Poulo R. Mathematicians Don't Work With Numbers

Birkhäuser Cham, 2024. — 195 p. — eBook ISBN 978-3-031-58916-4.Explores what mathematics is really about in the form of short and entertaining vignettes
Covers a broad range of mathematical topics with a light and often humorous style
Illustrates concepts using real-world examples, ranging from barbershops to President James GarfieldThis book answers, in the form of short and entertaining vignettes, the question: "What do mathematicians really do?" Readers will learn that mathematicians use numbers in the same way that novelists use letters. The individual letters are typed while the author thinks on a much grander scale, invisible to the observer.
Requiring only familiarity with the multiplication table (and that for only one vignette), the book makes accessible a variety of mathematical concepts, such as game theory, chaos, and traffic flow modelling. The author accomplishes this with a light, engaging style, and a range of real-world examples that includes everything from barbershops to President James Garfield.
Mathematicians Don't Work With Numbers will be of interest to the large audience of people who have always assumed that mathematicians do, in fact, work with numbers.Preface
Acknowledgment
Introduction
A Citizen’s Dilemma
The Structure of Mathematics
A Danger Scale
Public Key Encryption I
Public Key Encryption II
Fractals
Graphs
Military Math
Misusing Statistics: A Rant
Estimation
Ramanujan
Hardy
It’s Obvious
Chaos
Recognition
Map Coloring
Groups
Topology I
Topology II
Nonexistence Proofs
Existence Proofs
Can’t Be Computed
Can’t Be Proved
Games
X-Ray Vision
The Greatest Three
Being Choosy
To Infinity and Beyond
The Largest Hotel Ever
Tied Up in Knots
Probably
Rush Hour Traffic
Fermat and His Last Theorem
A Million Bucks
Russia Versus America
Cardano, Viète, and Notation
President James Garfield
Error-Correcting Codes
Mercator Maps
Ball and Saddle Geometries
The Spherical Earth
Consistency
Can So Be Proved
My Face Is Complex, Yours Is Imaginary
Cycloids
C******* of Variations
Amazing Waves
How to Push a Pendulum
Surprising Theorems
Mathematical Aesthetics
Katherine Johnson’s Math
My Career as a Mathematician
Karen’s New Perspective
Afterword
Doing Metric Right
Movies About Real Mathematicians
Further ReadingTrue PDF