A Course in Computational Number Theory (Textbooks in Mathematical Sciences) (Hardcover)

~ David Bressoud (Author), Stan Wagon (Author)
Key Phrases: Fermat's Little Theorem, Chinese Remainder Theorem, Prime Number Theorem (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Review

"The book presents the standard curriculum of a first course in number theory: the fundamental theorem of arithmetic, congruences, Fermat's theorem and Euler's generalization, primitive roots, facts about the distribution of primes, quadratic residues, Pell's equation and sums of squares. The proofs are constructive and the emphasis is on computing. Algorithms are given for GCD, solving linear congruences, factoring, primality testing, finding large primes, evaluating Jacobi symbols, computing square roots modulo a prime, finding continued fractions of quadratic irrationals, solving Pell's equation and expressing an integer as the sum of two squares. The diverse applications include repeating decimals, the RSA cipher, digital signatures, the Yao millionaire problem, check digits, the cattle problem of Archimedes and the crystal structure of salt. There is an excellent survey of many (probable) prime tests with Lucas sequences. The computer algebra system Mathematica is used throughout the book and summarized in an appendix. On nearly every page, Mathematica instructions illustrate algorithms and provide examples. An accompanying CD-ROM holds a rich assortment of Mathematica programs from the text. Three color plates display the power residues modulo small primes and the Gaussian primes reachable from $1+i$ in steps of bounded length."--MATHEMATICAL REVIEWS

Product Description

This text will be a modern introduction to number theory, a course taught at most colleges and universities, primarily to math and c. s. majors, and will place heavy and continuing emphasis on algorithmic aspects of the subject. The language of the algorithms used will be the popular Mathematica, and a comprehensive set of notebooks will be included on a book web site. While the emphasis will be on modern topics like factorization and primality testing techniques, there will be extensive coverage of traditional number theory. Among its features willbe lots of displayed computations, and the inclusion of many computer exercises for students.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 367 pages
• Publisher: Key College; 1 edition (May 11, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1930190107
• ISBN-13: 978-1930190108
• Product Dimensions: 9.5 x 7.2 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 1.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,778,787 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Typesetting ruins a great book, December 28, 2007

By	Darrell Plank "[e-mail]" (Sequim, WA USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I love the hardcover version of this book and was really excited to see I could get it on the kindle. It was the first thing I ordered and was the first big disappointment.

The typesetting for the math equations makes many of them essentially unreadable with characters overstriking other characters, super and subscripts far from the characters they are super or subscripting, etc..

It appears to me that Amazon is probably using OCR technology that isn't handling this stuff well. Personally I think they should reimburse me for this poorly transcribed version of what is such a great book in the hardcover version although I'm not going to push it.