Nuno Crato
Copernicus | 2010 | 238 páginas | pdf | 3 Mb
Copernicus | 2010 | 238 páginas | pdf | 3 Mb
This is a book of mathematical stories — funny and puzzling mathematical stories. They tell of villains who try to steal secrets, heroes who encode their messages, and mathematicians who spend years on end searching for the best way to pile oranges.
There are also stories about highway confusions occurring when the rules of Cartesian geometry are ignored, small-change errors due to ignorance of ancient paradoxes, and mistakes in calendars arising from poor numerical approximations.
This book is about the power and beauty of mathematics. It shows mathematics in action, explained in a way that everybody can understand. It is a book for enticing youngsters and inspiring teachers.
Nuno Crato is a leading science writer and mathematician, whose entertaining essays have won a number of international awards. (E atualmente ministro da educação em Portugal :()
CONTENTS
Preface v
EverydayMatters
The Dinner Table Algorithm 3
Cutting the Christmas Cake 7
Oranges and Computers 11
When Two and Two Don’t Make Four 15
Getting More Intelligent Every Day 19
The Other Lane Always Goes Faster 23
Shoelaces and Neckties 27
Number Puzzles 31
Tossing a Coin 35
The Switch 39
Eubulides, The Heap and The Euro 43
The Earth is Round
How GPS Works 49
Gear Wheels 53
February 29 57
The Nonius Scale 61
Pedro Nunes’ Map 65
Lighthouse Geometry 71
Asteroids and Least Squares 75
The Useful Man and the Genius 79
Secret Affairs
Alice and Bob 85
Inviolate Cybersecrets 89
Quantum Cryptography 93
The FBI Wavelet 97
The Enigma Machine 101
Art and Geometry
The Vitruvian Man 107
The Golden Number 111
The Geometry of A4 Paper Sizes 115
The Strange Worlds of Escher 119
Escher and the Möbius Strip 123
Picasso, Einstein and the Fourth Dimension 127
Pollock’s Fractals 131
Voronoi Diagrams 137
The Platonic Solids 141
Pythagorean Mosquitoes 145
The Most Beautiful of All 147
Mathematical Objects
The Power of Math 153
Doubts in the Realm of Certainty 157
When Chance Enhances Reliability 161
The Difficulty of Chance 167
Conjectures and Proofs 171
Mr. Benford 173
Financial Fractals 179
Turing’s Test 183
DNA Computers 187
Magical Multiplication 191
π Day 193
The Best Job in theWorld 197
Out of this World
Electoral Paradoxes 201
The Melon Paradox 205
The Cupcake Paradox 207
Infinity 209
Unfair Games 211
Monsieur Bertrand 213
Boy or Girl? 215
A Puzzle for Christmas 217
Crisis Time for Easter Eggs 221
Index 223
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