The Secret Life of Numbers: 50 Easy Pieces on How Mathematicians Work and Think - Hardcover

George G. Szpiro

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0309096588 ISBN 13: 9780309096584

Publisher: Joseph Henry Press, 2006

Synopsis

Most of us picture mathematicians laboring before a chalkboard, scribbling numbers and obscure symbols as they mutter unintelligibly. This lighthearted (but realistic) sneak-peak into the everyday world of mathematicians turns that stereotype on its head.Most people have little idea what mathematicians do or how they think. It’s often difficult to see how their seemingly arcane and esoteric work applies to our own everyday lives. But mathematics also holds a special allure for many people. We are drawn to its inherent beauty and fascinated by its complexityâ€"but often intimidated by its presumed difficulty. The Secret Life of Numbers opens our eyes to the joys of mathematics, introducing us to the charming, often whimsical side, of the discipline. Divided into several parts, the book looks at interesting and largely unknown historical tidbits, introduces the largerthan- life practitioners of mathematics through the ages, profiles some of the most significant unsolved conjectures, and describes problems and puzzles that have already been solved. Rounding out the table of contents is a host of mathematical miscellanyâ€"all of which add up to 50 fun, sometimes cheeky, shorttakes on the field. Chock full of stories, anecdotes, and entertaining vignettes, The Secret Life of Numbers shows us how mathematics really does affect almost every aspect of lifeâ€"from the law to geography, elections to botanyâ€"and we come to appreciate the delight and gratification that mathematics holds for all of us.

Table of Contents

• Front Matter
• I Historical Tidbits - 1 Lopping Leap Years
• 2 Is the World Coming to an End Soon?
• 3 Cozy Zurich
• 4 Daniel Bernoulli and His Difficult Family
• II Unsolved Conjectures - 5 The Mathematicians' Million Dollar Baby
• 6 A Puzzle by Any Other Name
• 7 Twins, Cousins, and Sexy Primes
• 8 Hilbert's Elusive Problem Number 16
• III Solved Problems - 9 The Tile Layer's Efficiency Problem
• 10 The Catalanian Rabbi's Problem
• 11 Even Infinite Series End Sometimes
• 12 Proving the Proof
• 13 Has Poincaré's Conjecture Finally Been Solved?
• IV Personalities - 14 Late Tribute to a Tragic Hero
• 15 The Unpaid Professor
• 16 Genius from a Different Planet
• 17 The Resurrection of Geometry
• 18 God's Gift to Science?
• 19 Vice-President of Imagineering
• 20 The Demoted Pensioner
• 21 A Grand Master Becomes Permanent Visiting Professor
• V Concrete and Abstract Matters - 22 Knots and "Unknots"
• 23 Knots and Tangles with Real Ropes
• 24 Small Mistakes May Have Large Consequences
• 25 Ignorant Gamblers
• 26 Tetris Is Hard
• 27 Groups, Monster Groups, and Baby Monsters
• 28 Fermat's Incorrect Conjecture
• 29 The Crash of Catastrophe Theory
• 30 Deceptive Simplicity
• 31 The Beauty of Dissymmetry
• 32 Random and Not So Random
• 33 How Can One Be Sure It's Prime?
• VI Interdisciplinary Potpourri - 34 A Mathematician Judges the Judges (Law)
• 35 Elections Aren't Decided by the Voters Alone (Political Science)
• 36 A Dollar Isn't Always Worth a Dollar (Insurance)
• 37 Compressing the Divine Comedy (Lingusitics)
• 38 Nature's Fundamental Formula (Botany)
• 39 Stacking Words Like Oranges and Tomatoes (Computer Science)
• 39 Stacking Words Like Oranges and Tomatoes (Computer Science)
• 41 Calculated in Cold Ice (Physics)
• 42 Built on Sand (Physics)
• 43 Buzzing Around Corners (Biology)
• 44 Inexperienced Traders Make the Market Efficient (Economics)
• 45 The Waggle Dance of Internet Servers (Computer Science, Biology)
• 46 Turbulent Liquids and Stock Markets (Finance, Economics)
• 47 Encrypting Messages with Candles and Hot Plates (Cryptography)
• 48 Fighting for Survival (Evolutionary Theory, Finance)
• 49 Insults Stink (Neurosciences, Economics)
• 50 Bible Codes: The Not So Final Report (Theology)
• References
• Index

About this title

About the Author

George G. Szpiro is a mathematician turned journalist. He earned an M.A. at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, an MBA, from Stanford, and a Ph.D. in mathematical economics from Hebrew University. He taught at the Wharton School, Hebrew University, and the University of Zürich; for the past 20 years, he has been the Israel correspondent for Neue Zürcher Zeitung. His first book, Kepler’s Conjecture, was widely praised.

From Publishers Weekly

The 50 chapters in this light, occasionally amusing book by Swiss science journalist Szpiro (Kepler's Conjecture) range from two to six pages and include very little mathematics. They cover a wide range of topics, from profiles of famous mathematicians—Daniel Bernoulli, John von Neumann and Niels Henrik Abel, for example—to a superficial discussion of some unproven mathematical conjectures. Szpiro also touches on game theory, Bible codes, the game of Tetris, Isaac Newton's prediction of the end of the world, and the need for insurance. Although mathematics, at some level, is associated with each topic, rarely is it made central, so little holds the book together. Nonetheless, individual chapters are engaging. One on proportional representation (in Congress, for example) documents the surprising fact that a state's representation might increase as its percentage of the total population decreases. Another explains the ways our calendars have been adjusted to compensate for the fact that "the time between two spring equinoxes is... 365.242199 days, which in turn equals nearly, but not exactly, 365.25 days." The discrepancy causes a host of temporal problems. Many of the chapters have appeared previously in the Swiss newspaper Neue Zurcher Zeitung, which accounts for their abbreviated style and, perhaps, their repetitiveness. (Mar.)
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Edition details

• Publisher: Joseph Henry Press
• Publication date: 2006
• ISBN 10: 0309096588
• ISBN 13: 9780309096584
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 224