Springer-Verlag New York Inc. Book of Numbers 1st Corrected ed. 1996. Corr. 2nd printing 1998

Explores number theory and patterns that emerge in arithmetic, algebra, and geometry "...the great feature of the book is that anyone can read it without excessive head scratching...You'll find plenty here to keep you occupied, amused, and informed. Buy, dip in, wallow." -IAN STEWART, NEW SCIENTIST"...a delightful look at numbers and their roles in everything from language to flowers to the imagination." -SCIENCE NEWS"...a fun and fascinating tour of numerical topics and concepts. It will have readers contemplating ideas they might never have thought were understandable or even possible." -WISCONSIN BOOKWATCH"This popularization of number theory looks like another classic." -LIBRARY JOURNAL Journey through the world of numbers with the foremost authorities and writers in the field. John Horton Conway and Richard K. Guy are two of the most accomplished, creative, and engaging number theorists any mathematically minded reader could hope to encounter. In this book, Conway and Guy lead the reader on an imaginative, often astonishing tour of the landscape of numbers. The Book of Numbers is just that - an engagingly written, heavily illustrated introduction to the fascinating, sometimes surprising properties of numbers and number patterns. The book opens up a world of topics, theories, and applications, exploring intriguing aspects of real numbers, systems, arrays and sequences, and much more. Readers will be able to use figures to figure out figures, rub elbows with famous families of numbers, prove the primacy of primes, fathom the fruitfulness of fractions, imagine imaginary numbers, investigate the infinite and infinitesimal and more. "...the great feature of the book is that anyone can read it without excessive head scratching...You'll find plenty here to keep you occupied, amused, and informed. Buy, dip in, wallow." -IAN STEWART, NEW SCIENTIST"...a delightful look at numbers and their roles in everything from language to flowers to the imagination." -SCIENCE NEWS"...a fun and fascinating tour of numerical topics and concepts. It will have readers contemplating ideas they might never have thought were understandableor even possible." -WISCONSIN BOOKWATCH"This popularization of number theory looks like another classic." -LIBRARY JOURNAL Autorid: John H. Conway, Richard Guy