Strange Curves, Counting Rabbits, and other Mathematical Explorations

Strange Curves, Counting Rabbits, and other Mathematical Explorations Book Description

How does mathematics enable us to send pictures from space back to Earth? Where does the bell-shaped curve come from? Why do you need only 23 people in a room for a 50/50 chance of two of them sharing the same birthday? In strange Curves, Counting Rabbits, and Other Mathematical Explorations, Keith Ball highlights how ideas, mostly form pure math can answer these questions and many more. Drawing on areas of mathematics from probability theory, number theory, and geometry, he explores a wide range of concepts some more lighthearted others central to the development of the fields and used daily by mathematicians, physicists and engineers.

Each of the book?s ten chapters begins by outlining key concepts and goes on to discuss with the minimum of technical detail, the principles that underlie them. Each includes puzzles and problems of varying difficulty. While the chapters are self-contained, they also reveal the links between seemingly unrelated topics. For example, the problem of how to design codes for satellite communication gives rise to the same idea of uncertainty as the problem of screening blood samples for disease. Accessible to anyone familiar with basic calculus, this book is treasure trove of ideas that will entertain, amuse, and bemuse students, teachers, and math lovers of all ages.

This special low-priced edition is for sale in India, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Maldives, Nepal, Myanmar, Pakistan and Sri Lanka only.

About the Author(s):
Keith Ball is Professor of Mathematics at University College London. Well known for his entertaining public lectures on mathematics, he is the author of a graduate level introduction to convex geometry in a textbook on geometry.

Contents:
Chapter 1

Shannon?s Free Lunch


Chapter 2

Counting Dots


Chapter 3

Fermat?s Little Theorem and Infinite Decimals


Chapter 4

Strange Curves


Chapter 5

Shared Birthday, Normal Bells


Chapter 6

Stirling Works


Chapter 7

Spare Change, Pools of Blood


Chapter 8

Fibonacci?s Rabbits Revisited


Chapter 9

Chasing the Curve


Chapter 10

Rational and Irrational

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