Imagine algebra class meets The Hitchhiker 's Guide to the Galaxy

Meet JJ, an unusual character with a unique vantage position from which he can measure and monitor humanity 's progress. Armed with a device that compels all around it to tell the truth, JJ offers a satirical evaluation of our attitudes to numeracy and logic, touching upon several aspects of life on Earth along the way, from the criminal justice system and people 's use of language to highway driving and modern art.

A collection of mathematically-flavored stories and jokes, interlaced with puzzles, paradoxes and problems, fuse together in an entertaining, free-flowing narrative that will engage and amuse anyone with an interest in the issues confronting society today. JJ demonstrates how a lack of elementary mathematical knowledge can taint our work and general thinking and reflects upon the importance of what is arguably our most valuable weapon against ignorance: a sound mathematical education.

The series is devoted to the publication of monographs and high-level textbooks in mathematics, mathematical methods and their applications. Apart from covering important areas of current interest, a major aim is to make topics of an interdisciplinary nature accessible to the non-specialist. The works in this series are addressed to advanced students and researchers in mathematics and theoretical physics. In addition, it can serve as a guide for lectures and seminars on a graduate level. The series de Gruyter Studies in Mathematics was founded ca. 35 years ago by the late Professor Heinz Bauer and Professor Peter Gabriel with the aim to establish a series of monographs and textbooks of high standard, written by scholars with an international reputation presenting current fields of research in pure and applied mathematics. While the editorial board of the Studies has changed with the years, the aspirations of the Studies are unchanged. In times of rapid growth of mathematical knowledge carefully written monographs and textbooks written by experts are needed more than ever, not least to pave the way for the next generation of mathematicians. In this sense the editorial board and the publisher of the Studies are devoted to continue the Studies as a service to the mathematical community. Please submit any book proposals to Niels Jacob.

The twentieth century has been one of great international conflict, but also one of increasing globalization and cooperation among nations. The history of international mathematical cooperation over the last hundred years--from the first international congress in 1897 to plans for the World Mathematical Year 2000--as told by Professor Olli Lehto, is a surprisingly compelling story. For reflected in the history of the International Mathematical Union (IMU) is all the strife among world powers, as well as aspirations for cooperation among nations in an increasingly interdependent world. The IMU, founded in the aftermath of World War I, for fifteen years excluded Germany and the other defeated Central Powers. But in the 1920s the IMU embraced principles of political neutrality, inviting every national mathematical organization to join the IMU, and this principle of nondiscrimination, while sometimes sorely tried, has held the IMU in good stead. Then came the Second World War, and again international cooperation was threatened. After World War II, a number of issues--the Cold War, the conflict between the People's Republic of China and Taiwan, a divided Germany, problems in the emerging nations of Africa--at times led to attempts to influence the IMU Executive Committee in its decisions regarding membership, location of international congresses, committee assignments, handling of protests, and awarding the coveted Fields Medals. Throughout the tumultuous past half century the IMU has sponsored International Congresses throughout the world, and Mathematics Without Borders will fill you in on all the mathematical and organizational details. But what keeps you turning pages is the very humanstory of individuals, among them many of the great mathematicians of our

This book details a unique training evaluation approach developed by David J. Basarab, Sr. currently the Manager of Evaluation at Motorola University. This approach was developed in part based on information from his graduate coursework with Dr. Darrell K. Root, professor of program evaluation and educational administration at the University of Dayton. It enabled Motorola to evaluate their corporate training programs to determine whether money spent on training was an investment or an expense. This evaluation approach is also significant in determining either the effectiveness of or the opportunities to improve corporate training programs. In this text, The Training Evaluation Process, David Basarab and Darrell Root provide commercial industry training with a step-by-step approach to use when evaluating training progrruns, thus allowing training to be viewed as an investment rather than an expense. This text focuses on assessing training programs, so that they may be improved. This approach provides a successful procedure to use when evaluating training programs. Included in the text is a comprehensive explanation of the evaluation model developed by D. L. Kirkpatrick (Kirkpatrick, D. L., November 1959) in which he described four levels of evaluating training progrruns: Level 1 -Reaction: Evaluate to learn participants' perception to the training program. Level 2 -Learning: Evaluate to determine whether participants have learned the course subject matter. Level 3 -Behavior: Evaluate participants' use of newly acquired job skills on the job. Level 4 -Results: Evaluate the organizational impact of training on company's workforce.

Projective geometry, and the Cayley-Klein geometries embedded into it, were originated in the 19th century. It is one of the foundations of algebraic geometry and has many applications to differential geometry.

The book presents a systematic introduction to projective geometry as based on the notion of vector space, which is the central topic of the first chapter. The second chapter covers the most important classical geometries which are systematically developed following the principle founded by Cayley and Klein, which rely on distinguishing an absolute and then studying the resulting invariants of geometric objects.

An appendix collects brief accounts of some fundamental notions from algebra and topology with corresponding references to the literature.

This self-contained introduction is a must for students, lecturers and researchers interested in projective geometry.

Codes, Designs, and Geometry brings together in one place important contributions and up-to-date research results in this important area. Codes, Designs, and Geometry serves as an excellent reference, providing insight into some of the most important research issues in the field.

Kvasz's book is a contribution to the history and philosophy of mat- matics, or, as one might say, the historical approach to the philosophy of mathematics. This approach is for mathematics what the history and philosophy of science is for science. Yet the historical approach to the philosophy of science appeared much earlier than the historical approach to the philosophy of mathematics. The ?rst signi?cant work in the history and philosophy of science is perhaps William Whewell's Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences, founded upon their History. This was originally published in 1840, a second, enlarged edition appeared in 1847, and the third edition appeared as three separate works p- lished between 1858 and 1860. Ernst Mach's The Science of Mech- ics: A Critical and Historical Account of Its Development is certainly a work of history and philosophy of science. It ?rst appeared in 1883, and had six further editions in Mach's lifetime (1888, 1897, 1901, 1904, 1908, and 1912). Duhem's Aim and Structure of Physical Theory appeared in 1906 and had a second enlarged edition in 1914. So we can say that history and philosophy of science was a well-established ?eld th th by the end of the 19 and the beginning of the 20 century. By contrast the ?rst signi?cant work in the history and philosophy of mathematics is Lakatos's Proofs and Refutations, which was p- lished as a series of papers in the years 1963 and 1964.

This book provides a detailed description of fast boundary element methods, all based on rigorous mathematical analysis. In particular, the authors use a symmetric formulation of boundary integral equations as well as discussing Galerkin discretisation. All the necessary related stability and error estimates are derived. The authors therefore describe the Adaptive Cross Approximation Algorithm, starting from the basic ideas and proceeding to their practical realization. Numerous examples representing standard problems are given.

This volume features substantive biographical essays on 59 women from around the world who have made significant contributions to mathematics from antiquity to the present. Designed for secondary school students and the general public, each profile describes major life events, obstacles faced and overcome, educational and career milestones--including a discussion of mathematical research in non-technical terms--and interests outside of 2 promotics. Although the collection includes historical women, the emphasis is on contemporary mathematicians, many of whom have not been profiled in any previous work. The work also celebrates the contributions of minority women, including 10 African-American, Latina, and Asian mathematicians. Written by practicing mathematicians, teachers and researchers, these profiles give voice to the variety of pathways into mathematics that women have followed and the diversity of areas in which mathematics can work. Many profiles draw on interviews with the subject, and each includes a short list of suggested reading by and about the mathematician. Most mathematicians profiled stress the value, importance, and enjoyment of collaborative research, contradicting the prevailing notion that doing good mathematics requires isolation. This collection provides not only a substantial number of role models for girls interested in a career in mathematics, but also a unique depiction of a field that can offer a lifetime of challenge and enjoyment.

This volume is dedicated to the career of Jill Adler and the role she has played in growing mathematics education research in South Africa, Africa and beyond. Her work epitomises what is referred to as the 'engaged scholar': i.e. doing rigorous and theoretically rich research at the cutting edge of international work in the field which at the same time contributes to critical areas of local and regional need in education. Jill is one of the world's leading experts in mathematics education research and her exemplary career is a continuous source of inspiration for generations of researchers and students. The chapters in this volume are authored by Jill's former PhD students, a few select colleagues from different parts of the world that she collaborated with as well as leading scholars who she worked with in PME, ICMI and in her many international assignments. In essence, this volume celebrates Jill's contribution not only to mathematics education but also to our contributions as her friends and colleagues. Topics covered include language and mathematics, teacher education, and the dilemma of an activist researcher engaging in issues that matter hugely to the participants in the research, students and teachers in post-apartheid schooling, whilst also setting up the separation that is needed for good research.

For one- or two-term introductory courses in discrete mathematics. With nearly 4,500 exercises, Discrete Mathematics provides ample opportunities for students to practice, apply, and demonstrate conceptual understanding. Exercise sets features a large number of applications, especially applications to computer science. The almost 650 worked examples provide ready reference for students as they work. A strong emphasis on the interplay among the various topics serves to reinforce understanding. The text models various problem-solving techniques in detail, then provides opportunity to practice these techniques. The text also builds mathematical maturity by emphasising how to read and write proofs. Many proofs are illustrated with annotated figures and/or motivated by special Discussion sections.

This volume collects the contributions of a Conference held in June 2005 at the laboratoire Paul Painleve (UMR CNRS 8524) in Lille, France. The meeting was intended to review hot topics and future trends in fluid dynamics, with the objective to foster exchanges of various viewpoints (e.g. theoretical, and numerical) on the addressed questions. It comprises a collection of research articles on recent advances in the analysis and simulation of fluid dynamics.

The Glencoe Math Student Edition is an interactive text that engages students and assist with learning and organization. It personalizes the learning experience for every student. The write-in text, 3-hole punched, perfed pages allow students to organize while they are learning.

This book provides an interdisciplinary presentation of the current knowledge of pattern formation in complex system, with sufficiently many details, tools, and concrete examples to be useful for the graduate student or scientist entering this area of research.

As K. Nomizu has justly noted [K. Nomizu, 56], Differential Geometry ever will be initiating newer and newer aspects of the theory of Lie groups. This monograph is devoted to just some such aspects of Lie groups and Lie algebras. New differential geometric problems came into being in connection with so called subsymmetric spaces, subsymmetries, and mirrors introduced in our works dating back to 1957 [L.V. Sabinin, 58a,59a,59b]. In addition, the exploration of mirrors and systems of mirrors is of interest in the case of symmetric spaces. Geometrically, the most rich in content there appeared to be the homogeneous Riemannian spaces with systems of mirrors generated by commuting subsymmetries, in particular, so called tri-symmetric spaces introduced in [L.V. Sabinin, 61b]. As to the concrete geometric problem which needs be solved and which is solved in this monograph, we indicate, for example, the problem of the classification of all tri-symmetric spaces with simple compact groups of motions. Passing from groups and subgroups connected with mirrors and subsymmetries to the corresponding Lie algebras and subalgebras leads to an important new concept of the involutive sum of Lie algebras [L.V. Sabinin, 65]. This concept is directly concerned with unitary symmetry of elementary par- cles (see [L.V. Sabinin, 95,85] and Appendix 1). The first examples of involutive (even iso-involutive) sums appeared in the - ploration of homogeneous Riemannian spaces with and axial symmetry. The consideration of spaces with mirrors [L.V. Sabinin, 59b] again led to iso-involutive sums.

¿If you are interested in the beauty of mathematics, you must go out and buy Robin Wilson¿s absolutely stunning book of mathematical stamps, a book which traces the history of mathematics through images on the postage of countries around the globe.¿ ¿Victor Katz, MAA Online Postage stamps are an attractive vehicle for presenting mathematics and its development. For many years the author has presented illustrated lectures entitled Stamping through Mathematics to school and college groups and to mathematical clubs and societies, and has written a regular ¿Stamps Corner¿ for The Mathematical Intelligencer. The book contains almost four _hundred postage stamps relating to mathematics, ranging from the earliest forms of counting to the modern computer age. The stamps appear enlarged and in full color with full historical commentary, and are listed at the end of the book.

This comprehensive new two-volume work provides the reader with a detailed insight into the use of the finite element method in geotechnical engineering. As specialist knowledge required to perform geotechnical finite element analysis is not normally part of a single engineering degree course, this lucid work will prove invaluable. It brings together essential information presented in a manner understandable to most engineers.Volume 1 presents the theory, assumptions and approximations involved in finite element analysis while Volume 2 concentrates on its practical applications.