A Curious History Of Mathematics

This is the book that invites the curious non-mathemetician to explore the development of mathematics from prehistoric times to the present. The consistent breadth and height proportions of Paleolithic hand axes is discussed as early evidence of human mathematical thinking, posited as an innate understanding of what the ancient Greeks later termed as the Golden Ratio millions of years later in 300 B.C. The invention of logarithims in the 17th century—making multiplication and division as simple as addition and subtraction—is credited for advancing the field of astronomy. The book retells the story of other inventions, such as Cartesian coordinates and the Pascaline calculator, eventually leading to Newton’s and Leibniz’s calculus 100 years later. The fields of statistics, computing, and game theory are discussed in the book’s final section. Hardcover; 192 pages. 9″ H x 7 3/4″ W x 3/4″ D. (1 1/2 lbs.)