The History of Mathematical Tables PDF Download

Author: Martin Campbell-Kelly
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 9780198508410
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 384

View

Book Description
This book contains a series of articles summarizing the technical, institutional and intellectual history of mathematical tables from earliest times until the late 20th century when the electronic spreadsheet changed the way information is processed.

Author: Raymond Clare Archibald
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Mathematicians
Languages : en
Pages : 136

View

Book Description

Author: Martin Campbell-Kelly
Publisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 019154521X
Category : Mathematics
Languages : en
Pages : 372

View

Book Description
The oldest known mathematical table was found in the ancient Sumerian city of Shuruppag in southern Iraq. Since then, tables have been an important feature of mathematical activity; table making and printed tabular matter are important precursors to modern computing and information processing. This book contains a series of articles summarising the technical, institutional and intellectual history of mathematical tables from earliest times until the late twentieth century. It covers mathematical tables (the most important computing aid for several hundred years until the 1960s), data tables (eg. Census tables), professional tables (eg. insurance tables), and spreadsheets - the most recent tabular innovation. The book is presented in a scholarly yet accessible way, making appropriate use of text boxes and illustrations. Each chapter has a frontispiece featuring a table along with a small illustration of the source where the table was first displayed. Most chapters have sidebars telling a short "story" or history relating to the chapter. The aim of this edited volume is to capture the history of tables through eleven chapters written by subject specialists. The contributors describe the various information processing techniques and artefacts whose unifying concept is "the mathematical table".

Author: Eleanor Robson
Publisher: Oxford University Press on Demand
ISBN: 0199213127
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 927

View

Book Description
This handbook explores the history of mathematics, addressing what mathematics has been and what it has meant to practise it. 36 self-contained chapters provide a fascinating overview of 5000 years of mathematics and its key cultures for academics in mathematics, historians of science, and general historians.

Author: Scott B. Guthery
Publisher: Docent Press
ISBN: 1453810579
Category : Mathematics
Languages : en
Pages : 266

View

Book Description
The curious property that John Farey observed in one of Henry Goodwyn's tables has enduring pratical and theoretic interest. This book traces the curious property, the mediant, from its initial sighting by Nicolas Chuquet and Charles Haros to its connection to the Riemann hypothesis by Jerome Franel.

Author: Raymond Flood
Publisher: CRC Press
ISBN: 1351253883
Category : Mathematics
Languages : en
Pages : 292

View

Book Description
Greenwich has been a centre for scientific computing since the foundation of the Royal Observatory in 1675. Early Astronomers Royal gathered astronomical data with the purpose of enabling navigators to compute their longitude at sea. Nevil Maskelyne in the 18th century organised the work of computing tables for the Nautical Almanac, anticipating later methods used in safety-critical computing systems. The 19th century saw influential critiques of Charles Babbage’s mechanical calculating engines, and in the 20th century Leslie Comrie and others pioneered the automation of computation. The arrival of the Royal Naval College in 1873 and the University of Greenwich in 1999 has brought more mathematicians and different kinds of mathematics to Greenwich. In the 21st century computational mathematics has found many new applications. This book presents an account of the mathematicians who worked at Greenwich and their achievements. Features A scholarly but accessible history of mathematics at Greenwich, from the seventeenth century to the present day, with each chapter written by an expert in the field The book will appeal to astronomical and naval historians as well as historians of mathematics and scientific computing.

Author: Glen Van Brummelen
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691179417
Category : MATHEMATICS
Languages : en
Pages : 390

View

Book Description
An interdisciplinary history of trigonometry from the mid-sixteenth century to the early twentieth The Doctrine of Triangles offers an interdisciplinary history of trigonometry that spans four centuries, starting in 1550 and concluding in the 1900s. Glen Van Brummelen tells the story of trigonometry as it evolved from an instrument for understanding the heavens to a practical tool, used in fields such as surveying and navigation. In Europe, China, and America, trigonometry aided and was itself transformed by concurrent mathematical revolutions, as well as the rise of science and technology. Following its uses in mid-sixteenth-century Europe as the "foot of the ladder to the stars" and the mathematical helpmate of astronomy, trigonometry became a ubiquitous tool for modeling various phenomena, including animal populations and sound waves. In the late sixteenth century, trigonometry increasingly entered the physical world through the practical disciplines, and its societal reach expanded with the invention of logarithms. Calculus shifted mathematical reasoning from geometric to algebraic patterns of thought, and trigonometry’s participation in this new mathematical analysis grew, encouraging such innovations as complex numbers and non-Euclidean geometry. Meanwhile in China, trigonometry was evolving rapidly too, sometimes merging with indigenous forms of knowledge, and with Western discoveries. In the nineteenth century, trigonometry became even more integral to science and industry as a fundamental part of the science and engineering toolbox, and a staple subject in high school classrooms. A masterful combination of scholarly rigor and compelling narrative, The Doctrine of Triangles brings trigonometry’s rich historical past full circle into the modern era.

Author: Mircea Pitici
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691153159
Category : Mathematics
Languages : en
Pages : 415

View

Book Description
The year's finest writing on mathematics from around the world This anthology brings together the year's finest mathematics writing from around the world. Featuring promising new voices alongside some of the foremost names in the field, The Best Writing on Mathematics 2011 makes available to a wide audience many articles not easily found anywhere else—and you don't need to be a mathematician to enjoy them. These writings offer surprising insights into the nature, meaning, and practice of mathematics today. They delve into the history, philosophy, teaching, and everyday occurrences of math, and take readers behind the scenes of today's hottest mathematical debates. Here Ian Hacking discusses the salient features that distinguish mathematics from other disciplines of the mind; Doris Schattschneider identifies some of the mathematical inspirations of M. C. Escher's art; Jordan Ellenberg describes compressed sensing, a mathematical field that is reshaping the way people use large sets of data; Erica Klarreich reports on the use of algorithms in the job market for doctors; and much, much more. In addition to presenting the year's most memorable writings on mathematics, this must-have anthology includes a foreword by esteemed physicist and mathematician Freeman Dyson. This book belongs on the shelf of anyone interested in where math has taken us—and where it is headed.

Author: Dirk J. Struik
Publisher: Courier Corporation
ISBN: 0486138887
Category : Mathematics
Languages : en
Pages : 260

View

Book Description
This compact, well-written history — first published in 1948, and now in its fourth revised edition — describes the main trends in the development of all fields of mathematics from the first available records to the middle of the 20th century. Students, researchers, historians, specialists — in short, everyone with an interest in mathematics — will find it engrossing and stimulating. Beginning with the ancient Near East, the author traces the ideas and techniques developed in Egypt, Babylonia, China, and Arabia, looking into such manuscripts as the Egyptian Papyrus Rhind, the Ten Classics of China, and the Siddhantas of India. He considers Greek and Roman developments from their beginnings in Ionian rationalism to the fall of Constantinople; covers medieval European ideas and Renaissance trends; analyzes 17th- and 18th-century contributions; and offers an illuminating exposition of 19th century concepts. Every important figure in mathematical history is dealt with — Euclid, Archimedes, Diophantus, Omar Khayyam, Boethius, Fermat, Pascal, Newton, Leibniz, Fourier, Gauss, Riemann, Cantor, and many others. For this latest edition, Dr. Struik has both revised and updated the existing text, and also added a new chapter on the mathematics of the first half of the 20th century. Concise coverage is given to set theory, the influence of relativity and quantum theory, tensor calculus, the Lebesgue integral, the calculus of variations, and other important ideas and concepts. The book concludes with the beginnings of the computer era and the seminal work of von Neumann, Turing, Wiener, and others. "The author's ability as a first-class historian as well as an able mathematician has enabled him to produce a work which is unquestionably one of the best." — Nature Magazine.

Author: Dirk Jan Struik
Publisher: Courier Corporation
ISBN: 9780486602554
Category : Mathematics
Languages : en
Pages : 260

View

Book Description
This compact, well-written history covers major mathematical ideas and techniques from the ancient Near East to 20th-century computer theory, surveying the works of Archimedes, Pascal, Gauss, Hilbert, and many others. "The author's ability as a first-class historian as well as an able mathematician has enabled him to produce a work which is unquestionably one of the best." — Nature.