Five Golden Rules - 96 edition

Summary: Acclaimed author John L. Casti's fascinating exploration of five monumental mathematical breakthroughs and how they shape our lives. Praise for John Casti: "Mr. Casti is at his best in presenting difficult philosophical ideas enthusiastically and lucidly, and in providing everyday examples to illustrate them." --The New York Times Book Review. "John Casti writes with considerable knowledge and good judgment about his topics without ceasing to be ...show moreinteresting and entertaining along the way." --John Barrow, New Scientist. Advance Praise for Five Golden Rules: "With this ground-breaking work, John Casti shows himself to be a great mathematics writer. Five Golden Rules is a feast of rare new delights all made perfectly comprehensible...succeeds brilliantly in showing that mathematics applies to the whole spectrum of human thought: physical, metaphysical, and metaphorical." --Rudy Rucker, author of The Fourth Dimension. "John Casti has written a wonderful book full of interesting examples that will catch the reader's imagination." --George Dantzig, Stanford University. "This is a first-rate, well-written exposition of several basic ideas in modern mathematics as applied to the world around us, with no compromise on rigor...science writing at its best." --Martin Shubik, Yale University. "With the lucid informality for which he has become known, John Casti has written an engaging and articulate examination of five great mathematical theorems and their myriad applications." --John Allen Paulos, author of Innumeracy and Mathematician Reads the Newspaper. "Books on mathematics with such beauty, breadth, and insight are rare. Five Golden Rules is replete with intriguing information--not only for curious laypeople--but also for seasoned mathematicians and scientists. Casti has produced a truly stunning survey of mathematics' manifold consequences." --Clifford Pickover, IBM T. J. Watson Research Center. ...show less

Edition/Copyright: 96
Cover: Paperback
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Published: 09/28/1997

View Author Bio

JOHN L. CASTI is a resident member of the Santa Fe Institute and a professor at the Technical University of Vienna. He is the author of four other trade books, Would-Be Worlds (Wiley), Paradigms Lost, Searching for Certainty, and Complexification, as well as the two-volume Reality Rules, a text on mathematical modeling (also published by Wiley).

View Table of Contents

The Minimax Theorem (Game Theory).

The Brouwer Fixed-Point Theorem (Topology).

Morse's Theorem (Singularity Theory).

The Halting Theorem (Theory of Computation).

The Simplex Method (Optimization Theory).

Bibliography.
Index.