Maths in 100 key breakthroughs
By: Richard Elwes
Publisher: Quercus
Published: 2013
Place of publication: London
Language: eng
Number of pages: 416
ISBN-13: 9781780873220
Subjects: Mathematics; History
Other titles: Maths in one hundred key breakthroughs
Description: Maths in 100 Key Breakthroughs presents a series of essays explaining the fundamentals of the most important maths concepts you really need to know. Richard Elwes profiles the groundbreaking and front-of-mind discoveries that have had a profound influence on our way of life and understanding. From the origins of counting some 35,000 years ago, right up to the very latest breakthroughs - such as Wiles' proof of Fermat's Last Theorem and Cook & Wolfram's Rule 110 - Maths in 100 Key Breakthroughs tells a story of discovery, invention, painstaking progress and inspired leaps of the imagination.
Notes: Includes index.
Table of contents: title: Machine generated contents note: 1. The evolution of counting; title: 2. Tallies; title: 3. Place-value notation; title: 4. Area and volume; title: 5. Pythagoras' theorem; title: 6. Irrational numbers; title: 7. Zeno's paradoxes; title: 8. The Platonic solids; title: 9. Logic; title: 10. Euclidean geometry; title: 11. Prime numbers; title: 12. The area of a circle; title: 13. Conic sections; title: 14. Trigonometry; title: 15. Perfect numbers; title: 16. Diophantine equations; title: 17. Hindu-Arabic numerals; title: 18. Modular arithmetic; title: 19. Negative numbers; title: 20. Algebra; title: 21.Combinatorics; title: 22. The Fibonacci sequence; title: 23. The harmonic series; title: 24. Cubic and quartic equations; title: 25. The complex numbers; title: 26. Logarithms; title: 27. Polyhedra; title: 28. Tessellations; title: 29. Kepler's laws; title: 30. Projective geometry; title: 31. Coordinates; title: 32. Calculus; title: 33. Differential geometry; title: 34. Polar coordinates; title: 35. Normal distribution; title: 36. Graph theory; title: 37. Exponentiation; title: 38. Euler characteristic; title: 39. Conditional probability; title: 40. Fundamental theorem of algebra; title: 41. Fourier analysis; title: Note continued: 42. The real numbers; title: 43. The unsolvability of the quintic; title: 44. The Navier-Stokes equations; title: 45. Curvature; title: 46. Hyperbolic geometry; title: 47. Constructible numbers; title: 48. Transcendental numbers; title: 49. Polytopes; title: 50. Riemann's zeta function; title: 51. Jordan curve theorem; title: 52. Classification of surfaces; title: 53. Cardinal numbers; title: 54. Wallpaper groups; title: 55. Digital geometry; title: 56. Russell's paradox; title: 57. Special relativity; title: 58. The three-body problem; title: 59. Waring's problem; title: 60. Markov processes; title: 61. General relativity; title: 62. Fractals; title: 63. Abstract algebra; title: 64. Knot polynomials; title: 65. Quantum mechanics; title: 66. Quantum field theory; title: 67. Ramsey theory; title: 68. Godel's incompleteness theorem; title: 69. Turing machines; title: 70. Numerical analysis; title: 71. Information theory; title: 72. Arrow's impossibility theorem; title: 73. Game theory; title: 74. Exotic spheres; title: 75. Randomness; title: 76. The continuum hypothesis; title: 77. Singularity theory; title: 78. Quasicrystals; title: 79. Friendship theorem; title: Note continued: 80. Non-standard analysis; title: 81. Hilbert's tenth problem; title: 82. The game of Life; title: 83.Complexity theory; title: 84. The travelling salesman problem; title: 85. Chaos theory; title: 86. Four colour theorem; title: 87. Public key cryptography; title: 88. Elliptic curves; title: 89. Weaire-Phelan foam; title: 90. Quantum computing; title: 91. Fermat's Last Theorem; title: 92. Kepler's conjecture; title: 93. Catalan's conjecture; title: 94. Poincare's conjecture; title: 95. Constellations of primes; title: 96. The classification of finite simple groups; title: 97. Langlands program; title: 98. Reverse mathematics; title: 99. Partitions; title: 100. Sudoku.