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This book answers, in the form of short and entertaining vignettes, the question: "What do mathematicians really do?" Readers will learn that mathematicians use numbers in the same way that novelists use letters. The individual letters are typed while the author thinks on a much grander scale, invisible to the observer.
Requiring only familiarity with the multiplication table (and that for only one vignette), the book makes accessible a variety of mathematical concepts, such as game theory, chaos, and traffic flow modelling. The author accomplishes this with a light, engaging style, and a range of real-world examples that includes everything from barbershops to President James Garfield.
Mathematicians Don't Work With Numbers will be of interest to the large audience of people who have always assumed that mathematicians do, in fact, work with numbers.
List of contents
Introduction.- A Citizen's Dilemma.- The Structure of Mathematics.- A Danger Scale.- Public Key Encryption I.- Public Key Encryption II.- Fractals.- Graphs.- Military Math.- Statistics - A Rant.- Estimation.- Ramanujan.- Hardy.- It's Obvious.- Chaos.- Recognition.- Map Coloring.- Groups.- Topology I.- Topology II.- Non-existence Proofs.- Existence Proofs.- Can't Be Computed.- Can't Be Proved.- Games.- The Greatest Three.- Sets.- Infinity.- The Largest Hotel Ever.- Tied Up in Knots.- Probably.- Rush Hour Traffic.- Fermat and His Last Theorem.- A Million Bucks.- Russia vs. America.- Cardano, Viète and Notation.- President James Garfield.- Error-Correcting Codes.- Mercator Maps.- Ball and Saddle Geometries.- The Spherical Earth.- Consistency.- Can Be Proved.- Cycloids.- C******* of Variations.- Amazing Waves.- How to Push a Pendulum.- Surprising Theorems.- Mathematical Aesthetics.- Katherine Johnson's Math.- My Career as a Mathematician.- Afterword.- Further Reading.- Movies About Real Mathematicians.
About the author
Richard Poulo considers himself a mathematician first and foremost, though his PhD is in Computer Science from Rutgers University, after receiving a degree in mathematics from Cornell. Poulo spent his career in industry, developing mathematical and engineering software.
Report
The book Mathematicians don t work with numbers is an agile and engaging introduction to different branches of mathematics, from public key encryption to chaotic models, from proof techniques to aesthetics in mathematics. ... Each chapter is a little piece added to the reality s understanding. The non-expert reader can enjoy jargon-free chapters, while the more expert reader can appreciate the way to present the topics, along with their precision." (Maria Mannone, zbMATH 1553.00001, 2025)
