How does homebanking work? How are board games developed? How reliable can wind energy get? How do we discover forged paintings? Do smart girls stay single? How dangerous can a bioterrorist get? In all these questions (and many others), mathematics plays a crucial role in the search for an answer.?
This book tells the story behind twenty of these questions. This is explicitly not a mathematics book, but a book about the crucial role that mathematics plays in devising the creative solutions the world needs. The questions are divided into three categories: home, garden and kitchen mathematics; mathematics for the workplace; and mathematics for tomorrow's society. The themes illustrate not only the incredibly broad applicability of mathematics in the world around us, but also the great diversity of useful mathematical techniques.
Recenzijos
The Invisible Power of Mathematics by Giovanni Samaey and Joos Vandewalle discusses 20 wide-ranging applications of mathematics, devoting an average of eight pages to each application. ... The book feels like a series of conversations about mathematics while walking through the woods with nothing to write on and with far more words than equations. ... The Invisible Power of Mathematics is closer to the Bell end, which is needed given book's intended purpose. (John D. Cook, MAA Reviews, January 28, 2024)
Foreword.- Preface.- Introduction.- 1. Worry-Free Online Shopping -
2.
Reach Everyone, Everywhere in Just Six Steps.-
3. Are the Polls Right?.-
4.
Cochlear Implants Help the Deaf Hear Again.-
5. Google PageRank, or the
Needle in the Haystack.-
6. Fun and Game Theory.-
7. High Winds on High
Mills.-
8. Reducing Factory Noise.-
9. Virtual Architecture and Engineering.-
10. The Art of Forgery.-
11. The Right Bike in the Right Place.- 12. 1.
Can Computers Detect Fraud? (And Do We Want Them To?).-
13. How to Predict
the Future.-
14. Do Smart Girls Stay Single Longer?.-
15. What if There's
More Data than Storage?.-
16. Driving Without a Driver.-
17. How Vulnerable
Are Our Banking Systems?.-
18. Can We Predict Climate Change?.-
19. War and
Peace.-
20. Pandemics: From Ebola and HIV to Bioterrorism and the
Coronavirus.- Bibliography.- Glossary.- Translator's Note.
Giovanni Samaey (b. 1978) obtained a PhD in engineering in 2006 and has been a lecturer in Mathematical Engineering at the Computer Science Department of KU Leuven since 2011. He is also a member of the Young Academy.
Joos Vandewalle (b. 1948) is Emeritus Professor of Engineering and taught mathematical engineering for many years at the Department of Electrical Engineering (ESAT) KU Leuven. He is a director of the Technical Sciences class of the Royal Flemish Academy of Belgium for Sciences and Arts KVAB, member of the Academia Europaea, and Fellow of IEEE, Eurasip and IET.
