|
|
Books > Science & Mathematics > Mathematics > Geometry > General
The same factors that motivated the writing of our first volume of
strategic activities on fractals continued to encourage the
assembly of additional activities for this second volume. Fractals
provide a setting wherein students can enjoy hands-on experiences
that involve important mathematical content connected to a wide
range of physical and social phenomena. The striking graphic
images, unexpected geometric properties, and fascinating numerical
processes offer unparalleled opportunity for enthusiastic student
inquiry. Students sense the vigor present in the growing and highly
integrative discipline of fractal geom etry as they are introduced
to mathematical developments that have occurred during the last
half of the twentieth century. Few branches of mathematics and
computer science offer such a contem porary portrayal of the
wonderment available in careful analysis, in the amazing dialogue
between numeric and geometric processes, and in the energetic
interaction between mathematics and other disciplines. Fractals
continue to supply an uncommon setting for animated teaching and
learn ing activities that focus upon fundamental mathematical
concepts, connections, problem-solving techniques, and many other
major topics of elementary and advanced mathematics. It remains our
hope that, through this second volume of strategic activities,
readers will find their enjoyment of mathematics heightened and
their appreciation for the dynamics of the world in creased. We
want experiences with fractals to enliven curiosity and to stretch
the imagination."
Addressed to all readers with an interest in fractals, hyperspaces,
fixed-point theory, tilings and nonstandard analysis, this book
presents its subject in an original and accessible way complete
with many figures. The first part of the book develops certain
hyperspace theory concerning the Hausdorff metric and the Vietoris
topology, as a foundation for what follows on self-similarity and
fractality. A major feature is that nonstandard analysis is used to
obtain new proofs of some known results much more slickly than
before. The theory of J.E. Hutchinson's invariant sets (sets
composed of smaller images of themselves) is developed, with a
study of when such a set is tiled by its images and a
classification of many invariant sets as either regular or
residual. The last and most original part of the book introduces
the notion of a "view" as part of a framework for studying the
structure of sets within a given space. This leads to new, elegant
concepts (defined purely topologically) of self-similarity and
fractality: in particular, the author shows that many invariant
sets are "visually fractal," i.e. have infinite detail in a certain
sense. These ideas have considerable scope for further development,
and a list of problems and lines of research is included.
Geometric Topology can be defined to be the investigation of global
properties of a further structure (e.g. differentiable, Riemannian,
complex, algebraic etc.) one can impose on a topological manifold.
At the C.I.M.E. session in Montecatini, in 1990, three courses of
lectures were given onrecent developments in this subject which is
nowadays emerging as one of themost fascinating and promising
fields of contemporary mathematics. The notesof these courses are
collected in this volume and can be described as: 1) the geometry
and the rigidity of discrete subgroups in Lie groups especially in
the case of lattices in semi-simple groups; 2) the study of the
critical points of the distance function and its appication to the
understanding of the topology of Riemannian manifolds; 3) the
theory of moduli space of instantons as a tool for studying the
geometry of low-dimensional manifolds. CONTENTS: J. Cheeger:
Critical Points of Distance Functions and Applications to
Geometry.- M. Gromov, P. Pansu, Rigidity of Lattices: An
Introduction.- Chr. Okonek: Instanton Invariants and Algebraic
Surfaces.
Gromov's theory of hyperbolic groups have had a big impact in
combinatorial group theory and has deep connections with many
branches of mathematics suchdifferential geometry, representation
theory, ergodic theory and dynamical systems. This book is an
elaboration on some ideas of Gromov on hyperbolic spaces and
hyperbolic groups in relation with symbolic dynamics. Particular
attention is paid to the dynamical system defined by the action of
a hyperbolic group on its boundary. The boundary is most
oftenchaotic both as a topological space and as a dynamical system,
and a description of this boundary and the action is given in terms
of subshifts of finite type. The book is self-contained and
includes two introductory chapters, one on Gromov's hyperbolic
geometry and the other one on symbolic dynamics. It is intended for
students and researchers in geometry and in dynamical systems, and
can be used asthe basis for a graduate course on these subjects.
In this volume experts from university and industry are presenting
new technologies for solving industrial problems as well as
important and practicable impulses for new research. The following
topics are treated: - solid modelling - geometry processing -
feature modelling - product modelling - surfaces over arbitrary
topologies - blending methods - scattered data algorithms -
smooting and fairing algorithms - NURBS 21 articles are giving a
state-of-the-art survey of the relevant problems and issues in the
rapidly growing area of geometric modelling.
This book is an introduction to the ideas from general topology
that are used in elementary analysis. It is written at a level that
is intended to make the bulk of the material accessible to students
in the latter part of their first year of study at a university or
college although students will normally meet most of the work in
their second or later years. The aim has been to bridge the gap
between introductory books like the author"s Mathematical Analysis:
A Straightforward Approach, in which carefully selected theorems
are discussed at length with numerous examples, and the more
advanced book on analysis, in which the author is more concerned
with providing a comprehensive and elegant theory than in smoothing
the ways for beginners. An attempt has been made throughout not
only to prepare the ground for more advanced work, but also to
revise and to illuminate the material which students will have met
previously but may have not fully understood.
Mathematicians have developed the language of topology; but the
conventional development leaves until last the discussion and ideas
about shapes, so those who have not mastered the initial ideas of
analysis and general topology are barred from participation by a
rigid formalism. This book, first published in 1976, adopts a
different approach, developing a language close to that of ordinary
discourse. It is intended to encourage readers of varying
backgrounds, but especially students, to think spatially. The text
is well illustrated, with toned drawings creating three-dimensional
effects where appropriate, and there are abundant exercises. Useful
appendices accompany the text, providing hints and solutions to
these exercises and also a sketch of how the treatment can be
modelled within a conventional topology course for more advanced
students. The book can be regarded as an example of the emerging
discipline of mathematics education, as well as being about
surfaces.
Fractal geometry has become popular in the last 15 years, its
applications can be found in technology, science, or even arts.
Fractal methods and formalism are seen today as a general,
abstract, but nevertheless practical instrument for the description
of nature in a wide sense. But it was Computer Graphics which made
possible the increasing popularity of fractals several years ago,
and long after their mathematical formulation. The two disciplines
are tightly linked. The book contains the scientificcontributions
presented in an international workshop in the "Computer Graphics
Center" in Darmstadt, Germany. The target of the workshop was to
present the wide spectrum of interrelationships and interactions
between Fractal Geometry and Computer Graphics. The topics vary
from fundamentals and new theoretical results to various
applications and systems development. All contributions are
original, unpublished papers.The presentations have been discussed
in two working groups; the discussion results, together with actual
trends and topics of future research, are reported in the last
section. The topics of the book are divides into four sections:
Fundamentals, Computer Graphics and Optical Simulation, Simulation
of Natural Phenomena, Image Processing and Image Analysis.
The earlier chapter of this self-contained text provide a route
from first principles through standard linear and quadratic algebra
to geometric algebra, with Clifford's geometric algebras taking
pride of place. In parallel with this is an account, also from
first principles, of the elementary theory of topological spaces
and of continuous and differentiable maps that leads up to the
definitions of smooth manifolds and their tangent spaces and of Lie
groups and Lie algebras. The calculus is presented as far as
possible in basis free form to emphasize its geometrical flavour
and its linear algebra content. In this second edition Dr Porteous
has taken the opportunity to add a chapter on triality which
extends earlier work on the Spin groups in the chapter on Clifford
algebras. The details include a number of important transitive
group actions and a description of one of the exceptional Lie
groups, the group G2. A number of corrections and improvements have
also been made. There are many exercises throughout the book and
senior undergraduates in mathematics as well as first-year graduate
students will continue to find it stimulating and rewarding.
One way to advance the science of computational geometry is to make
a comprehensive study of fundamental operations that are used in
many different algorithms. This monograph attempts such an
investigation in the case of two basic predicates: the
counterclockwise relation pqr, which states that the circle through
points (p, q, r) is traversed counterclockwise when we encounter
the points in cyclic order p, q, r, p, ...; and the incircle
relation pqrs, which states that s lies inside that circle if pqr
is true, or outside that circle if pqr is false. The author, Donald
Knuth, is one of the greatest computer scientists of our time. A
few years ago, he and some of his students were looking at amap
that pinpointed the locations of about 100 cities. They asked,
"Which ofthese cities are neighbors of each other?" They knew
intuitively that some pairs of cities were neighbors and some were
not; they wanted to find a formal mathematical characterization
that would match their intuition.This monograph is the result.
Fractals play an important role in modeling natural phenomena and
engineering processes. And fractals have a close connection to the
concepts of chaotic dynamics. This monograph presents definitions,
concepts, notions and methodologies of both spatial and temporal
fractals. It addresses students and researchers in chemistry and in
chemical engineering. The authors present the concepts and
methodologies in sufficient detail for uninitiated readers. They
include many simple examples and graphical illustrations. They
outline some examples in more detail: Perimeter fractal dimension
of char particles, surface fractal dimension of charcoal; fractal
analysis of pressure fluctuation in multiphase flow systems.
Readers who master the concepts in this book, can confidently apply
them to their fields of interest.
The author presents a topological approach to the problem of
robustness of dynamic feedback control. First the gap-topology is
introduced as a distance measure between systems. In this topology,
stability of the closed loop system is a robust property.
Furthermore, it is possible to solve the problem of optimally
robust control in this setting. The book can be divided into two
parts. The first chapters form an introduction to the topological
approach towards robust stabilization. Although of theoretical
nature, only general mathematical knowledge is required from the
reader. The second part is devoted to compensator design. Several
algorithms for computing an optimally robust controller in the
gap-topology are presented and worked out. Therefore we hope that
the book will not only be of interest to theoreticians, but that
also practitioners will benefit from it.
In these notes, first published in 1980, Professor Northcott
provides a self-contained introduction to the theory of affine
algebraic groups for mathematicians with a basic knowledge of
communicative algebra and field theory. The book divides into two
parts. The first four chapters contain all the geometry needed for
the second half of the book which deals with affine groups.
Alternatively the first part provides a sure introduction to the
foundations of algebraic geometry. Any affine group has an
associated Lie algebra. In the last two chapters, the author
studies these algebras and shows how, in certain important cases,
their properties can be transferred back to the groups from which
they arose. These notes provide a clear and carefully written
introduction to algebraic geometry and algebraic groups.
The theory of surgery on manifolds has been generalized to
categories of manifolds with group actions in several different
ways. This book discusses some basic properties that such theories
have in common. Special emphasis is placed on analogs of the
fourfold periodicity theorems in ordinary surgery and the roles of
standard general position hypotheses on the strata of manifolds
with group actions. The contents of the book presuppose some
familiarity with the basic ideas of surgery theory and
transformation groups, but no previous knowledge of equivariant
surgery is assumed. The book is designed to serve either as an
introduction to equivariant surgery theory for advanced graduate
students and researchers in related areas, or as an account of the
authors' previously unpublished work on periodicity for specialists
in surgery theory or transformation groups.
During the Fall Semester of 1987, Stevo Todorcevic gave a series of
lectures at the University of Colorado. These notes of the course,
taken by the author, give a novel and fast exposition of four
chapters of Set Theory. The first two chapters are about the
connection between large cardinals and Lebesque measure. The third
is on forcing axioms such as Martin's axiom or the Proper Forcing
Axiom. The fourth chapter looks at the method of minimal walks and
p-functions and their applications. The book is addressed to
researchers and graduate students interested in Set Theory,
Set-Theoretic Topology and Measure Theory.
This book demonstrates the lively interaction between algebraic
topology, very low dimensional topology and combinatorial group
theory. Many of the ideas presented are still in their infancy, and
it is hoped that the work here will spur others to new and exciting
developments. Among the many techniques disussed are the use of
obstruction groups to distinguish certain exact sequences and
several graph theoretic techniques with applications to the theory
of groups.
A central problem in algebraic topology is the calculation of the
values of the stable homotopy groups of spheres +*S. In this book,
a new method for this is developed based upon the analysis of the
Atiyah-Hirzebruch spectral sequence. After the tools for this
analysis are developed, these methods are applied to compute
inductively the first 64 stable stems, a substantial improvement
over the previously known 45. Much of this computation is
algorithmic and is done by computer. As an application, an element
of degree 62 of Kervaire invariant one is shown to have order two.
This book will be useful to algebraic topologists and graduate
students with a knowledge of basic homotopy theory and
Brown-Peterson homology; for its methods, as a reference on the
structure of the first 64 stable stems and for the tables depicting
the behavior of the Atiyah-Hirzebruch and classical Adams spectral
sequences through degree 64.
The book is devoted to two natural problems, the existence and
unicity of minimal projections in Banach space. Connections are
established between the latter and unicity in mathematical
programming problems and also with the problem of the
characterization of Hilbert spaces. The book also contains a
Kolmogorov type criterion for minimal projections and detailed
descriptions of the Fourier operators. Presenting both new results
and problems for further investigations, this book is addressed to
researchers and graduate students interested in geometric
functional analysis and to applications.
This workbook is intended for college courses for prospective or
in-service secondary school teachers of geometry. It contains
solutions and commentary to the numerous exercises in the
accompanying workbook.
The Handbook of Homotopy Theory provides a panoramic view of an
active area in mathematics that is currently seeing dramatic
solutions to long-standing open problems, and is proving itself of
increasing importance across many other mathematical disciplines.
The origins of the subject date back to work of Henri Poincare and
Heinz Hopf in the early 20th century, but it has seen enormous
progress in the 21st century. A highlight of this volume is an
introduction to and diverse applications of the newly established
foundational theory of Y -categories. The coverage is vast, ranging
from axiomatic to applied, from foundational to computational, and
includes surveys of applications both geometric and algebraic. The
contributors are among the most active and creative researchers in
the field. The 22 chapters by 31 contributors are designed to
address novices, as well as established mathematicians, interested
in learning the state of the art in this field, whose methods are
of increasing importance in many other areas.
These notes give the basic ingredients of the theory of weighted
Hardy spaces of tempered distribution on Rn and illustrate the
techniques used. The authors consider properties of weights in a
general setting; they derive mean value inequalities for wavelet
transforms and introduce halfspace techniques with, for example,
nontangential maximal functions and g-functions. This leads to
several equivalent definitions of the weighted Hardy space HPW.
Fourier multipliers and singular integral operators are applied to
the weighted Hardy spaces and complex interpolation is considered.
One tool often used here is the atomic decomposition. The methods
developed by the authors using the atomic decomposition in the
strictly convex case p>1 are of special interest.
The contributions in this volume summarize parts of a seminar on
conformal geometry which was held at the Max-Planck-Institut fur
Mathematik in Bonn during the academic year 1985/86. The intention
of this seminar was to study conformal structures on mani folds
from various viewpoints. The motivation to publish seminar notes
grew out of the fact that in spite of the basic importance of this
field to many topics of current interest (low-dimensional topology,
analysis on manifolds . . . ) there seems to be no coherent
introduction to conformal geometry in the literature. We have tried
to make the material presented in this book self-contained, so it
should be accessible to students with some background in
differential geometry. Moreover, we hope that it will be useful as
a reference and as a source of inspiration for further research.
Ravi Kulkarni/Ulrich Pinkall Conformal Structures and Mobius
Structures Ravi S. Kulkarni* Contents 0 Introduction 2 1 Conformal
Structures 4 2 Conformal Change of a Metric, Mobius Structures 8 3
Liouville's Theorem 12 n 4 The GroupsM(n) andM(E ) 13 5 Connection
with Hyperbol ic Geometry 16 6 Constructions of Mobius Manifolds 21
7 Development and Holonomy 31 8 Ideal Boundary, Classification of
Mobius Structures 35 * Partially supported by the
Max-Planck-Institut fur Mathematik, Bonn, and an NSF grant. 2 O
Introduction (0. 1) Historically, the stereographic projection and
the Mercator projection must have appeared to mathematicians very
startling."
This volume collects six related articles. The first is the notes
(written by J.S. Milne) of a major part of the seminar "Periodes
des Int grales Abeliennes" given by P. Deligne at I'.B.E.S.,
1978-79. The second article was written for this volume (by P.
Deligne and J.S. Milne) and is largely based on: N Saavedra Rivano,
Categories tannakiennes, Lecture Notes in Math. 265, Springer,
Heidelberg 1972. The third article is a slight expansion of part
of: J.S. Milne and Kuang-yen Shih, Sh ura varieties: conjugates and
the action of complex conjugation 154 pp. (Unpublished manuscript,
October 1979). The fourth article is based on a letter from P.
De1igne to R. Langlands, dated 10th April, 1979, and was revised
and completed (by De1igne) in July, 1981. The fifth article is a
slight revision of another section of the manuscript of Milne and
Shih referred to above. The sixth article, by A. Ogus, dates from
July, 1980.
|
|