Benjamin Franklin's Numbers: An Unsung Mathematical Odyssey
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | 4.73 (651 Votes) |
| Asin | : | 0691129568 |
| Format Type | : | paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 272 Pages |
| Publish Date | : | 2016-10-14 |
| Language | : | English |
DESCRIPTION:
Ely J. Titley said Ben"s Genius. Benjamin Franklin's Numbers is very facinating, I never knew he more than a founding father. This is a great book for anyone who loves numbers and has a math background, something you won't learn in school.. Review of Paul Pasles' "Benjamin Franklin's Numbers" Full disclosure: The author is a relative. Still, this book will joyfully upend your ideas about one of our founding fathers and his amazing mathematical skills (not one of his main interests, apparently, but we should all be so talented in our hobbies and pastimes). The book is easy to read and understand, has wry authorial comments and wonderful illustrations, and makes Sudoku puzzles look absolutely trivial.. Formater said Surprisingly much more than magic squares.. It goes into many parts of Franklin's life that other biograph's miss. For example, there were rivalies among various competing almanacs via mathematical puzzles.
Not content with matrices where columns, rows and diagonals all have equal sums, Franklin created magic squares where bent diagonals and other groupings have special properties and then went on to develop even more complex magic circles, outclassing not only his contemporaries but also many modern mathematicians Drawing on Franklin's letters and journals as well as modern-day reconstructions of his library, Pasles touches on Franklin's fondness for magazines of mathematical diversions; publication of arithmetic problems in Poor Richard's Almanac; startlingly accurate projections of population growth and cost-benefit arguments against slavery. . From Publishers Weekly Pasles, an associate professor of mathematics at Villanova, speculates gleefully on the oft-denied mathematical genius of Benjamin Franklin. All rights reserved. The author focuses on magic squares, a type of matrix that Franklin dismissed (inaccurately) as incapa
Written for a general audience, this book assumes no technical skills beyond basic arithmetic.Benjamin Franklin's Numbers is a delightful blend of biography, history, and popular mathematics. Few American lives have been as celebrated--or as closely scrutinized--as that of Benjamin Franklin. Magic squares and circles were a lifelong fascination of Franklin's. Yet until now Franklin's biographers have downplayed his interest in mathematics, at best portraying it as the idle musings of a brilliant and ever-restless mind. He draws upon previously unknown sources to illustrate Franklin's genius for numbers as never before. In fact, Franklin indulged in many areas of mathematics, includin