历史与综述
Transcription into modern notations of the derivation by Stirling and De Moivre of an asymptotic series for $\log(n!)$, usually called Stirling's series. The previous discovery by Wallis of an infinite product for $\pi$, and later results…
Cauchy's method from two centuries ago for computing integrals along the real axis by passing into the complex plane is not rigorous by present-day standards. Yet when properly formulated, his original approach is simpler than modern…
In this article, we investigate how Euler might have been led to conjecture the Prime Number Theorem, based on what he knew. We also speculate on why he did not do so.
The primary aim of this chapter is, commemorating the 150th anniversary of Riemann's death, to explain how the idea of {\it Riemann sum} is linked to other branches of mathematics. The materials I treat are more or less classical and…
An expansion upon Donald Kunth's quarter-imaginary base system is introduced to handle any imaginary number base where its real part is zero and the absolute value of its imaginary part is greater than one. A brief overview on number bases…
Summer 2015 marked the 100th anniversary of the excavation by J.W. Fewkes of the Sun Temple in Mesa Verde National Park, Colorado, an ancient complex prominently located atop a mesa, constructed by the ancestral Pueblo peoples approximately…
It is a book on geodesy and the theory of errors for the students of the cycle of geomatics, surveying and mapping. The geometric and spatial aspects of geodesy are presented in the first part of the book. The second part is about the…
In this article I conduct a short review of the proofs of the area inside a circle. These include intuitive as well as rigorous analytic proofs. This discussion is important not just from mathematical view point but also because…
This text is based on an invited talk at the Dedekind Symposium at Braunschweig in October 2016. It summarizes views from my recent commented edition of Dedekinds two books on the foundations of mathematics.
Following a paper in which the fundamental aspects of probabilistic inference were introduced by means of a toy experiment, details of the analysis of simulated long sequences of extractions are shown here. In fact, the striking performance…
We provide a new proof of Vivinai's Theorem using what George Polya calls a 'leading particular case.' Our proof highlights the role of generalization in mathematics.
This article addresses the logistics of implementing projects in an undergraduate mathematics class and is intended both for new instructors and for instructors who have had negative experiences implementing projects in the past. Project…
It is a collection of problems and exercises of geodesy and the theory of errors.
In real Hilbert spaces, this paper generalizes the orthogonal groups $\mathrm{O}(n)$ in two ways. One way is by finite multiplications of a family of operators from reflections which results in a group denoted as $\Theta(\kappa)$, the other…
We discuss the art and science of producing conformally correct euclidean and hyperbolic tilings of compact surfaces. As an example, we present a tiling of the Chmutov surface by hyperbolic (2, 4, 6) triangles.
Did Leibniz exploit infinitesimals and infinities `a la rigueur, or only as shorthand for quantified propositions that refer to ordinary Archimedean magnitudes? Chapter 5 in (Ishiguro 1990) is a defense of the latter position, which she…
Allegedly, Brouwer discovered his famous fixed point theorem while stirring a cup of coffee and noticing that there is always at least one point in the liquid that does not move. In this paper, based on a talk in honour of Brouwer at the…
The following result, a consequence of Dumas criterion for irreducibility of polynomials over integers, is generally proved using the notion of Newton diagram: Let $f(x)$ be a polynomial with integer coefficients and $k$ be a positive…
This paper presents a systematic study of the prehistory of the traditional subsystems of second-order arithmetic that feature prominently in the reverse mathematics program of Friedman and Simpson. We look in particular at: (i) the long…
In relation to a thesis put forward by Marx Wartofsky, we seek to show that a historiography of mathematics requires an analysis of the ontology of the part of mathematics under scrutiny. Following Ian Hacking, we point out that in the…