Imagining Numbers: (particularly the square root of minus fifteen)
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | 4.26 (629 Votes) |
| Asin | : | 0312421877 |
| Format Type | : | paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 288 Pages |
| Publish Date | : | 2014-07-16 |
| Language | : | English |
DESCRIPTION:
From Scientific American Mazur, a mathematician and university professor at Harvard University, writes "for people who have no training in mathematics and who may not have actively thought about mathematics since high school, or even during it, but who may wish to experience an act of mathematical imagining and to consider how such an experience compares with the imaginative work involved in reading and understanding a phrase in a poem." It is a stimulating and challenging journey, one likely to lead the reader to share Mazur's view: "The great glory of mathematics is its durative nature; that it is one of humankind's longest conversations; that it never finishes by answering some questions a
Through discussions of the role of the imagination and imagery in both poetry and mathematics, Mazur reviews the writings of the early mathematical explorers and reveals the early bafflement of these Renaissance thinkers faced with imaginary numbers. Then he shows us, step-by-step, how to begin imagining these strange mathematical objects ourselves.. Barry Mazur invites lovers of poetry to make a leap into mathematics
More than just math - yet not interesting I have read a few math books, prime obsession most recently, and this book wasn't technically very interesting, it also wasn't fun to read either. There are some good parts at the very beginning and end but middle is incoherently dry. Basically I believe that in some ways the way the author was trying to thought provoking and intelectual is where it lost it's was. Neither technical, historica. "Not for math geeks" according to A Customer. This isn't a book for people whose sole focus is mathematics. In fact, it's a book for those who are interested in the imagination and all of its works: poems, novels, paintings, music, and yes, mathematical concepts and ideas. The central question of the book is simply "what happens when we imagine something?" By way of shedding some light on that question, Mazur explores the slow, tentative. "A disjointed book" according to Dan Taflin. I read this book during the leisure time of a vacation, when I could have spent hours on tangents if the situation called for it. In fact, I did take the time to do some of the calculations suggested in the text. Unfortunately, despite its moments of brilliance, I did not find the book in general suitable for leisurely contemplation, but found myself racing toward the conclusion and both reli
Barry Mazur does his mathematics at Harvard University and lives in Cambridge, Massachussetts, with the writer Grace Dane Mazur.