Customer Reviews

What's Happening in the Mathematical Sciences, Volume 4 (What's Happening in the Mathermatical Sciences)

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Barry Cipra is an excellent writer of mathematical articles for the public. This is the fourth in a series that started in 1993 covering recent developments in mathematics of general interest to the public. This volume covers the period from 1998-1999. most interesting to me is the coverage of the developments in artificial intelligence and how it is being used to master difficult combinatorial games like chess and go. In the case of chess he details the developments from the IBM researchers who developed the Deep Blue program that defeated world chess champion Garry Kasparov in 1997 after some early unsuccessful attempts.

I also was very interested in the work of Paul Erdos that is described along with Dr. Grossman's fun research on Erdos numbers. Because Erdos published so many mathematical papers and nearly all were coauthored there are many mathematicians with Erdos number 1 (coauthor of at least one published paper with Erdos). This happened partly because Erdos was a wanderer who had no permanent home and liked to travel from campus to campus throughout the world. At each stop he would usually stay long enough to produce at least one joint publication.

The Erdos number is defined as the number of links through coauthorship that are required to connect you to Paul Erdos. Since I have published a number of papers with statisticians who could be connected to Erdos, I contacted Grossman to find out if I had a finite Erdos number. It turned out that my Erdos number is 3! I published a paper with McCormick who on another occasion published a paper with Canfield and Canfield once published a paper with Erdos. So Canfield has an Erdos number of 1, McCormick's is 2 and mine is 3. Defining the number requires checking all links with coauthors of Erdos.

Another important article deals with cryptograph. With the need for security over the internet, safe coding systems are increasingly important to banks and members of the general public that shops over the internet.

The article on the new role of computers in algebraic geometry is also fascinating.

Reviewed by:
Timothy E. McMahon, M.S.
Principal Web Developer
The McMahon Group

This is an excellent book for those who have an interest in the mathematical sciences and the personalities that make up the field. Cipra takes a complex science and makes it available to anyone from the high schooler to the educated layman.

The article on Erdos is well done and is an excellent companion to The Man Who Loved Only Numbers and Poincare's famous article "Mathematical Discovery" points out the Eureca moment and the deep thinking for which mathematicians are so well known.

The American Mathematical Society is in the process of preparing another work in this series, and I for one am waiting anxiously for its release.

What's Happening in the Mathematical Sciences is an yearly publication about recent interesting happenings in Mathematical field.

All the articles are very will written and are suitable for general audience as well as more informed. Barry Cipra has the ability to arouse an interest in the reader to learn more about the topics covered. This issue contains articles on Deep Blue, Chaos, Paul Erdös, Algebraic Geometry, Cryptogrpahy and many more.

One more plus point is reprint of Henri Poincaré's "Mathematical Discovery", written in the start of twentieth century.