This book discusses how to design "good" geometric puzzles: two-dimensional dissection puzzles, polyhedral dissections, and burrs. It outlines major categories of geometric puzzles and provides examples, sometimes going into the history and philosophy of those examples. The author presents challenges and thoughtful questions, as well as practical design and woodworking tips to encourage the reader to build his own puzzles and experiment with his own designs. Aesthetics, phychology, and mathematical considerations all factor into the definition of the quality of a puzzle.

Mathematics in Games, Sports, and Gambling: The Games People Play, Second Edition demonstrates how discrete probability, statistics, and elementary discrete mathematics are used in games, sports, and gambling situations. With emphasis on mathematical thinking and problem solving, the text draws on numerous examples, questions, and problems to explain the application of mathematical theory to various real-life games.This updated edition of a widely adopted textbook considers a number of popular games and diversions that are mathematically based or can be studied from a mathematical perspective. Requiring only high school algebra, the book is suitable for use as a textbook in seminars, general education courses, or as a supplement in introductory probability courses.New in this Edition: Many new exercises, including basic skills exercises More answers in the back of the book Expanded summary exercises, including writing exercises More detailed examples, especially in the early chapters An expansion of the discrete adjustment technique for binomial approximation problems New sections on chessboard puzzles that encourage students to develop graph theory ideas New review material on relations and functions Exercises are included in each section to help students understand the various concepts. The text covers permutations in the two-deck matching game so derangements can be counted. It introduces graphs to find matches when looking at extensions of the five-card trick and studies lexicographic orderings and ideas of encoding for card tricks.The text also explores linear and weighted equations in the section on the NFL passer rating formula and presents graphing to show how data can be compared or displayed. For each topic, the author includes exercises based on real games and actual sports data.

A day does not go by without a news article reporting some amazing breakthrough in artificial intelligence (AI). Many philosophers, futurists, and AI researchers have conjectured that human-level AI will be developed in the next 20 to 200 years. If these predictions are correct, it raises new and sinister issues related to our future in the age of intelligent machines. Artificial Superintelligence: A Futuristic Approach directly addresses these issues and consolidates research aimed at making sure that emerging superintelligence is beneficial to humanity. While specific predictions regarding the consequences of superintelligent AI vary from potential economic hardship to the complete extinction of humankind, many researchers agree that the issue is of utmost importance and needs to be seriously addressed. Artificial Superintelligence: A Futuristic Approach discusses key topics such as: AI-Completeness theory and how it can be used to see if an artificial intelligent agent has attained human level intelligence Methods for safeguarding the invention of a superintelligent system that could theoretically be worth trillions of dollars Self-improving AI systems: definition, types, and limits The science of AI safety engineering, including machine ethics and robot rights Solutions for ensuring safe and secure confinement of superintelligent systems The future of superintelligence and why long-term prospects for humanity to remain as the dominant species on Earth are not great Artificial Superintelligence: A Futuristic Approach is designed to become a foundational text for the new science of AI safety engineering. AI researchers and students, computer security researchers, futurists, and philosophers should find this an invaluable resource.

The connections between origami, mathematics, science, technology, and education have been a topic of considerable interest now for several decades. While many individuals have happened upon discrete connections among these fields during the twentieth century, the field really took off when previously isolated individuals began to make stronger connections with each other through a series of conferences exploring the links between origami and "the outside world." The Fourth International Meeting on Origami in Science, Mathematics, and Education (4OSME), held in September, 2006, at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, California, brought together an unprecedented number of researchers presenting on topics ranging from mathematics, to technology, to educational uses of origami, to fine art, and to computer programs for the design of origami. Selected papers based on talks presented at that conference make up the book you hold in your hands.

Exploring a vast array of topics related to computation, Computing: A Historical and Technical Perspective covers the historical and technical foundation of ancient and modern-day computing. The book starts with the earliest references to counting by humans, introduces various number systems, and discusses mathematics in early civilizations. It guides readers all the way through the latest advances in computer science, such as the design and analysis of computer algorithms. Through historical accounts, brief technical explanations, and examples, the book answers a host of questions, including: Why do humans count differently from the way current electronic computers do? Why are there 24 hours in a day, 60 minutes in an hour, etc.? Who invented numbers, when were they invented, and why are there different kinds? How do secret writings and cryptography date back to ancient civilizations? Innumerable individuals from many cultures have contributed their talents and creativity to formulate what has become our mathematical and computing heritage. By bringing together the historical and technical aspects of computing, this book enables readers to gain a deep appreciation of the long evolutionary processes of the field developed over thousands of years. Suitable as a supplement in undergraduate courses, it provides a self-contained historical reference source for anyone interested in this important and evolving field.

From Zero to Infinity is a combination of number lore, number history, and sparkling descriptions of the simply stated but exceedingly difficult problems posed by the most ordinary numbers that first appeared in 1955 and has been kept in print continuously ever since. With the fifth edition this classic has been updated to report on advances in number theory over the last 50 years, including the proof of Fermat's Last Theorem. Deceptively simple in style and structure, it is a book to which the reader will return again and again, gaining greater understanding and satisfaction with each reading.

The Star and the Whole: Gian-Carlo Rota on Mathematics and Phenomenology, authored by Fabrizio Palombi, is the first book to study Rota's philosophical reflection. Rota (1932 1999) was a leading figure in contemporary mathematics and an outstanding philosopher, inspired by phenomenology, who made fundamental contributions to combinatorial analysis, and trained several generations of mathematicians in his long career at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and the Los Alamos National Laboratory. The first chapter of the book reconstructs Rota's cultural biography and examines his philosophical style, his criticisms of analytical philosophy, and his reflection on Heidegger's thought. The second chapter presents a general picture of Rota's re-elaboration of phenomenology examined in the light of the Husserlian notion of Fundierung. This chapter also illustrates how the star-shape becomes a powerful instrument for understanding the properties of Husserl's mereology and the critique of objectivism. The third chapter is a theoretical reflection on the nature of mathematical entities, and the fourth examines the complex relation of mathematical research with technological applicability and scientific progress. The foreword of the text is written by Robert Sokolowski.

The subject of mathematics is not something distant, strange, and abstract that you can only learn about and often dislike in school. It is in everyday situations, such as housekeeping, communications, traffic, and weather reports. Taking you on a trip into the world of mathematics, Do I Count? Stories from Mathematics describes in a clear and captivating way the people behind the numbers and the places where mathematics is made. Written by top scientist and engaging storyteller G nter M. Ziegler and translated by Thomas von Foerster, the book presents mathematics and mathematicians in a manner that you have not previously encountered. It guides you on a scenic tour through the field, pointing out which beds were useful in constructing which theorems and which notebooks list the prizes for solving particular problems. Forgoing esoteric areas, the text relates mathematics to celebrities, history, travel, politics, science and technology, weather, clever puzzles, and the future. Can bees count? Is 13 bad luck? Are there equations for everything? What's the real practical value of the Pythagorean Theorem? Are there Sudoku puzzles with fewer than 17 entries and just one solution? Where and how do mathematicians work? Who invented proofs and why do we need them? Why is there no Nobel Prize for mathematics? What kind of life did Paul Erdos lead? Find out the answers to these and other questions in this entertaining book of stories. You'll see that everyone counts, but no computation is needed.

This book comprises five parts. The first three contain ten historical essays on important topics: number theory, calculus/analysis, and proof, respectively. Part four deals with several historically oriented courses, and Part five provides biographies of five mathematicians who played major roles in the historical events described in the first four parts of the work.

"Excursions in the History of Mathematics" was written with several goals in mind: to arouse mathematics teachers' interest in the history of their subject; to encourage mathematics teachers with at least some knowledge of the history of mathematics to offer courses with a strong historical component; and to provide an historical perspective on a number of basic topics taught in mathematics courses."

Paradoxes are poems of science and philosophy that collectively allow us to address broad multidisciplinary issues within a microcosm. A true paradox is a source of creativity and a concise expression that delivers a profound idea and provokes a wild and endless imagination. The study of paradoxes leads to ultimate clarity and, at the same time, indisputably challenges your mind. Paradoxes in Scientific Inference analyzes paradoxes from many different perspectives: statistics, mathematics, philosophy, science, artificial intelligence, and more. The book elaborates on findings and reaches new and exciting conclusions. It challenges your knowledge, intuition, and conventional wisdom, compelling you to adjust your way of thinking. Ultimately, you will learn effective scientific inference through studying the paradoxes.

Computational Thinking (CT) involves fundamental concepts and reasoning, distilled from computer science and other computational sciences, which become powerful general mental tools for solving problems, increasing efficiency, reducing complexity, designing procedures, or interacting with humans and machines. An easy-to-understand guidebook, From Computing to Computational Thinking gives you the tools for understanding and using CT. It does not assume experience or knowledge of programming or of a programming language, but explains concepts and methods for CT with clarity and depth. Successful applications in diverse disciplines have shown the power of CT in problem solving. The book uses puzzles, games, and everyday examples as starting points for discussion and for connecting abstract thinking patterns to real-life situations. It provides an interesting and thought-provoking way to gain general knowledge about modern computing and the concepts and thinking processes underlying modern digital technologies.

"Ah, I'm Pingree. We meet again. Splendid. Won't you sit down?" I looked around David's room. Short of the library stacks, I had never seen so many books piled into a single room. Where could I sit down? Every square inch of horizontal surface was covered. Books, papers, notes, manuscripts-all congregated in random and chaotic disorder. This small encounter and the snapshot of the protagonist on the cover of this book introduce the reader to David E. Pingree, the eminent classicist, Orientalist, historian of ancient science, and member of the Department of the History of Mathematics at Brown University. This is a book of his stories, retold by Phil Davis, award-winning author and raconteur par excellence, who reconstructs them from letters and many conversations with his friend Pingree. The stories trace connections between ancient characters, historical and mythical, and recreate a world in which the pursuit of knowledge for its own sake leads to unexpected pleasures and associations. They capture a world best described by Saul Lieberman's quip about Gershom Scholem's great work on the Kabala: "Trash is trash; but the study of trash is scholarship," and David Pingree's imagined response, "Yes, but there's always something of value to be learned." The book is dedicated to preserving and promoting the specialized knowledge and thoughts of David Pingree, a truly remarkable person and to inspire readers to follow academic tradition and at the same time explore unusual connections.

Beginning with a short biography of Kurt Godel, "Godel's Theorem in Focus" provides the reader with a clear guide to the mechanics of Godel's proof in a format intelligible to the non-mathematician. The book moves on to explanations of the mechanics of Godel's proof and its significance for mathematical logic and the philosophy of mathematics. In the final section, S. G. Shanker presents a major new critique of Godel's theorem.

This book brings together the scattered literature associated with the seemingly unrelated regression equations (SURE) model used by econometricians and others. It focuses on the theoretical statistical results associated with the SURE model.

This book explores the limits of our knowledge. The author shows how uncertainty and indefiniteness not only define the borders confining our understanding, but how they feed into the process of discovery and help to push back these borders. Starting with physics the author collects examples from economics, neurophysiology, history, ecology and philosophy. The first part shows how information helps to reduce indefiniteness. Understanding rests on our ability to find the right context, in which we localize a problem as a point in a network of connections. New elements must be combined with the old parts of the existing complex knowledge system, in order to profit maximally from the information. An attempt is made to quantify the value of information by its ability to reduce indefiniteness. The second part explains how to handle indefiniteness with methods from fuzzy logic, decision theory, hermeneutics and semiotics. It is not sufficient that the new element appears in an experiment, one also has to find a theoretical reason for its existence. Indefiniteness becomes an engine of science, which gives rise to new ideas.

Published with the aid of a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities. Contains the only complete English-language text of The Concept of Truth in Formalized Languages. Tarski made extensive corrections and revisions of the original translations for this edition, along with new historical remarks. It includes a new preface and a new analytical index for use by philosophers and linguists as well as by historians of mathematics and philosophy.

Das Buch behandelt Matrizengleichungen und -funktionen sowie die computergerechte Darstellung und Losung der Bewegungsgleichungen von Schwingungssystemen mit endlich vielen Freiheitsgraden und fuhrt in die Grundlagen der Naherungsmethoden von Rayleigh und Ritz ein. Das Eigenwertproblem wird, anders als sonst ublich, von einem allgemeinen Standpunkt aus betrachtet. Dadurch gewinnt die Darstellung an Verstandlichkeit und an Anwendungsbreite. Das Buch ist sowohl fur Studierende als auch fur Physiker und Ingenieure in der Praxis geschrieben.

Stretch your students' mathematical imaginations to their limits as they solve challenging real-world and mathematical problems that extend concepts from the Common Core State Standards for Mathematics in Advanced Common Core Math Explorations: Ratios, Proportions, and Similarity. Model the solar system, count the fish in a lake, choose the best gear for a bike ride, solve a middle school's overcrowding problem, and explore the mysteries of Fibonacci numbers and the golden ratio. Each activity comes with extensive teacher support including student handouts, discussion guides, detailed solutions, and suggestions for extending the investigations. Grades 5-8

The Only Undergraduate Textbook to Teach Both Classical and Virtual Knot Theory An Invitation to Knot Theory: Virtual and Classical gives advanced undergraduate students a gentle introduction to the field of virtual knot theory and mathematical research. It provides the foundation for students to research knot theory and read journal articles on their own. Each chapter includes numerous examples, problems, projects, and suggested readings from research papers. The proofs are written as simply as possible using combinatorial approaches, equivalence classes, and linear algebra. The text begins with an introduction to virtual knots and counted invariants. It then covers the normalized f-polynomial (Jones polynomial) and other skein invariants before discussing algebraic invariants, such as the quandle and biquandle. The book concludes with two applications of virtual knots: textiles and quantum computation.

This volume, which presents the cumulation of the authors' research in the field, deals with Lidstone, Hermite, Abel-Gontscharoff, Birkhoff, piecewise Hermite and Lidstone, spline and Lidstone-spline interpolating problems. Explicit representations of the interpolating polynomials and associated error functions are given, as well as explicit error inequalities in various norms. Numerical illustrations are provided of the importance and sharpness of the various results obtained. Also demonstrated are the significance of these results in the theory of ordinary differential equations such as maximum principles, boundary value problems, oscillation theory, disconjugacy and disfocality. The book should be useful for mathematicians, numerical analysts, computer scientists and engineers.

This book presents a philosophy of science, based on panenmentalism: an original modal metaphysics, which is realist about individual pure (non-actual) possibilities and rejects the notion of possible worlds. The book systematically constructs a new and novel way of understanding and explaining scientific progress, discoveries, and creativity. It demonstrates that a metaphysics of individual pure possibilities is indispensable for explaining and understanding mathematics and natural sciences. It examines the nature of individual pure possibilities, actualities, mind-dependent and mind-independent possibilities, as well as mathematical entities. It discusses in detail the singularity of each human being as a psychical possibility. It analyses striking scientific discoveries, and illustrates by means of examples of the usefulness and vitality of individual pure possibilities in the sciences.

Students become mathematical adventurers in these challenging and engaging activities designed to deepen and extend their understanding of concepts from the Common Core State Standards in Mathematics. The investigations in this book stretch students' mathematical imaginations to their limits as they solve puzzles, create stories, and explore fraction-related concepts that take them from the mathematics of ancient Greece to the outer reaches of infinity. Each activity comes with detailed support for classroom implementation including learning goals, discussion guides, detailed solutions, and suggestions for extending the investigation. There is also a free supplemental e-book offering strategies for motivation, assessment, parent communication, and suggestions for using the materials in different learning environments. Grades 5-8

This volume, first published in 2000, presents a classical approach to the foundations and development of the geometry of vector fields, describing vector fields in three-dimensional Euclidean space, triply-orthogonal systems and applications in mechanics. Topics covered include Pfaffian forms, systems in n-dimensional space, and foliations and their Godbillion-Vey invariant. There is much interest in the study of geometrical objects in n-dimensional Euclidean space and this volume provides a useful and comprehensive presentation.

This book argues for a view in which processes of dialogue and interaction are taken to be foundational to reasoning, logic, and meaning. This is both a continuation, and a substantial modification, of an inferentialist approach to logic. As such, the book not only provides a critical introduction to the inferentialist view, but it also provides an argument that this shift in perspective has deep and foundational consequences for how we understand the nature of logic and its relationship with meaning and reasoning. This has been upheld by several technical results, including, for example a novel approach to logical paradox and logical revision, and an account of the internal justification of logical rules. The book shows that inferentialism is greatly strengthened, such that it can answer the most stringent criticisms of the view. This leads to a view of logic that emphasizes the dynamics of reasoning, provides a novel account of the justification and normativity of logical rules, thus leading to a new, attractive approach to the foundations of logic. The book addresses readers interested in philosophy of language, philosophical and mathematical logic, theories of reasoning, and also those who actively engage in current debates involving, for example, logical revision, and the relationship between logic and reasoning, from advanced undergraduates, to professional philosophers, mathematicians, and linguists.

Introduction to Mathematical Modeling and Chaotic Dynamics focuses on mathematical models in natural systems, particularly ecological systems. Most of the models presented are solved using MATLAB (R). The book first covers the necessary mathematical preliminaries, including testing of stability. It then describes the modeling of systems from natural science, focusing on one- and two-dimensional continuous and discrete time models. Moving on to chaotic dynamics, the authors discuss ways to study chaos, types of chaos, and methods for detecting chaos. They also explore chaotic dynamics in single and multiple species systems. The text concludes with a brief discussion on models of mechanical systems and electronic circuits. Suitable for advanced undergraduate and graduate students, this book provides a practical understanding of how the models are used in current natural science and engineering applications. Along with a variety of exercises and solved examples, the text presents all the fundamental concepts and mathematical skills needed to build models and perform analyses.