Read more
Journey through the world of numbers with the foremost authorities and writers in the field.
John Horton Conway and Richard K. Guy are two of the most accomplished, creative, and engaging number theorists any mathematically minded reader could hope to encounter. In this book, Conway and Guy lead the reader on an imaginative, often astonishing tour of the landscape of numbers.
The Book of Numbers is just that - an engagingly written, heavily illustrated introduction to the fascinating, sometimes surprising properties of numbers and number patterns. The book opens up a world of topics, theories, and applications, exploring intriguing aspects of real numbers, systems, arrays and sequences, and much more. Readers will be able to use figures to figure out figures, rub elbows with famous families of numbers, prove the primacy of primes, fathom the fruitfulness of fractions, imagine imaginary numbers, investigate the infinite and infinitesimal and more.
List of contents
1 The Romance of Numbers.- 2 Figures from Figures: Doing Arithmetic and Algebra by Geometry.- 3 What Comes Next?.- 4 Famous Families of Numbers.- 5 The Primacy of Primes.- 6 Further Fruitfulness of Fractions.- 7 Geometric Problems and Algebraic Numbers.- 8 Imagining Imaginary Numbers.- 9 Some Transcendental Numbers.- 10 Infinite and Infinitesimal Numbers.
Report
From the reviews:
"This is a really fascinating book either to read or to browse in, or for reference - there is a good index, and I can strongly recommend it - it should be in every school and college library!" The Mathematical Gazette
"... A delightful look at numbers and their roles in everything from language to flowers to the imagination." Science News
"... The great feature of the book is that anyone can read it without excessive head scratching ... You'll find plenty here to keep you occupied, amused, and informed. Buy, dip in, wallow." New Scientist
