The Language of Mathematics: Making the Invisible Visible by KEITH DEVLIN

Author: KEITH DEVLIN
Language: English
Category: Study
Tag: Mathematics

Description

 The Language of Mathematics: Making the Invisible Visible by KEITH DEVLIN

Product Details

# Paperback: 352 pages
# Publisher: Holt Paperbacks (March 13, 2000)
# Language: English
# ISBN-10: 0805072543
# ISBN-13: 978-0805072549
# Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.1 x 1 inches

Product Description

Keith Devlin is the "Carl Sagan of mathematics". He writes: "Though the structures and patterns of mathematics reflect the structure of, and resonate in, the human mind every bit as much as do the structures and patterns of music, human beings have developed no mathematical equivalent of a pair of ears. Mathematics can be seen only with the eyes of the mind." All of his books are attempts to get around this problem, to "try to communicate to others some sense of what it is we experience--some sense of the simplicity, the precision, the purity, and the elegance that give the patterns of mathematics their aesthetic value."

Life by the Numbers, Devlin's companion book to the PBS series of the same name, is heavily illustrated and soothingly low on equations. But as he says, wanting mathematics without abstract notation "is rather like saying that Shakespeare would be much easier to understand if it were written in simpler language."

The Language of Mathematics is Devlin's second iteration of the approach he used in Mathematics: The Science of Patterns. It covers all the same ground (and uses many of the same words) as the latter, but with fewer glossy pictures, sidebars, and references. Devlin has also added chapters on statistics and on mathematical patterns in nature.

"The great book of nature," said Galileo, "can be read only by those who know the language in which it was written. And this language is mathematics." In The Langua