- Paperback: 244 pages
- Publisher: The Mathematical Association of America (14 Oct 2004)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0883850370
- ISBN-13: 978-0883850374
- Product Dimensions: 18.3 x 12.7 x 1.5 cm
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 1,353,962 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- See Complete Table of Contents
| |||||||||||||||
Did you know you can trade in your old books for an Amazon.co.uk Gift Card to spend on the things you want? Plus, get an extra £5 Gift Certificate when you trade in books worth £10 or more before June 30, 2012. Visit the Books Trade-In Store for more details. |
Product details |
More About the Author
Product Description
Review
'Thompson provides an excellent example of the constant interaction between applied and theoretical mathematics. Thompson's work is first-rate historical research and good clear writing. As a mathematics teacher, he has gone to great pains to make the material understandable to anyone with even a casual acquaintance with vector spaces and groups.' Annals of the History of Computing
Product Description
This book traces a remarkable path of mathematical connections through seemingly disparate topics. Frustrations with a 1940's electro-mechanical computer at a premier research laboratory begin this story. Subsequent mathematical methods of encoding messages to ensure correctness when transmitted over noisy channels led to discoveries of extremely efficient lattice packings of equal-radius balls, especially in 24-dimensional space. In turn, this highly symmetric lattice, with each point neighbouring exactly 196,560 other points, suggested the possible presence of new simple groups as groups of symmetries. Indeed, new groups were found and are now part of the 'Enormous Theorem' - the classification of all simple groups whose entire proof runs to some 10,000+ pages. And these connections, along with the fascinating history and the proof of the simplicity of one of those 'sporadic' simple groups, are presented at an undergraduate mathematical level.
Tag this product(What's this?)Think of a tag as a keyword or label you consider is strongly related to this product.
Tags will help all customers organise and find favourite items. |
Sell a Digital Version of This Book in the Kindle Store
If you are a publisher or author and hold the digital rights to a book, you can sell a digital version of it in our Kindle Store.
Learn more
Customer Reviews
There are no customer reviews yet on Amazon.co.uk.
5 star
4 star
3 star
2 star
1 star
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
1 review
1 of 3 people found the following review helpful
Fascinating!
14 Jun 2003
Format:Hardcover
One of the best math books around. It has a good story, clear explanations, and great subject matter.
Was this review helpful?
Let us know
Listmania!
Look for similar items by category
- Books > Reference > Encyclopaedias
- Books > Science & Nature > Mathematics > Combinatorics & Graph Theory
- Books > Science & Nature > Mathematics > Discrete Mathematics
- Books > Science & Nature > Mathematics > Reference
- Books > Science & Nature > Popular Science > Maths
- Books > Scientific, Technical & Medical
Look for similar items by subject
Feedback
- Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
- I am the Author, and I want to comment on my book.
- I am the Publisher, and I want to comment on this book.
|
