There are two kinds of math: the hard kind and the easy kind. The easy kind, practiced by ants, shrimp, Welsh corgis -- and us -- is innate. What innate calculating skills do we humans have? Leaving aside built-in mathematics, such as the visual system, ordinary people do just fine when faced with mathematical tasks in the course of the day. Yet when they are confronted with the same tasks presented as "math," their accuracy often drops. But if we have innate mathematical ability, why do we have to teach math and why do most of us find it so hard to learn? Are there tricks or strategies that the ordinary person can do to improve mathematical ability? Can we improve our math skills by learning from dogs, cats, and other creatures that "do math"? The answer to each of these questions is a qualified yes. All these examples of animal math suggest that if we want to do better in the formal kind of math, we should see how it arises from natural mathematics. From NPR's "Math Guy" -- The Math Instinct will provide even the most number-phobic among us with confidence in our own mathematical abilities.
The companion to the hit CBS crime series Numb3rs presents the fascinating way mathematics is used to fight real-life crime Using the popular CBS prime-time TV crime series Numb3rs as a springboard, Keith Devlin (known to millions of NPR listeners as the Math Guy on NPR's Weekend Edition with Scott Simon) and Gary Lorden (the principal math advisor to Numb3rs) explain real-life mathematical techniques used by the FBI and other law enforcement agencies to catch and convict criminals. From forensics to counterterrorism, the Riemann hypothesis to image enhancement, solving murders to beating casinos, Devlin and Lorden present compelling cases that illustrate how advanced mathematics can be used in state-of-the-art criminal investigations.
A compelling firsthand account of Keith Devlin's ten-year quest to tell Fibonacci's story In 2000, Keith Devlin set out to research the life and legacy of the medieval mathematician Leonardo of Pisa, popularly known as Fibonacci, whose book Liber abbaci has quite literally affected the lives of everyone alive today. Although he is most famous for the Fibonacci numbers--which, it so happens, he didn't invent--Fibonacci's greatest contribution was as an expositor of mathematical ideas at a level ordinary people could understand. In 1202, Liber abbaci--the "Book of Calculation"--introduced modern arithmetic to the Western world. Yet Fibonacci was long forgotten after his death, and it was not until the 1960s that his true achievements were finally recognized. Finding Fibonacci is Devlin's compelling firsthand account of his ten-year quest to tell Fibonacci's story. Devlin, a math expositor himself, kept a diary of the undertaking, which he draws on here to describe the project's highs and lows, its false starts and disappointments, the tragedies and unexpected turns, some hilarious episodes, and the occasional lucky breaks. You will also meet the unique individuals Devlin encountered along the way, people who, each for their own reasons, became fascinated by Fibonacci, from the Yale professor who traced modern finance back to Fibonacci to the Italian historian who made the crucial archival discovery that brought together all the threads of Fibonacci's astonishing story. Fibonacci helped to revive the West as the cradle of science, technology, and commerce, yet he vanished from the pages of history. This is Devlin's search to find him.
Intelligence can be characterised both as the ability to absorb and process information and as the ability to reason. Humans and other animals have both of these abilities to a greater or lesser degree, but the search for artificial intelligence has been hampered by our inability to create a theory that covers both of these characteristics. In this provocative and ground-breaking book, Professor Keith Devlin argues that to obtain a deeper understanding of the nature of intelligence and knowledge acquisition, we must broaden our concept of logic. For these purposes, Devlin introduces the concept of the infon, a quantum of information, and merges it with situations, a mathematical construction generalising the notion of sets developed by Barwise and Perry at Stanford University in order to study the meaning of natural languages. He develops and describes the theory here in general and intuitive terms, and discusses its relevance to a variety of concerns such as artificial intelligence, cognition, natural language and communication.
With this fascinating volume, Keith Devlin proves that the guiding principles of some of the most mysterious mathematical topics can be made comprehensible. Writing with an elegant lucidity, Devlin shows just why the definition of mathematics as "working with numbers" has been out of date for nearly 2,500 years. And he demonstrates that far from being too abstract to matter, mathematics is instead an essential and uniquely human endeavor, one that helps us understand the universe and ourselves. In this century alone, there has been a veritable explosion of mathematical activity. A body of knowledge that in 1900 might have filled 80 volumes now would require nearly 100,000. Fields such as algebra and topology have grown tremendously, while complexity theory, dynamical systems theory, and other new areas have developed. And in the last two decades, a common thread running through the many facets of mathematics has been recognized: mathematicians of all kinds now see their work as the study of patterns - real or imagined, visual or mental, arising from the natural world or from within the human mind. Devlin uses this basic definition as his central theme, revealing the search for patterns that drives the mathematics of counting (natural numbers), reasoning (language and logic), motion (calculus), shape (geometry, tilings), and position (topology, knots, symmetry). Interweaving historical highlights and current developments, and using a minimum of formulas, he lets readers see into the kind of reasoning that allows mathematicians to create and explore arcane subjects. And he makes clear the many ways mathematics informs our perceptions of reality - both the physical, biological, and social worlds without, and the realm of ideas and thoughts within. "Mathematics, rightly viewed, possesses not only truth, but supreme beauty," the noted philosopher and mathematician Bertrand Russell once wrote. In Mathematics: The Science of Patterns, Keith Devlin makes such a vision accessible, entertaining, and meaningful. It is an insightful, richly illustrated celebration of the simplicity, the precision, the purity, and the elegance of mathematics.
The purpose of this book is to provide the student beginning undergraduate mathematics with a solid foundation in the basic logical concepts necessary for most of the subjects encountered in a university mathematics course. The main distinction between most school mathematics and university mathematics lies in the degree of rigour demanded at university level. In general, the new student has no experience of wholly rigorous definitions and proofs, with the result that, although competent to handle quite difficult problems in, say, the differential calculus, he/she is totally lost when presented with a rigorous definition oflimits and derivatives. In effect, this means that in the first few weeks at university the student needs to master what is virtually an entire new language {'the language of mathematics'} and to adopt an entirely new mode ofthinking. Needless to say, only the very ablest students come through this process without a great deal of difficulty.
In 1202, a 32-year old Italian finished one of the most influential books of all time, which introduced modern arithmetic to Western Europe. Devised in India in the seventh and eighth centuries and brought to North Africa by Muslim traders, the Hindu-Arabic system helped transform the West into the dominant force in science, technology, and commerce, leaving behind Muslim cultures which had long known it but had failed to see its potential.The young Italian, Leonardo of Pisa (better known today as Fibonacci), had learned the Hindu number system when he traveled to North Africa with his father, a customs agent. The book he created was Liber abbaci, the 'Book of Calculation', and the revolution that followed its publication was enormous.Arithmetic made it possible for ordinary people to buy and sell goods, convert currencies, and keep accurate records of possessions more readily than ever before. Liber abbaci's publication led directly to large-scale international commerce and the scientific revolution of the Renaissance. Yet despite the ubiquity of his discoveries, Leonardo of Pisa remains an enigma. His name is best known today in association with an exercise in Liber abbaci whose solution gives rise to a sequence of numbers - the Fibonacci sequence - used by some to predict the rise and fall of financial markets, and evident in myriad biological structures. In The Man of Numbers, Keith Devlin recreates the life and enduring legacy of an overlooked genius, and in the process makes clear how central numbers and mathematics are to our daily lives.
It has been called everything from the new gold standard to the fundamental building block of the universe. In InfoSense, Keith Devlin shows how to make sense of the constant flow of information that swirls past us daily, and reveals how businesses and individuals alike can benefit from better information management.
This book provides an account of those parts of contemporary set theory that are relevant to other areas of pure mathematics. Intended for advanced undergraduates and beginning graduate students, the text is written in an easy-going style, with a minimum of formalism. The book begins with a review of "naive" set theory; it then develops the Zermelo-Fraenkel axioms of the theory, showing how they arise naturally from a rigorous answer to the question, "what is a set?" After discussing the ordinal and cardinal numbers, the book then delves into contemporary set theory, covering such topics as: the Borel hierarchy, stationary sets and regressive functions, and Lebesgue measure. Two chapters present an extension of the Zermelo-Fraenkel theory, discussing the axiom of constructibility and the question of provability in set theory. A final chapter presents an account of an alternative conception of set theory that has proved useful in computer science, the non-well-founded set theory of Peter Aczel"--Back cover.
Since their inception, the Perspectives in Logic and Lecture Notes in Logic series have published seminal works by leading logicians. Many of the original books in the series have been unavailable for years, but they are now in print once again. In this volume, the sixth publication in the Perspectives in Logic series, Keith J. Devlin gives a comprehensive account of the theory of constructible sets at an advanced level. The book provides complete coverage of the theory itself, rather than the many and diverse applications of constructibility theory, although applications are used to motivate and illustrate the theory. The book is divided into two parts: Part I (Elementary Theory) deals with the classical definition of the Lα-hierarchy of constructible sets and may be used as the basis of a graduate course on constructibility theory. and Part II (Advanced Theory) deals with the Jα-hierarchy and the Jensen 'fine-structure theory'.
A modern classic by an accomplished mathematician and best-selling author has been updated to encompass and explain the recent headline-making advances in the field in non-technical terms.
Intelligence can be characterised both as the ability to absorb and process information and as the ability to reason. Humans and other animals have both of these abilities to a greater or lesser degree, but the search for artificial intelligence has been hampered by our inability to create a theory that covers both of these characteristics. In this provocative and ground-breaking book, Professor Keith Devlin argues that to obtain a deeper understanding of the nature of intelligence and knowledge acquisition, we must broaden our concept of logic. For these purposes, Devlin introduces the concept of the infon, a quantum of information, and merges it with situations, a mathematical construction generalising the notion of sets developed by Barwise and Perry at Stanford University in order to study the meaning of natural languages. He develops and describes the theory here in general and intuitive terms, and discusses its relevance to a variety of concerns such as artificial intelligence, cognition, natural language and communication.
The purpose of this book is to provide the student beginning undergraduate mathematics with a solid foundation in the basic logical concepts necessary for most of the subjects encountered in a university mathematics course. The main distinction between most school mathematics and university mathematics lies in the degree of rigour demanded at university level. In general, the new student has no experience of wholly rigorous definitions and proofs, with the result that, although competent to handle quite difficult problems in, say, the differential calculus, he/she is totally lost when presented with a rigorous definition oflimits and derivatives. In effect, this means that in the first few weeks at university the student needs to master what is virtually an entire new language {'the language of mathematics'} and to adopt an entirely new mode ofthinking. Needless to say, only the very ablest students come through this process without a great deal of difficulty.
This text covers the parts of contemporary set theory relevant to other areas of pure mathematics. After a review of "naïve" set theory, it develops the Zermelo-Fraenkel axioms of the theory before discussing the ordinal and cardinal numbers. It then delves into contemporary set theory, covering such topics as the Borel hierarchy and Lebesgue measure. A final chapter presents an alternative conception of set theory useful in computer science.
Pensions promised to current and future federal civilian and military retirees total $1.8 Trillion (T!). Our children and grandchildren will have to pay that bill, but there are no actual assets to pay it--only the promise of the federal government. Retired Congressman Hastings Keith has fought this system, especially its excessive cost of living increases (COLAs) for more than 25 years though he is a major beneficiary of the system. This is his story of what this means to your family's future and what you can do about it.
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