Author: David Ruelle Publisher: Princeton University Press ISBN: 9780691129822 Category : Mathematics Languages : en Pages : 180
Book Description
Examines mathematical ideas and the visionary minds behind them. This book provides an account of celebrated mathematicians and their quirks, oddities, personal tragedies, bad behavior, descents into madness, tragic ends, and the beauty of their mathematical discoveries.
Author: David Ruelle Publisher: Princeton University Press ISBN: 0691190305 Category : Mathematics Languages : en Pages :
Book Description
The Mathematician's Brain poses a provocative question about the world's most brilliant yet eccentric mathematical minds: were they brilliant because of their eccentricities or in spite of them? In this thought-provoking and entertaining book, David Ruelle, the well-known mathematical physicist who helped create chaos theory, gives us a rare insider's account of the celebrated mathematicians he has known-their quirks, oddities, personal tragedies, bad behavior, descents into madness, tragic ends, and the sublime, inexpressible beauty of their most breathtaking mathematical discoveries. Consider the case of British mathematician Alan Turing. Credited with cracking the German Enigma code during World War II and conceiving of the modern computer, he was convicted of "gross indecency" for a homosexual affair and died in 1954 after eating a cyanide-laced apple--his death was ruled a suicide, though rumors of assassination still linger. Ruelle holds nothing back in his revealing and deeply personal reflections on Turing and other fellow mathematicians, including Alexander Grothendieck, René Thom, Bernhard Riemann, and Felix Klein. But this book is more than a mathematical tell-all. Each chapter examines an important mathematical idea and the visionary minds behind it. Ruelle meaningfully explores the philosophical issues raised by each, offering insights into the truly unique and creative ways mathematicians think and showing how the mathematical setting is most favorable for asking philosophical questions about meaning, beauty, and the nature of reality. The Mathematician's Brain takes you inside the world--and heads--of mathematicians. It's a journey you won't soon forget.
Author: Andreas Nieder Publisher: MIT Press ISBN: 0262042789 Category : Science Languages : en Pages : 394
Book Description
How our intuitive understanding of numbers is deeply rooted in our biology, traceable through both evolution and development. Humans' understanding of numbers is intuitive. Infants are able to estimate and calculate even before they learn the words for numbers. How have we come to possess this talent for numbers? In A Brain for Numbers, Andreas Nieder explains how our brains process numbers. He reports that numerical competency is deeply rooted in our biological ancestry; it can be traced through both the evolution of our species and the development of our individual minds. It is not, as it has been traditionally explained, based on our ability to use language. We owe our symbolic mathematical skills to the nonsymbolic numerical abilities that we inherited from our ancestors. The principles of mathematics, Nieder tells us, are reflections of the innate dispositions wired into the brain. Nieder explores how the workings of the brain give rise to numerical competence, tracing flair for numbers to dedicated “number neurons” in the brain. Drawing on a range of methods including brain imaging techniques, behavioral experiments, and twin studies, he outlines a new, integrated understanding of the talent for numbers. Along the way, he compares the numerical capabilities of humans and animals, and discusses the benefits animals reap from such a capability. He shows how the neurobiological roots of the brain's nonverbal quantification capacity are the evolutionary foundation of more elaborate numerical skills. He discusses how number signs and symbols are represented in the brain; calculation capability and the “neuromythology” of mathematical genius; the “start-up tools” for counting and developmental of dyscalculia (a number disorder analogous to the reading disorder dyslexia); and how the brain processes the abstract concept of zero.
Author: David A. Sousa Publisher: Corwin Press ISBN: 1452294917 Category : Education Languages : en Pages : 265
Book Description
Learn how the brain processes mathematical concepts and why some students develop math anxiety! David A. Sousa discusses the cognitive mechanisms for learning mathematics and the environmental and developmental factors that contribute to mathematics difficulties. This award-winning text examines: Children’s innate number sense and how the brain develops an understanding of number relationships Rationales for modifying lessons to meet the developmental learning stages of young children, preadolescents, and adolescents How to plan lessons in PreK–12 mathematics Implications of current research for planning mathematics lessons, including discoveries about memory systems and lesson timing Methods to help elementary and secondary school teachers detect mathematics difficulties Clear connections to the NCTM standards and curriculum focal points
Author: Bogumil Kaminski Publisher: CRC Press ISBN: 1000216675 Category : Mathematics Languages : en Pages : 339
Book Description
This accessible book helps readers to see the bigger picture of advanced mathematics. The book contains carefully selected, challenging problems in an easy-to-follow, step-by-step process. Neither prior preparation nor any mathematical sophistication is required. The authors guide the reader to “train their brain” to think and express themselves in a rigorous, mathematical way, and to extract facts, analyze the problem, and identify main challenges. A firm foundation in a diverse range of topics is presented. Moreover, the authors show how to draw appropriate, true conclusions. Computer support is used to better intuition into discussed problems. The book is designed for self-study. It can be used to bridge the gap between introductory calculus/linear algebra courses and more advanced courses offered at universities. It improves the ability to read, write, and think in a rigorous, mature mathematical fashion. The reader will develop a deeper understanding in preparation to succeed in more advanced course work. Features •The authors employ a six-step process: 1.SOURCE 2.PROBLEM 3.THEORY 4.SOLUTION 5.REMARK 6.EXERCISES •An Appendix introduces programming in Julia This book is also suitable for high school students that are interested in competing in math competitions or simply for people of all ages and backgrounds who want to expand their knowledge and to challenge themselves with interesting questions.
Author: Grace Lindsay Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing ISBN: 1472966457 Category : Science Languages : en Pages : 401
Book Description
The human brain is made up of 85 billion neurons, which are connected by over 100 trillion synapses. For more than a century, a diverse array of researchers searched for a language that could be used to capture the essence of what these neurons do and how they communicate – and how those communications create thoughts, perceptions and actions. The language they were looking for was mathematics, and we would not be able to understand the brain as we do today without it. In Models of the Mind, author and computational neuroscientist Grace Lindsay explains how mathematical models have allowed scientists to understand and describe many of the brain's processes, including decision-making, sensory processing, quantifying memory, and more. She introduces readers to the most important concepts in modern neuroscience, and highlights the tensions that arise when the abstract world of mathematical modelling collides with the messy details of biology. Each chapter of Models of the Mind focuses on mathematical tools that have been applied in a particular area of neuroscience, progressing from the simplest building block of the brain – the individual neuron – through to circuits of interacting neurons, whole brain areas and even the behaviours that brains command. In addition, Grace examines the history of the field, starting with experiments done on frog legs in the late eighteenth century and building to the large models of artificial neural networks that form the basis of modern artificial intelligence. Throughout, she reveals the value of using the elegant language of mathematics to describe the machinery of neuroscience.
Author: Brian C. Hall Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media ISBN: 1461471168 Category : Science Languages : en Pages : 554
Book Description
Although ideas from quantum physics play an important role in many parts of modern mathematics, there are few books about quantum mechanics aimed at mathematicians. This book introduces the main ideas of quantum mechanics in language familiar to mathematicians. Readers with little prior exposure to physics will enjoy the book's conversational tone as they delve into such topics as the Hilbert space approach to quantum theory; the Schrödinger equation in one space dimension; the Spectral Theorem for bounded and unbounded self-adjoint operators; the Stone–von Neumann Theorem; the Wentzel–Kramers–Brillouin approximation; the role of Lie groups and Lie algebras in quantum mechanics; and the path-integral approach to quantum mechanics. The numerous exercises at the end of each chapter make the book suitable for both graduate courses and independent study. Most of the text is accessible to graduate students in mathematics who have had a first course in real analysis, covering the basics of L2 spaces and Hilbert spaces. The final chapters introduce readers who are familiar with the theory of manifolds to more advanced topics, including geometric quantization.
Author: William Byers Publisher: Princeton University Press ISBN: 0691145997 Category : Mathematics Languages : en Pages : 424
Book Description
To many outsiders, mathematicians appear to think like computers, grimly grinding away with a strict formal logic and moving methodically--even algorithmically--from one black-and-white deduction to another. Yet mathematicians often describe their most important breakthroughs as creative, intuitive responses to ambiguity, contradiction, and paradox. A unique examination of this less-familiar aspect of mathematics, How Mathematicians Think reveals that mathematics is a profoundly creative activity and not just a body of formalized rules and results. Nonlogical qualities, William Byers shows, play an essential role in mathematics. Ambiguities, contradictions, and paradoxes can arise when ideas developed in different contexts come into contact. Uncertainties and conflicts do not impede but rather spur the development of mathematics. Creativity often means bringing apparently incompatible perspectives together as complementary aspects of a new, more subtle theory. The secret of mathematics is not to be found only in its logical structure. The creative dimensions of mathematical work have great implications for our notions of mathematical and scientific truth, and How Mathematicians Think provides a novel approach to many fundamental questions. Is mathematics objectively true? Is it discovered or invented? And is there such a thing as a "final" scientific theory? Ultimately, How Mathematicians Think shows that the nature of mathematical thinking can teach us a great deal about the human condition itself.
Author: Elizabeth Brannon Publisher: Academic Press ISBN: 0123859484 Category : Mathematics Languages : en Pages : 375
Book Description
The study of mathematical cognition and the ways in which the ideas of space, time and number are encoded in brain circuitry has become a fundamental issue for neuroscience. How such encoding differs across cultures and educational level is of further interest in education and neuropsychology. This rapidly expanding field of research is overdue for an interdisciplinary volume such as this, which deals with the neurological and psychological foundations of human numeric capacity. A uniquely integrative work, this volume provides a much needed compilation of primary source material to researchers from basic neuroscience, psychology, developmental science, neuroimaging, neuropsychology and theoretical biology. The first comprehensive and authoritative volume dealing with neurological and psychological foundations of mathematical cognition Uniquely integrative volume at the frontier of a rapidly expanding interdisciplinary field Features outstanding and truly international scholarship, with chapters written by leading experts in a variety of fields
Author: David Ruelle
Author: David Ruelle
Author: Andreas Nieder
Author: David A. Sousa
Author: Bogumil Kaminski
Author: Grace Lindsay
Author: Brian C. Hall
Author: Michael A. Arbib
Author: William Byers
Author: Elizabeth Brannon