Knots: Mathematics with a Twist
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | 4.36 (760 Votes) |
| Asin | : | 0674013816 |
| Format Type | : | paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 160 Pages |
| Publish Date | : | 2015-11-21 |
| Language | : | French |
DESCRIPTION:
A Fun Book Michael Graber If you like mathematics, even if you did not major in math, read this book. It is written for both the non-mathematician and the Ph.D. mathematician. For a more rigorous introduction, see Prasolov and Sossinsky, Knots, Links, Braids and 3-Manifolds.. This book is bad! Don't buy this book if you're a mathematician!Either something really disturbing has happened during one of the translations (russian->french->english), or I seriously doubt mr. Sossinsky's ability to teach anyone about knot theory.Almost every single calculation in the book is wrong. Some of the errors are plain typo's, admitted. But others are so disturbingly wrong that I had to read the passages several times to believe that a mathematician could have written this.One notable example is when the author calculates (corr. Read the Adams book instead If you just plan to skim the text and do not intend to try applying the ideas presented to actual knots, then you may not notice this small book's many errors. But if you wish to verify what the text says and try your hand at some knot calculations, then this is not the book for you. Perhaps the worst example is the author's comment that the figure-eight knot and the trefoil not have the same Conway polynomial. They don't. After an hour of calculating and recalculating, it is frustrating to discover that the author, not t
Alexei Sossinsky is Professor of Mathematics, University of Moscow.
His spirited, timely, and lavishly illustrated work shows us the pleasure of mathematics for its own sake as well as the surprising usefulness of its connections to real-world problems in the sciences. In recent years knot theory has been brought to bear on the study of equations describing weather systems, mathematical models used in physics, and even, with the realization that DNA sometimes is knotted, molecular biology. This book, written by a mathematician known for his own work on knot theory, is a clear, concise, and engaging introduction to this complicated subject. Ornaments and icons, symbols of complexity or evil, aesthetically appealing and endlessly useful in everyday ways, knots are also the object of mathematical theory, used to unravel ideas about the topological nature of space. A guide to the basic ideas and applications of knot theory, Knots takes us from Lord Kelvin's early--and mistaken--idea of using the knot to model the atom, almost
(S. Beginning with Lord Kelvin's ill-conceived idea of using knots as a model for the atom, Sossinsky moves to the connection of knots to braids and then on to the arithmetic of knots. Throughout, this book untangles many a snag in the field of mathematics. (Amy Crunvard Library Journal 2003-02-01)The author describes knot theory by chronicling its history. 1860) theory of knots as models for atomsmoves through discussions of braids, links, Reidemeister moves, surgery, various knot polynomials (Alexander-Conway, Homfly, Jones), Vassiliev invariants, and concludes with connections between and speculations about knots and physics. A sophisticated high school student might enjoy working out the math in t