Seventeen Equations that Changed the World

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The other kind provides information about an unknown quantity, and the mathematician’s task is to solve it - to make the unknown known.

But the way these mathematical breakthroughs have contributed to human progress is seldom appreciated. However, I found it quite hard to read at times, despite having a statistical/mathematical background. Stewart has managed to produce a remarkably readable, informative and entertaining volume on a subject about which few are as well informed as they would like to be.It is argued that improper use of the formula (and its descendants) contributed to the financial crisis. He clarified that "the equation itself wasn't the real problem", but its abuse in the financial industry. The normal probability distribution, which has the familiar bell curve graph above, is ubiquitous in statistics.

I was a little disappointed in the discussion of Maxwell's Equations, as he tried to get a little technical, but then said a couple times that it would be too hard to explain correctly in this book. I have an advantage over school math teachers: I'm not trying to show you how to do the sums yourself. Each chapter begins with a summary page, showing the equation in question, with little lines pointing to the major elements of the equations, and labels identifying them.Nonostante a tratti sia stato un libro di non facile lettura, ogni capitolo ha offerto qualcosa di coinvolgente; i temi trattati variano dal mondo microscopico a quello macro, dal punto di vista della matematica e spiegando i fenomeni con la stessa. Like with most popular science books it is not important that the reader understand all the logical implications of maths, but to get some understanding of the general nature of these equations. Importance: According to Stewart, "More than any other mathematical technique, it has created the modern world. Solving the resulting equations tells us how the planets orbit the Sun, or how to design a trajectory for a space probe.

He used two parallel lines (he used an obsolete word gemowe, meaning ‘twin’) to avoid tedious repetition of the words ‘is equal to’. A differential equation that describes the behavior of waves, like the behavior of a vibrating violin string. Knowing the distance between them, he could work out the size of the Earth, which he published in his Eratosthenes Batavus (‘The Dutch Eratosthenes’) in 1617. The equation in the graphic, log(ab) = log(a) + log(b), shows one of the most useful applications of logarithms: they turn multiplication into addition.It attained its most polished form, and its first recorded proof, in the writings of Euclid of Alexandria. Ich schreibe üblicherweise keine Rezension zu Büchern mehr, weil diese subjektiv sind und es zu viele Bücher gibt die lesenswert sind. You can change your choices at any time by visiting Cookie preferences, as described in the Cookie notice.