Designed for a junior-senior level course for mathematics majors, including those who plan to teach in secondary school. The first chapter presents several finite geometries in an axiomatic framework, while Chapter 2 continues the synthetic approach in introducing both Euclids and ideas of non-Euclidean geometry. There follows a new introduction to symmetry and hands-on explorations of isometries that precedes an extensive analytic treatment of similarities and affinities. Chapter 4 presents plane projective geometry both synthetically and analytically, and the new Chapter 5 uses a descriptive and exploratory approach to introduce chaos theory and fractal geometry, stressing the self-similarity of fractals and their generation by transformations from Chapter 3. Throughout, each chapter includes a list of suggested resources for applications or related topics in areas such as art and history, plus this second edition points to Web locations of author-developed guides for dynamic software explorations of the Poincare model, isometries, projectivities, conics and fractals. Parallel versions are available for "Cabri Geometry" and "Geometers Sketchpad".

This book contains two surveys on modern research into non-regular Riemannian geometry, carried out mostly by Russian mathematicians. Coverage examines two-dimensional Riemannian manifolds of bounded curvature and metric spaces whose curvature lies between two given constants. This book will be immensely useful to graduate students and researchers in geometry, in particular Riemannian geometry.

This volume is a result of a meeting which took place in June 1986 at 'll Ciocco" in Italy entitled 'Deformation theory of algebras and structures and applications'. It appears somewhat later than is perhaps desirable for a volume resulting from a summer school. In return it contains a good many results which were not yet available at the time of the meeting. In particular it is now abundantly clear that the Deformation theory of algebras is indeed central to the whole philosophy of deformations/perturbations/stability. This is one of the main results of the 254 page paper below (practically a book in itself) by Gerstenhaber and Shack entitled "Algebraic cohomology and defor mation theory". Two of the main philosphical-methodological pillars on which deformation theory rests are the fol lowing * (Pure) To study a highly complicated object, it is fruitful to study the ways in which it can arise as a limit of a family of simpler objects: "the unraveling of complicated structures" . * (Applied) If a mathematical model is to be applied to the real world there will usually be such things as coefficients which are imperfectly known. Thus it is important to know how the behaviour of a model changes as it is perturbed (deformed).

This book presents the text of most of the lectures which were de- livered at the Meeting Quantum Theories and Geometry which was held at the Fondation Les Treilles from March 23 to March 27, 1987. The general aim of this meeting was to bring together mathemati- cians and physicists who have worked in this growing field of contact between the two disciplines, namely this region where geometry and physics interact creatively in both directions. It 1S the strong belief of the organizers that these written con- tributions will be a useful document for research people workin~ 1n geometry or physics. Three lectures were devoted to the deformation approach to quantum mechanics which involves a modification of both the associative and the Lie structure of the algebra of functions on classical phase space. A.Lichnerowicz shows how one can view classical and quantum statistical mechanics in terms of a deformation with a parameter inversely propor- tional to temperature. S.Gutt reviews the physical background of star products and indicates their applications in Lie groups representa- tion theory and in harmonic analysis. D.Arnal gives a rigorous theory Vll viii PREFACI of the star exponential in the case of the Heisenberg group and shows how this can be extended to arbitrary nilpotent groups.

Based on a course given to talented high-school students at Ohio University in 1988, this book is essentially an advanced undergraduate textbook about the mathematics of fractal geometry. It nicely bridges the gap between traditional books on topology/analysis and more specialized treatises on fractal geometry. The book treats such topics as metric spaces, measure theory, dimension theory, and even some algebraic topology. It takes into account developments in the subject matter since 1990. Sections are clear and focused. The book contains plenty of examples, exercises, and good illustrations of fractals, including 16 color plates.

In algebraic topology some classical invariants - such as Betti numbers and Reidemeister torsion - are defined for compact spaces and finite group actions. They can be generalized using von Neumann algebras and their traces, and applied also to non-compact spaces and infinite groups. These new L2-invariants contain very interesting and novel information and can be applied to problems arising in topology, K-Theory, differential geometry, non-commutative geometry and spectral theory. The book, written in an accessible manner, presents a comprehensive introduction to this area of research, as well as its most recent results and developments.

In the past decades now a famous class of evolution equations has been discovered and intensively studied, a class including the nowadays celebrated Korteweg-de Vries equation, sine-Gordon equation, nonlinear Schr] odinger equation, etc. The equations from this class are known also as the soliton equations or equations solvable by the so- called Inverse Scattering Tra- form Method. They possess a number of interesting properties, probably the most interesting from the geometric point of view of being that most of them are Liouville integrable Hamiltonian systems. Because of the importance of the soliton equations, a dozen monographs have been devoted to them. H- ever, the great variety of approaches to the soliton equations has led to the paradoxical situation that specialists in the same ?eld sometimes understand eachotherwithdi?culties. Wediscovereditourselvesseveralyearsagoduring a number of discussions the three of us had. Even though by friendship binds us, we could not collaborate as well as we wanted to, since our individual approach to the ?eld of integrable systems (?nite and in?nite dimensional) is quite di?erent. We have become aware that things natural in one approach are di?cult to understand for people using other approaches, though the - jects are the same, in our case - the Recursion (generating) Operators and theirapplicationsto?niteandin?nitedimensional(notnecessarilyintegrable) Hamiltonian systems."

Spaces of constant curvature, i.e. Euclidean space, the sphere, and Loba chevskij space, occupy a special place in geometry. They are most accessible to our geometric intuition, making it possible to develop elementary geometry in a way very similar to that used to create the geometry we learned at school. However, since its basic notions can be interpreted in different ways, this geometry can be applied to objects other than the conventional physical space, the original source of our geometric intuition. Euclidean geometry has for a long time been deeply rooted in the human mind. The same is true of spherical geometry, since a sphere can naturally be embedded into a Euclidean space. Lobachevskij geometry, which in the first fifty years after its discovery had been regarded only as a logically feasible by-product appearing in the investigation of the foundations of geometry, has even now, despite the fact that it has found its use in numerous applications, preserved a kind of exotic and even romantic element. This may probably be explained by the permanent cultural and historical impact which the proof of the independence of the Fifth Postulate had on human thought."

General textbooks, attempting to cover three thousand or so years of mathematical history, must necessarily oversimplify just about everything, the practice of which can scarcely promote a critical approach to the subject. To counter this, History of Mathematics offers deeper coverage of key select topics, providing students with material that could encourage more critical thinking. It also includes the proofs of important results which are typically neglected in the modern history of mathematics curriculum.

This monograph develops projective geometries and provides a systematic treatment of morphisms. It introduces a new fundamental theorem and its applications describing morphisms of projective geometries in homogeneous coordinates by semilinear maps. Other topics treated include three equivalent definitions of projective geometries and their correspondence with certain lattices; quotients of projective geometries and isomorphism theorems; and recent results in dimension theory.

One service mathematics has rendered the human race. It has put common sense back where it belongs. It has put common sense back where it belongs, on the topmost shelf next to the dusty canister labelled discarded nonsense. Eric TBell Every picture tells a story. Advenisement for for Sloan's backache and kidney oils, 1907 The book you have in your hands as you are reading this, is a text on3-dimensional topology. It can serve as a pretty comprehensive text book on the subject. On the other hand, it frequently gets to the frontiers of current research in the topic. If pressed, I would initially classify it as a monograph, but, thanks to the over three hundred illustrations of the geometrical ideas involved, as a rather accessible one, and hence suitable for advanced classes. The style is somewhat informal; more or less like orally presented lectures, and the illustrations more than make up for all the visual aids and handwaving one has at one's command during an actual presentation.

Critical Issues in Mathematics Education presents the significant contributions of Professor Alan Bishop within the mathematics education research community. Six critical issues, each of which have had paramount importance in the development of mathematics education research, are reviewed and include a discussion of current developments in each area.

Teacher decision making, spatial/visualizing geometry, teachers and research, cultural/social aspects of mathematics education, sociopolitical issues, and values serve as the basic issues discussed in this examination of mathematics education over the last fifty years during which Professor Bishop has been active in the field.

A comprehensive discussion of each of these topics is realized by offering the reader a classic research contribution of Professor Bishop s together with commentary and invited chapters from leading experts in the field of mathematics education.

Critical Issues in Mathematics Education will make an invaluable contribution to the ongoing reflection of mathematic education researchers worldwide, but also to policy makers and teacher educators who wish to understand some of the key issues with which mathematics education has been and still is concerned, and the context within which Professor Bishop s key contributions to these research issues were made.

Essentially, Orientations and Rotations treats the mathematical and computational foundations of texture analysis. It contains an extensive and thorough introduction to parameterizations and geometry of the rotation space. Since the notions of orientations and rotations are of primary importance for science and engineering, the book can be useful for a very broad audience using rotations in other fields.

One ofthe most important features of the development of physical and mathematical sciences in the beginning of the 20th century was the demolition of prevailing views of the three-dimensional Euclidean space as the only possible mathematical description of real physical space. Apriorization of geometrical notions and identification of physical 3 space with its mathematical modellR were characteristic for these views. The discovery of non-Euclidean geometries led mathematicians to the understanding that Euclidean geometry is nothing more than one of many logically admissible geometrical systems. Relativity theory amended our understanding of the problem of space by amalgamating space and time into an integral four-dimensional manifold. One of the most important problems, lying at the crossroad of natural sciences and philosophy is the problem of the structure of the world as a whole. There are a lot of possibilities for the topology offour dimensional space-time, and at first sight a lot of possibilities arise in cosmology. In principle, not only can the global topology of the universe be complicated, but also smaller scale topological structures can be very nontrivial. One can imagine two "usual" spaces connected with a "throat," making the topology of the union complicated."

From the reviews: "This attractive book provides an account of the theory of special relativity from a geometrical viewpoint, explaining the unification and insights that are given by such a treatment. [ ] Can be read with profit by all who have taken a first course in relativity physics." ASLIB Book Guide

This book presents methods of solving problems in three areas of elementary combinatorial mathematics: classical combinatorics, combinatorial arithmetic, and combinatorial geometry. In each topic, brief theoretical discussions are immediately followed by carefully worked-out examples of increasing degrees of difficulty, and by exercises that range from routine to rather challenging. While this book emphasizes some methods that are not usually covered in beginning university courses, it nevertheless teaches techniques and skills that are useful not only in the specific topics covered here. There are approximately 310 examples and 650 exercises. Jiri Herman is the headmaster of a prestigious secondary school (Gymnazium) in Brno, Radan Kucera is Associate Professor of Mathematics at Masaryk University in Brno, and Jaromir Simsa is a researcher at the Mathematical Institute of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic. The translator, Karl Dilcher, is Professor of Mathematics at Dalhousie University in Canada. This book can be seen as a continuation of the previous book by the same authors and also translated by Karl Dilcher, Equations and Inequalities: Elementary Problems and Theorems in Algebra and Number Theory (Springer-Verlag 2000).

Lattices are discrete subgroups of maximal rank in a Euclidean space. To each such geometrical object, we can attach a canonical sphere packing which, assuming some regularity, has a density. The question of estimating the highest possible density of a sphere packing in a given dimension is a fascinating and difficult problem: the answer is known only up to dimension 3. This book thus discusses a beautiful and central problem in mathematics, which involves geometry, number theory, coding theory and group theory, centering on the study of extreme lattices, i.e. those on which the density attains a local maximum, and on the so-called perfection property. Written by a leader in the field, it is closely related to, though disjoint in content from, the classic book by J.H. Conway and N.J.A. Sloane, Sphere Packings, Lattices and Groups, published in the same series as vol. 290. Every chapter except the first and the last contains numerous exercises. For simplicity those chapters involving heavy computational methods contain only few exercises. It includes appendices on Semi-Simple Algebras and Quaternions and Strongly Perfect Lattices.

This book is a monograph on unitals embedded in ?nite projective planes. Unitals are an interesting structure found in square order projective planes, and numerous research articles constructing and discussing these structures have appeared in print. More importantly, there still are many open pr- lems, and this remains a fruitful area for Ph.D. dissertations. Unitals play an important role in ?nite geometry as well as in related areas of mathematics. For example, unitals play a parallel role to Baer s- planes when considering extreme values for the size of a blocking set in a square order projective plane (see Section 2.3). Moreover, unitals meet the upper bound for the number of absolute points of any polarity in a square order projective plane (see Section 1.5). From an applications point of view, the linear codes arising from unitals have excellent technical properties (see 2 Section 6.4). The automorphism group of the classical unitalH =H(2, q ) is 2-transitive on the points ofH, and so unitals are of interest in group theory. In the ?eld of algebraic geometry over ?nite ?elds, H is a maximal curve that contains the largest number of F -rational points with respect to its genus, 2 q as established by the Hasse-Weil boun

In 1961 Robinson introduced an entirely new version of the theory of infinitesimals, which he called Nonstandard analysis'. Nonstandard' here refers to the nature of new fields of numbers as defined by nonstandard models of the first-order theory of the reals. This system of numbers was closely related to the ring of Schmieden and Laugwitz, developed independently a few years earlier. During the last thirty years the use of nonstandard models in mathematics has taken its rightful place among the various methods employed by mathematicians. The contributions in this volume have been selected to present a panoramic view of the various directions in which nonstandard analysis is advancing, thus serving as a source of inspiration for future research. Papers have been grouped in sections dealing with analysis, topology and topological groups; probability theory; and mathematical physics. This volume can be used as a complementary text to courses in nonstandard analysis, and will be of interest to graduate students and researchers in both pure and applied mathematics and physics.

This monograph (in two volumes) deals with non scalar variational problems arising in geometry, as harmonic mappings between Riemannian manifolds and minimal graphs, and in physics, as stable equilibrium configuations in nonlinear elasticity or for liquid crystals. The presentation is selfcontained and accessible to non specialists. Topics are treated as far as possible in an elementary way, illustrating results with simple examples; in principle, chapters and even sections are readable independently of the general context, so that parts can be easily used for graduate courses. Open questions are often mentioned and the final section of each chapter discusses references to the literature and sometimes supplementary results. Finally, a detailed Table of Contents and an extensive Index are of help to consult this monograph

This book is a concept-oriented treatment of the structure theory of association schemes. The generalization of Sylow 's group theoretic theorems to scheme theory arises as a consequence of arithmetical considerations about quotient schemes. The theory of Coxeter schemes (equivalent to the theory of buildings) emerges naturally and yields a purely algebraic proof of Tits main theorem on buildings of spherical type.

The seminal 1970 Moscow thesis of Grigoriy A. Margulis, published for the first time. Entitled "On Some Aspects of the Theory of Anosov Systems," it uses ergodic theoretic techniques to study the distribution of periodic orbits of Anosov flows. The thesis introduces the "Margulis measure" and uses it to obtain a precise asymptotic formula for counting periodic orbits. This has an immediate application to counting closed geodesics on negatively curved manifolds. The thesis also contains asymptotic formulas for the number of lattice points on universal coverings of compact manifolds of negative curvature.

The thesis is complemented by a survey by Richard Sharp, discussing more recent developments in the theory of periodic orbits for hyperbolic flows, including the results obtained in the light of Dolgopyat's breakthroughs on bounding transfer operators and rates of mixing.

In many fields of modern mathematics specialised scientific software becomes increasingly important. Hence, tremendous effort is taken by numerous groups all over the world to develop appropriate solutions.
This book contains surveys and research papers on mathematical software and algorithms. The common thread is that the field of mathematical applications lies on the border between algebra and geometry. Topics include polyhedral geometry, elimination theory, algebraic surfaces, Grobner bases, triangulations of point sets and the mutual relationship. This diversity is accompanied by the abundance of available software systems which often handle only special mathematical aspects. Therefore the volume's other focus is on solutions towards the integration of mathematical software systems. This includes low-level and XML based high-level communication channels as well as general framework for modular systems."

Compared to other popular math books, there is more algebraic manipulation, and more applications of algebra in number theory and geometry

Presents an exciting variety of topics to motivate beginning students

May be used as an introductory course or as background reading

Approach your problems from the right end It isn't that they can't see the solution. It is and begin with the answers. Then one day, that they can't see the problem. perhaps you will find the final question. G. K. Chesterton. The Scandal of Father 'The Hermit Clad in Crane Feathers' in R. Brown 'The point of a Pin'. van Gulik's The Chinese Maze Murders. Growing specialization and diversification have brought a host of monographs and textbooks on increasingly specialized topics. However, the "tree" of knowledge of mathematics and related fields does not grow only by putting forth new branches. It also happens, quite often in fact, that branches which were thought to be completely disparate are suddenly seen to be related. Further, the kind and level of sophistication of mathematics applied in various sciences has changed drastically in recent years: measure theory is used (non trivially) in regional and theoretical economics; algebraic geometry interacts with physics; the Minkowsky lemma, coding theory and the structure of water meet one another in packing and covering theory; quantum fields, crystal defects and mathematical programming profit from homotopy theory; Lie algebras are relevant to filtering; and prediction and electrical engineering can us;; Stein spaces. And in addition to this there are such new emerging subdisciplines as "experimental mathematics," "CFD," "completely integrable systems," "chaos, synergetics and large-scale order," which are almost impossible to fit into the existing classification schemes. They draw upon widely different sections of mathematics."