Euclid’s Elements of Geometry was a book that changed the world. In a sweeping history, Benjamin Wardhaugh traces how an ancient Greek text on mathematics – often hailed as the world’s first textbook – shaped two thousand years of art, philosophy and literature, as well as science and maths.
Thirteen volumes of mathematical definitions, propositions and proofs. Writing in 300 BC, Euclid could not have known his logic would go unsurpassed until the nineteenth century, or that his writings were laying down the very foundations of human knowledge.
Wardhaugh blasts the dust from Euclid’s legacy to offer not only a vibrant history of mathematics, told through people and invention, but also a broader story of culture. Telling stories from every continent, ranging between Ptolemy and Isaac Newton, Hobbes and Lewis Carrol, this is a history that dives from Ancient Greece to medieval Byzantium, early modern China, Renaissance Italy, the age of European empires, and our world today.
How has geometry sat at the beating heart of sculpture, literature, music and thought? How can one unknowable figure of antiquity live through two millennia?
From cells in our bodies to measuring the universe, big numbers are everywhere
We all know that numbers go on forever, that you could spend your life counting and never reach the end of the line, so there can’t be such a thing as a ‘biggest number’. Or can there?
To find out, David Darling and Agnijo Banerjee embark on an epic quest, revealing the answers to questions like: are there more grains of sand on Earth or stars in the universe? Is there enough paper on Earth to write out the digits of a googolplex? And what is a googolplex?
Then things get serious.
Enter the strange realm between the finite and the infinite, and float through a universe where the rules we cling to no longer apply. Encounter the highest number computable, infinite kinds of infinity and ask whether one infinity can be greater than another. At every turn, a cast of wild and wonderful characters threatens the status quo with their ideas, and each time the numbers get larger.
How both logical and emotional reasoning can help us live better in our post-truth world
In a world where fake news stories change election outcomes, has rationality become futile? In The Art of Logic in an Illogical World, Eugenia Cheng throws a lifeline to readers drowning in the illogic of contemporary life. Cheng is a mathematician, so she knows how to make an airtight argument. But even for her, logic sometimes falls prey to emotion, which is why she still fears flying and eats more cookies than she should. If a mathematician can't be logical, what are we to do? In this book, Cheng reveals the inner workings and limitations of logic, and explains why alogic--for example, emotion--is vital to how we think and communicate. Cheng shows us how to use logic and alogic together to navigate a world awash in bigotry, mansplaining, and manipulative memes. Insightful, useful, and funny, this essential book is for anyone who wants to think more clearly.
The solution to your troubles is contained in the wisdom of the ancients.
Stoicism is a philosophy that was started in Ancient Greece, but this two-thousand-year-old worldview is enjoying a modern rebirth. All across the globe, people are coming to appreciate the timeless wisdom of Stoicism.
You don’t have to suffer. You may not be able to control the path your life will take, but Stoicism teaches that you can control the way you see life. By shifting your way of thinking you can eliminate unnecessary suffering, reshape your thought patterns, and achieve that sense of calm you’ve always wanted.
In this book, you will find all of the information you need to understand Stoic thought and put it into action in your life.Gain insight into the emotions that can keep you from living the life that you want to lead. Find out how to master your heart by feeding positive emotions while starving the negative.Learn a strategy for success that has helped some of history’s greatest heroes to triumph in the face of tragedy. When you learn to see obstacles as opportunities you can rise to the top while others fall behind.Find out how to prepare yourself for any challenge life may hand you. Don’t wait for tragedy to strike before you learn how to handle it. Start building the skills that will allow you to weather any storm.You don’t have to live a life ruled by stress and worry. No matter who you are, you can learn how to master your own mind and retake control of your life. The power to change is inside of you, the ancient secrets of Stoicism will show you how to unlock your full potential.
"Two companies. Two opposing cultures. One multi-billion-dollar video-game empire.
Stay Awhile and Listen: How Two Blizzards Unleashed Diablo and Forged a Video-Game Empire - Book 1 invites readers to discover the origin of Blizzard North, a studio built by gamers, for gamers, and Blizzard Entertainment, a convergence of designers driven to rule their industry.
Composed from exhaustive research and hundreds of personal interviews, the Stay Awhile and Listen series divulges the fated meeting that brought the two Blizzards together, the clashes that tore them apart, and their transformation from grassroots democracy to corporate empire. At the center of it all-Diablo, a hack-and-slash adventure through the darkest recesses of Hell that changed online gaming forever."
The statistics concept is a vital source that is used commonly in the discipline of mathematics. It is crucial and plays a very significant role in order to understand the arrangement as well as the representation of data. There can be different ways through which data can be demonstrated, and statistics is one of them. It is extremely important in order to show the reposts of a company whether it is about its progress and sales or profit or loss. The concept of statistics has a variety of measurements that are used in order to evaluate and demonstrate a data set in a better way. This concept or discipline also make very good use of the pictorial forms such as bar graphs, wheels, etc. in order to show and demonstrate a report. Undoubtedly, the statistics and its concepts have a vital role to play when it comes to demonstrating the data and progress of different industries and sectors.
A sweeping inquiry into how the night sky has shaped human history
For as long as humans have lived, we have lived beneath the stars. But under the glow of today's artificial lighting, we have lost the intimacy our ancestors once shared with the cosmos.
In Starborn, cosmologist Roberto Trotta reveals how stargazing has shaped the course of human civilization. The stars have served as our timekeepers, our navigators, our muses-they were once even our gods. How radically different would we be, Trotta also asks, if our ancestors had looked up to the night sky and seen… nothing? He pairs the history of our starstruck species with a dramatic alternate version, a world without stars where our understanding of science, art, and ourselves would have been radically altered.
Revealing the hidden connections between astronomy and civilization, Starborn summons us to the marvelous sight that awaits us on a dark, clear night-to lose ourselves in the immeasurable vastness above.
"A very entertaining book about a very serious problem. We deceive ourselves all the time with statistics, and it is time we wised up." -Robert J. Shiller, Winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics Did you know that baseball players whose names begin with the letter "D" are more likely to die young? Or that Asian Americans are most susceptible to heart attacks on the fourth day of the month? Or that drinking a full pot of coffee every morning will add years to your life, but one cup a day increases the risk of pancreatic cancer? All of these "facts" have been argued with a straight face by credentialed researchers and backed up with reams of data and convincing statistics. As Nobel Prize-winning economist Ronald Coase once cynically observed, "If you torture data long enough, it will confess." Lying with statistics is a time-honored con. In Standard Deviations, economics professor Gary Smith walks us through the various tricks and traps that people use to back up their own crackpot theories. Sometimes, the unscrupulous deliberately try to mislead us. Other times, the well-intentioned are blissfully unaware of the mischief they are committing. Today, data is so plentiful that researchers spend precious little time distinguishing between good, meaningful indicators and total rubbish. Not only do others use data to fool us, we fool ourselves. With the breakout success of Nate Silver's The Signal and the Noise, the once humdrum subject of statistics has never been hotter. Drawing on breakthrough research in behavioral economics by luminaries like Daniel Kahneman and Dan Ariely and taking to task some of the conclusions of Freakonomics author Steven D. Levitt, Standard Deviations demystifies the science behind statistics and makes it easy to spot the fraud all around.
Learn models to maximize group effectiveness online
Avoid fragmentation and polarization in social and business networks
Strengthen relationships to build online unification and consensus
The internet was built for data transfer, yet we have long been trying to use it as a substitute for face-to-face interaction - with catastrophic results. Online business and social networks have been plagued by flaming (unregulated emotional outbursts), major misunderstandings, lack of cohesion, poor decision making, and loss of functionality. This is because emotional connection is vital for effective communication. Yet the channels for sending and receiving emotion are absent from the basic framework of virtual exchanges. In this dialogue, renowned internet theorist Clay Shirky describes how online business groups function best, how the internet can be utilized to improve work quality, and how social intelligence is changing the face of group interaction online.
An insightful guide that shows how habits of behavior are formed, and how we can transform bad habits into positive behaviors in ourselves and others.
Smart Change explores the psychological mechanisms that form and maintain habits in individuals and groups and offers real, accessible and actionable advice for changing habits. In an engaging narrative, Markman covers a wide range of habits, from individual behaviors like eating better and exercising regularly to work-related behaviors such as learning effectively and influencing customers' purchases. He proposes that there are five effective tools to help individuals change behavior and to help people influence the habits of the people around them:
-Tame the "Go" system: Identify the triggers of habits, replace old behaviors with new ones and generate specific plans to deal with obstacles.
-Harness the "Stop" system: Learn to deal with stress and other factors that hinder the development of new and positive habits.
-Optimize your goals. Determine the course of behavior change and how to successfully incorporate those changes for the long term.
-Manage your environment: Change your surroundings to dramatically reduce poor behavior and habits.
-Engage your Neighbors: To affect other people's behavior, understand the shared culture that creates a mutual dependency, and allows neighbors and colleagues to have a profound positive influence on the behavior of other members of their community.
Born to a poor Lutheran pastor in what is today the Federal Republic of Germany, Bernhard Riemann (1826-1866) was a child math prodigy who began studying for a degree in theology before formally committing to mathematics in 1846, at the age of 20. Though he would live for only another 20 years (he died of pleurisy during a trip to Italy), his seminal work in a number of key areas—several of which now bear his name—had a decisive impact on the shape of mathematics in the succeeding century and a half.
In Simply Riemann, author Jeremy Gray provides a comprehensive and intellectually stimulating introduction to Riemann’s life and paradigm-defining work. Beginning with his early influences—in particular, his relationship with his renowned predecessor Carl Friedrich Gauss—Gray goes on to explore Riemann’s specific contributions to geometry, functions of a complex variable, prime numbers, and functions of a real variable, which opened the way to discovering the limits of the calculus. He shows how without Riemannian geometry, cosmology after Einstein would be unthinkable, and he illuminates the famous Riemann hypothesis, which many regard as the most important unsolved problem in mathematics today.
With admirable concision and clarity, Simply Riemann opens the door on one of the most profound and original thinkers of the 19th century—a man who pioneered the concept of a multidimensional reality and who always saw his work as another way to serve God.
