The importance of mathematics competitions has been widely recognized for three reasons: they help to develop imaginative capacity and thinking skills whose value far transcends mathematics; they constitute the most effective way of discovering and nurturing mathematical talent; and they provide a means to combat the prevalent false image of mathematics held by high school students, as either a fearsomely difficult or a dull and uncreative subject. This book provides a comprehensive training resource for competitions from local and provincial to national Olympiad level, containing hundreds of diagrams, and graced by many light-hearted cartoons. It features a large collection of what mathematicians call "beautiful" problems - non-routine, provocative, fascinating, and challenging problems, often with elegant solutions. It features careful, systematic exposition of a selection of the most important topics encountered in mathematics competitions, assuming little prior knowledge. Geometry, trigonometry, mathematical induction, inequalities, Diophantine equations, number theory, sequences and series, the binomial theorem, and combinatorics - are all developed in a gentle but lively manner, liberally illustrated with examples, and consistently motivated by attractive "appetiser" problems, whose solution appears after the relevant theory has been expounded.
Each chapter is presented as a "toolchest" of instruments designed for cracking the problems collected at the end of the chapter. Other topics, such as algebra, co-ordinate geometry, functional equations and probability, are introduced and elucidated in the posing and solving of the large collection of miscellaneous problems in thefinal toolchest.
An unusual feature of this book is the attention paid throughout to the history of mathematics - the origins of the ideas, the terminology and some of the problems, and the celebration of mathematics as a multicultural, cooperative human achievement.
As a bonus the aspiring "mathlete" may encounter, in the most enjoyable way possible, many of the topics that form the core of the standard school curriculum.

This book provides a quick access to computational tools for algebraic geometry, the mathematical discipline which handles solution sets of polynomial equations. Originating from a number of intense one week schools taught by the authors, the text is designed so as to provide a step by step introduction which enables the reader to get started with his own computational experiments right away. The authors present the basic concepts and ideas in a compact way.

The relation between mathematics and physics has a long history, in which the role of number theory and of other more abstract parts of mathematics has recently become more prominent.

More than ten years after a first meeting in 1989 between number theorists and physicists at the Centre de Physique des Houches, a second 2-week event focused on the broader interface of number theory, geometry, and physics.

This book is the result of that exciting meeting, and collects, in 2 volumes, extended versions of the lecture courses, followed by shorter texts on special topics, of eminent mathematicians and physicists.

The present volume has three parts: Random matrices, Zeta functions, Dynamical systems.

The companion volume is subtitled: On Conformal Field Theories, Discrete Groups and Renormalization and will be published in 2006 (Springer, 3-540-30307-3).

Geometric Modeling and Algebraic Geometry, though closely related, are traditionally represented by two almost disjoint scientific communities. Both fields deal with objects defined by algebraic equations, but the objects are studied in different ways. In 12 chapters written by leading experts, this book presents recent results which rely on the interaction of both fields. Some of these results have been obtained from a major European project in geometric modeling.

Growing transportation costs and tight delivery schedules mean that good located decisions are more crucial than ever in the success or failure of industrial and puplic projects. The development of realistic location models is an essential phase in every locational decision process. Especially when dealing with geometric representations of continuous (planar) location model problems, the goegraphical reality must be incorporated. This text develops the mathematical implications of barriers to the geometrical and analytical characteristics of continuous location problems. Besides their relevance in the application of location theoretic results, location problems with barriers are also very interesting from a mathematical point of view. The nonconvexity of distance measures in the presence of barriers leads to nonconvex optimization problems. Most of the classical methods in continuous location theory rely heaily on the convexity of the objective function and will thus fail in this context. On the other hand, general methods in global optimization capable of treating nonconvex problems ignore the geometric charateristics of the location problems considered. Theoretic as well as algorithmic approaches are utilized to overcome the described difficulties for the solution of location problems with barriers. Depending on the barrier shapes, the underlying distance measure, and type of objective function, different concepts are conceived to handle the nonconvexity of the problem. This book will appeal to those working in operations research and management science and mathematicians interested in optimization theory and its applications.

This volume contains selected papers authored by speakers and participants of the 2013 Arbeitstagung, held at the Max Planck Institute for Mathematics in Bonn, Germany, from May 22-28. The 2013 meeting (and this resulting proceedings) was dedicated to the memory of Friedrich Hirzebruch, who passed away on May 27, 2012. Hirzebruch organized the first Arbeitstagung in 1957 with a unique concept that would become its most distinctive feature: the program was not determined beforehand by the organizers, but during the meeting by all participants in an open discussion. This ensured that the talks would be on the latest developments in mathematics and that many important results were presented at the conference for the first time. Written by leading mathematicians, the papers in this volume cover various topics from algebraic geometry, topology, analysis, operator theory, and representation theory and display the breadth and depth of pure mathematics that has always been characteristic of the Arbeitstagung.

A group of Gerry Schwarz's colleagues and collaborators gathered at the Fields Institute in Toronto for a mathematical festschrift in honor of his 60th birthday. This volume is an outgrowth of that event, covering the wide range of mathematics to which Gerry Schwarz has either made fundamental contributions or stimulated others to pursue. The articles are a sampling of modern day algebraic geometry with associated group actions from its leading experts, with a particular focus on characteristic 0 and modular invariant theory.

Contributors:

M. Brion

A. Broer

D. Daigle

J. Elmer

P. Fleischmann

G. Freudenberg

D. Greb

P. Heinzner

A. Helminck

B. Kostant

H. Kraft

R. J. Shank

W. Traves

N. R. Wallach

D. Wehlau

Configurations can be studied from a graph-theoretical viewpoint via the so-called Levi graphs and lie at the heart of graphs, groups, surfaces, and geometries, all of which are very active areas of mathematical exploration. In this self-contained textbook, algebraic graph theory is used to introduce groups; topological graph theory is used to explore surfaces; and geometric graph theory is implemented to analyze incidence geometries. After a preview of configurations in Chapter 1, a concise introduction to graph theory is presented in Chapter 2, followed by a geometric introduction to groups in Chapter 3. Maps and surfaces are combinatorially treated in Chapter 4. Chapter 5 introduces the concept of incidence structure through vertex colored graphs, and the combinatorial aspects of classical configurations are studied. Geometric aspects, some historical remarks, references, and applications of classical configurations appear in the last chapter. With over two hundred illustrations, challenging exercises at the end of each chapter, a comprehensive bibliography, and a set of open problems, Configurations from a Graphical Viewpoint is well suited for a graduate graph theory course, an advanced undergraduate seminar, or a self-contained reference for mathematicians and researchers.

This introduction to topology emphasises a geometric approach with a focus on surfaces. A primary feature is a large collection of exercises and projects, which fosters a teaching style making the student an active class participant. A wide range of material at different levels supports flexible use of the book for a variety of students. Part I is appropriate for a one semester or two quarter course, and Part II, (which is problem based), allows the book to be used for a year long course which supports a variety of syllabuses.

Based on a series of lectures for adult students, this lively and entertaining book proves that, far from being a dusty, dull subject, geometry is in fact full of beauty and fascination. The author's infectious enthusiasm is put to use in explaining many of the key concepts in the field, starting with the Golden Number and taking the reader on a geometrical journey via Shapes and Solids, through the Fourth Dimension, finishing up with Einstein's Theories of Relativity.

Equally suitable as a gift for a youngster or as a nostalgic journey back into the world of mathematics for older readers, John Barnes' book is the perfect antidote for anyone whose maths lessons at school are a source of painful memories. Where once geometry was a source of confusion and frustration, Barnes brings enlightenment and entertainment.

In this second edition, stimulated by recent lectures at Oxford, further material and extra illustrations have been added on many topics including Coloured Cubes, Chaos and Crystals.

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This proceedings book brings selected works from two conferences, the 2nd Brazil-Mexico Meeting on Singularity and the 3rd Northeastern Brazilian Meeting on Singularities, that were hold in Salvador, in July 2015. All contributions were carefully peer-reviewed and revised, and cover topics like Equisingularity, Topology and Geometry of Singularities, Topological Classification of Singularities of Mappings, and more. They were written by mathematicians from several countries, including Brazil, Spain, Mexico, Japan and the USA, on relevant topics on Theory of Singularity, such as studies on deformations, Milnor fibration, foliations, Catastrophe theory, and myriad applications. Open problems are also introduced, making this volume a must-read both for graduate students and active researchers in this field.

The theory of Frobenius splittings has made a significant impact in the study of the geometry of flag varieties and representation theory. This work, unique in book literature, systematically develops the theory and covers all its major developments.

Key features:

* Concise, efficient exposition unfolds from basic introductory material on Frobenius splittingsa "definitions, properties and examplesa "to cutting edge research

* Studies in detail the geometry of Schubert varieties, their syzygies, equivariant embeddings of reductive groups, Hilbert Schemes, canonical splittings, good filtrations, among other topics

* Applies Frobenius splitting methods to algebraic geometry and various problems in representation theory

* Many examples, exercises, and open problems suggested throughout

* Comprehensive bibliography and index

This book will be an excellent resource for mathematicians and graduate students in algebraic geometry and representation theory of algebraic groups.

The first instances of deformation theory were given by Kodaira and Spencer for complex structures and by Gerstenhaber for associative algebras. Since then, deformation theory has been applied as a useful tool in the study of many other mathematical structures, and even today it plays an important role in many developments of modern mathematics.
This volume collects a few self-contained and peer-reviewed papers by experts which present up-to-date research topics in algebraic and motivic topology, quantum field theory, algebraic geometry, noncommutative geometry and the deformation theory of Poisson algebras. They originate from activities at the Max-Planck-Institute for Mathematics and the Hausdorff Center for Mathematics in Bonn.

This textbook introduces geometric measure theory through the notion of currents. Currents, continuous linear functionals on spaces of differential forms, are a natural language in which to formulate types of extremal problems arising in geometry, and can be used to study generalized versions of the Plateau problem and related questions in geometric analysis. Motivating key ideas with examples and figures, this book is a comprehensive introduction ideal for both self-study and for use in the classroom. The exposition demands minimal background, is self-contained and accessible, and thus is ideal for both graduate students and researchers.

The Abel Symposium 2008 focused on the modern theory of differential equations and their applications in geometry, mechanics, and mathematical physics. Following the tradition of Monge, Abel and Lie, the scientific program emphasized the role of algebro-geometric methods, which nowadays permeate all mathematical models in natural and engineering sciences. The ideas of invariance and symmetry are of fundamental importance in the geometric approach to differential equations, with a serious impact coming from the area of integrable systems and field theories.

This volume consists of original contributions and broad overview lectures of the participants of the Symposium. The papers in this volume present the modern approach to this classical subject.

This is a collection of essays based on lectures that author has given on various occasions on foundation of quantum theory, symmetries and representation theory, and the quantum theory of the superworld created by physicists. The lectures are linked by a unifying theme: how the quantum world and superworld appear under the lens of symmetry and supersymmetry.

In the world of ultra-small times and distances such as the Planck length and Planck time, physicists believe no measurements are possible and so the structure of spacetime itself is an unkown that has to be first understood. There have been suggestions (Volovich hypothesis) that world geometry at such energy regimes is non-archimedian and some of the lectures explore the consequences of such a hypothesis.

Ultimately, symmetries and supersymmetries are described by the representation of groups and supergroups. The author's interest in representation is a lifelong one and evolved slowly, and owes a great deal to conversations and discussions he had with George Mackey and Harish-Chandra. The book concludes with a retrospective look at these conversations.

This book contains contributions from the Spanish Relativity Meeting, ERE 2012, held in" "Guimaraes, Portugal, September 2012. It features more than 70 papers on a range of topics in general relativity and gravitation, from mathematical cosmology, numerical relativity and black holes to string theory and quantum gravity.

Under the title "Progress in Mathematical Relativity, Gravitation and Cosmology," ERE 2012 was attended by an exceptional international list of over a hundred participants from the five continents and over forty countries. ERE is organized every year by one of the Spanish or Portuguese groups working in this area and is supported by the Spanish Society of Gravitation and Relativity (SEGRE).

This book will be of interest to researchers in mathematics and physics.

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Nonlinear Optimization is an intriguing area of study where mathematical theory, algorithms and applications converge to calculate the optimal values of continuous functions. Within this subject, Global Optimization aims at finding global optima for difficult problems in which many local optima might exist.

This book provides a compelling introduction to global and non-linear optimization providing interdisciplinary readers with a strong background to continue their studies into these and other related fields. The book offers insight in relevant concepts such as "region of attraction" and "Branch-and-Bound" by elaborating small numerical examples and exercises for the reader to follow.

This book is an introduction to the theory of elliptic curves, ranging from its most elementary aspects to current research. The first part, which grew out of Tate's Haverford lectures, covers the elementary arithmetic theory of elliptic curves over the rationals. The next two chapters recast the arguments used in the proof of the Mordell theorem into the context of Galois cohomology and descent theory. This is followed by three chapters on the analytic theory of elliptic curves, including such topics as elliptic functions, theta functions, and modular functions. Next, the theory of endomorphisms and elliptic curves over infinite and local fields are discussed. The book then continues by providing a survey of results in the arithmetic theory, especially those related to the conjecture of the Birch and Swinnerton-Dyer. This new edition contains three new chapters which explore recent directions and extensions of the theory of elliptic curves and the addition of two new appendices. The first appendix, written by Stefan Theisan, examines the role of Calabi-Yau manifolds in string theory, while the second, by Otto Forster, discusses the use of elliptic curves in computing theory and coding theory. Dale Husemöller is a member of the faculty at the Max Planck Institute of Mathematics in Bonn.

Clifford, or geometric algebra, provides a universal and powerful algebraic framework for an elegant and coherent representation of various problems occurring in computer science, signal processing, neural computing, image processing, pattern recognition, computer vision, and robotics. This book introduces the concepts and framework of Clifford algebra and provides a rich source of examples of how to work with this formalism.

This book provides a conceptual and computational framework to study how the nervous system exploits the anatomical properties of limbs to produce mechanical function. The study of the neural control of limbs has historically emphasized the use of optimization to find solutions to the muscle redundancy problem. That is, how does the nervous system select a specific muscle coordination pattern when the many muscles of a limb allow for multiple solutions? I revisit this problem from the emerging perspective of neuromechanics that emphasizes finding and implementing families of feasible solutions, instead of a single and unique optimal solution. Those families of feasible solutions emerge naturally from the interactions among the feasible neural commands, anatomy of the limb, and constraints of the task. Such alternative perspective to the neural control of limb function is not only biologically plausible, but sheds light on the most central tenets and debates in the fields of neural control, robotics, rehabilitation, and brain-body co-evolutionary adaptations. This perspective developed from courses I taught to engineers and life scientists at Cornell University and the University of Southern California, and is made possible by combining fundamental concepts from mechanics, anatomy, mathematics, robotics and neuroscience with advances in the field of computational geometry. Fundamentals of Neuromechanics is intended for neuroscientists, roboticists, engineers, physicians, evolutionary biologists, athletes, and physical and occupational therapists seeking to advance their understanding of neuromechanics. Therefore, the tone is decidedly pedagogical, engaging, integrative, and practical to make it accessible to people coming from a broad spectrum of disciplines. I attempt to tread the line between making the mathematical exposition accessible to life scientists, and convey the wonder and complexity of neuroscience to engineers and computational scientists. While no one approach can hope to definitively resolve the important questions in these related fields, I hope to provide you with the fundamental background and tools to allow you to contribute to the emerging field of neuromechanics.

In many areas of mathematics some "higher operations" are arising. These havebecome so important that several research projects refer to such expressions. Higher operationsform new types of algebras. The key to understanding and comparing them, to creating invariants of their action is operad theory. This is a point of view that is 40 years old in algebraic topology, but the new trend is its appearance in several other areas, such as algebraic geometry, mathematical physics, differential geometry, and combinatorics. The present volume is the first comprehensive and systematic approach to algebraic operads. An operad is an algebraic device that serves to study all kinds of algebras (associative, commutative, Lie, Poisson, A-infinity, etc.) from a conceptual point of view. The book presents this topic with an emphasis on Koszul duality theory. After a modern treatment of Koszul duality for associative algebras, the theory is extended to operads. Applications to homotopy algebra are given, for instance the Homotopy Transfer Theorem. Although the necessary notions of algebra are recalled, readers are expected to be familiar with elementary homological algebra. Each chapter ends with a helpful summary and exercises. A full chapter is devoted to examples, and numerous figures are included.

After a low-level chapter on Algebra, accessible to (advanced) undergraduate students, the level increases gradually through the book. However, the authors have done their best to make it suitable for graduate students: three appendicesreview the basic results needed in order to understand the various chapters. Since higher algebra is becoming essential in several research areas like deformation theory, algebraic geometry, representation theory, differential geometry, algebraic combinatorics, and mathematical physics, the book can also be used as a reference work by researchers.

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This book contains nine well-organized survey articles by leading researchers in positivity, with a strong emphasis on functional analysis. It provides insight into the structure of classical spaces of continuous functions, f-algebras, and integral operators, but also contains contributions to modern topics like vector measures, operator spaces, ordered tensor products, non-commutative Banach function spaces, and frames.

Contributors: B. Banerjee, D.P. Blecher, K. Boulabiar, Q. Bu, G. Buskes, G.P. Curbera, M. Henriksen, A.G. Kusraev, J. Marti-nez, B. de Pagter, W.J. Ricker, A.R. Schep, A. Triki, A.W. Wickstead