Imagining Numbers: (particularly the Square Root of Minus Fifteen)Macmillan, 2003 - 270 strani How the elusive imaginary number was first imagined, and how to imagine it yourself "Imagining Numbers (particularly the square root of minus fifteen)" is Barry Mazur's invitation to those who take delight in the imaginative work of reading poetry, but may have no background in math, to make a leap of the imagination in mathematics. Imaginary numbers entered into mathematics in sixteenth-century Italy and were used with immediate success, but nevertheless presented an intriguing challenge to the imagination. It took more than two hundred years for mathematicians to discover a satisfactory way of "imagining" these numbers. With discussions about how we comprehend ideas both in poetry and in mathematics, Mazur reviews some of the writings of the earliest explorers of these elusive figures, such as Rafael Bombelli, an engineer who spent most of his life draining the swamps of Tuscany and who in his spare moments composed his great treatise "L'Algebra." Mazur encourages his readers to share the early bafflement of these Renaissance thinkers. Then he shows us, step by step, how to begin imagining, ourselves, imaginary numbers. |
Iz vsebine knjige
Zadetki 1–5 od 76
Stran vii
... Mathematical problems and square roots 5. What is a mathematical problem? Chapter 2 Square Roots and the Imagination 25 6. What is a square root? 7. What is a square root? 8. The quadratic formula 9. What kind of thing is the square ...
... Mathematical problems and square roots 5. What is a mathematical problem? Chapter 2 Square Roots and the Imagination 25 6. What is a square root? 7. What is a square root? 8. The quadratic formula 9. What kind of thing is the square ...
Stran ix
... mathematics 42. Questioning answers 43. Back to Bombelli's puzzle 44. Interviewing Bombelli Chapter 9 Putting Geometry into Numbers 1 57 45. Many hands 46. Imagining the dynamics of multiplication by V-l: algebra and geometry mixed 47 ...
... mathematics 42. Questioning answers 43. Back to Bombelli's puzzle 44. Interviewing Bombelli Chapter 9 Putting Geometry into Numbers 1 57 45. Many hands 46. Imagining the dynamics of multiplication by V-l: algebra and geometry mixed 47 ...
Stran xiv
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Prikaz vsebine te strani ni dovoljen.
Stran xv
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Stran xvi
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Vsebina
PART II | 105 |
PART III | 197 |
Appendix The Quadratic Formula | 231 |
Notes | 235 |
Bibliography | 257 |
Acknowledgments | 259 |
261 | |
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Imagining Numbers: (particularly the square root of minus fifteen) Barry Mazur Omejen predogled - 2004 |
Imagining Numbers: (Particularly the Square Root of Minus Fifteen) Barry Mazur Omejen predogled - 2004 |
Imagining Numbers: (particularly the Square Root of Minus Fifteen) Barry Mazur Omejen predogled - 2003 |
Pogosti izrazi in povedi
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