The Best Writing on Mathematics 2020
eBook - PDF

The Best Writing on Mathematics 2020

  1. English
  2. PDF
  3. Available on iOS & Android
eBook - PDF

The Best Writing on Mathematics 2020

About this book

The year's finest mathematical writing from around the world

This annual anthology brings together the year's finest mathematics writing from around the world. Featuring promising new voices alongside some of the foremost names in the field, The Best Writing on Mathematics 2020 makes available to a wide audience many articles not easily found anywhere else—and you don't need to be a mathematician to enjoy them. These writings offer surprising insights into the nature, meaning, and practice of mathematics today. They delve into the history, philosophy, teaching, and everyday aspects of math, and take readers behind the scenes of today's hottest mathematical debates.

Here, Steven Strogatz reveals how calculus drives advances in virology, Paul Thagard argues that the power of mathematics stems from its combination of realistic and fictional qualities, and Erica Klarreich describes how Hao Huang used the combinatorics of cube nodes to solve a longstanding problem in computer science. In other essays, John Baez tells how he discovered the irresistible attractions of algebraic geometry, Mark Colyvan compares the radically different explanatory practices of mathematics and science, and Boris Odehnal reviews some surprising properties of multidimensional geometries. And there's much, much more.

In addition to presenting the year's most memorable writings on mathematics, this must-have anthology includes a bibliography of other notable writings and an introduction by the editor.

This book belongs on the shelf of anyone interested in where math has taken us—and where it is headed.

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Yes, you can access The Best Writing on Mathematics 2020 by Mircea Pitici in PDF and/or ePUB format, as well as other popular books in Mathematics & Games in Mathematics. We have over one million books available in our catalogue for you to explore.

Table of contents

  1. Cover
  2. Title
  3. Copyright
  4. Dedication
  5. Contents
  6. Color illustration insert follows page
  7. Introduction
  8. Outsmarting a Virus with Math
  9. Uncertainty
  10. The Inescapable Casino
  11. Resolving the Fuel Economy Singularity
  12. The Median Voter Theorem: Why Politicians Move to the Center
  13. The Math That Takes Newton into the Quantum World
  14. Decades-Old Computer Science Conjecture Solved in Two Pages
  15. The Three-Body Problem
  16. The Intrigues and Delights of Kleinian and Quasi-Fuchsian Limit Sets
  17. Mathematical Treasures from Sid Sackson
  18. The Amazing Math Inside the Rubik’s Cube
  19. What Is a Hyperbolic 3-Manifold?
  20. Higher Dimensional Geometries: What Are They Good For?
  21. Who Mourns the Tenth Heegner Number?
  22. On Your Mark, Get Set, Multiply
  23. 1994, The Year Calculus Was Born
  24. Gauss’s Computation of the Easter Date
  25. Mathematical Knowledge and Reality
  26. The Ins and Outs of Mathematical Explanation
  27. Statistical Intervals, Not Statistical Significance
  28. Contributors
  29. Notable Writings
  30. Acknowledgments
  31. Credits