham has been able to illuminate some of these connections and has helped to bring the field of discrete mathematics to where it is today. To celebrate his contribution, this volume brings together many of the best researchers working in discrete mathematics, including Fan Chung, Erik D. Demaine, Persi Diaconis, Peter Frankl, Alfred W. Hales, Jeffrey C. Lagarias, Allen Knutson, Janos Pach, Carl Pomerance, N. J. A. Sloane, and of course, Ron Graham himself.