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Product Description
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"God created the integers, all the rest is the work of man."
Book Description
Pulled together for the first time, and paired with commentary from the worlds most respected scholars, God Created the Integers presents historys extraordinary moments in math, culled from 2,500 years of history and 21 distinguished mathematicians, four more than the hardcover edition. Each chapter begins with a profile of one of these mathematical masters, followed by original printings of their relevant works. This new paperback edition includes the work of Euler, Galois, Bolyai, and Lobachevsky. Readers get a window into the minds of these geniuses and can see the unfolding thought process as it leads, inevitably, to the high-water marks in mathematical thinking. This new edition comes with an index to make it a valuable and easy-to-use research and reference tool.
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Most helpful customer reviews
11 of 12 people found the following review helpful
3.0 out of 5 stars
Not for browsers,
By
This review is from: God Created the Integers: The Mathematical Breakthroughs That Changed History (Paperback)
Ok, it's Stephen Hawking, which means an intelligent book. But it's full of quite difficult math, and the logic is really aimed at physics graduates, rather than the general public. If you buy this expecting another "Short History of Time", you will be disappointed.I found myself completely out of my depth. When Stephen Hawking isn't "talking down" to the lay reader, the discourse gets pretty complex very quickly, and never lets up. This is tough stuff.
2.0 out of 5 stars
Hawkin,
This review is from: God Created the Integers: The Mathematical Breakthroughs That Changed History (Paperback)
Interresting but not what I expected. It is mostly a compendium of texts, some of them difficult to read. It offer little in term of insinght in the world of mathematic, Not for the uniciated
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta) Amazon.com:
3.8 out of 5 stars (34 customer reviews) 220 of 230 people found the following review helpful
2.0 out of 5 stars
Good and bad,
By W. Stevens - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: God Created the Integers (Hardcover)
First, I loved the idea of this book--a compendum of the more significant mathematical breakthroughs in all their detail, as written by their creators. The text is refreshing in that it is not a watered down version of someone's results. I have a math background and all the details are appreciated. There's something about reading the original text, straight from the minds of these great men.This book could be useful, for example, for someone who likes math and wants a 'sampler' of different areas of study. It could also be useful for someone reading up on the history of mathematics who wants to dig deeper into certain areas and see the original works. All that said, I have to agree with another reviewer about the editing. It's awful (yes, awful) that such typographical errors could exist in a math book. The first section I looked at in this book, Riemann's original paper on the zeta function, had four typos ON THE SAME PAGE. This is disasterous to someone trying to learn the material for the first time, or someone trying to follow a tight line of argument. If this was a college text book, I'd probably burn it, because learning math is difficult enough, without having to contend with typos. To the editors of this book: COME ON GUYS, YOU CAN DO BETTER THAN THIS. YOU SHOULD BE ASHAMED (YES, ASHAMED) OF YOURSELVES (you're just COPYING something someone else wrote--and yet you managed to mess that up)! At least put an errata page somewhere online. 195 of 205 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 stars
A Browsers Delight But With One Important Defect,
By R. E. Little - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: God Created the Integers (Hardcover)
It's not for everyone, but if you have a couple of years of college-level math, you can find your way through most of the material. Open to a random page, see what's going on, if it grabs you, find the beginning of the presentation and plow right in. Hawking's biographical/historical pieces are a delight and worth buying the book for even if you don't do the math. How come I graded one of the greatest minds of our time only 80% (4 stars)? The damn book has no index and it drives me crazy. Because of this defect, it's a pain to try to tie the work of the great mathematicians together. You miss out on an entire layer of interest that could be developed so much more easily had their been an index.
95 of 99 people found the following review helpful
2.0 out of 5 stars
Need an editor, couldn't agree more,
By silmarilli - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: God Created the Integers (Hardcover)
I really want to give this book at least 4 stars as I love the idea of encapsulating those great mathematical breakthroughs in one book and giving each a proper account instead of over simplistic summaries like many other math readings do.HOWEVER, the errors contained in this book is intolerable. It doesn't make sense anymore to give those mathematical details as you can hardly follow them due to the errors. For example, on page 5 it prints: If (2^n - 1) is a prime number then 2^(n-1)*(2^(n-1)-1) is a perfect number and that even perfect numbers must have this form. it obveriously should be 2^(n-1)*(2^n - 1) instead of what has been printed. As other readers have suggested, you would expect more similar errors along the way. Don't buy this book and wait for the 2nd edition if the publisher ever want to make an effort to make this book readable. I'm so very disappointed. |
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