Weirdest maths : at the frontiers of reason /
David Darling & Agnijo Banerjee.
- xi, 243 pages : illustrations ; 20 cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Intro -- About the Authors -- Introduction -- Chapter 1 Genius -- Chapter 2 Sporting Chance -- Chapter 3 For Your Eyes Only -- Chapter 4 Fantasia Mathematica -- Chapter 5 In Beauty Lies Truth? -- Chapter 6 The Shape of Space -- Chapter 7 Life by Numbers -- Chapter 8 Stats Weird -- Chapter 9 Easier Said Than Done -- Chapter 10 Anything You Can Do... -- Chapter 11 Logic: Formal, Fallacious, and Fuzzy -- Chapter 12 Is Everything Mathematical? -- Chapter 13 The Next Fifty Years -- Acknowledgements
Maths is everywhere, in everything. It's in the finest margins of modern sport. It's in the electrical pulses of our hearts and the flight of every bird. It is our key to secret messages, lost languages and perhaps even the shape of the universe of itself. David Darling and Agnijo Banerjee reveal the mathematics at the farthest reaches of our world ' from its role in the plots of novels to how animals employ numerical skills to survive. Along the way they explore what makes a genius, why a seemingly simple problem can confound the best and brightest for decades, and what might be the great discovery of the twenty-first century. As Bertrand Russell once said, 'mathematics, rightly viewed, possesses not only truth, but supreme beauty'. Banerjee and Darling make sure we see it right again.