Beyond infinity : an expedition to the outer limits of mathematics
Cheng, Eugenia2017
Book
The hilarious and charming Eugenia Cheng leads us in search of what's bigger than infinity, and smaller than its opposite. Imagine something small enough to fit in your head but too large to fit in the world-or even the universe. What would you call it? And what would it be? How about...infinity? In Beyond Infinity, musician, chef, and mathematician Eugenia Cheng answers this question by taking readers on a startling journey from math at its most elemental to its loftiest abstractions. Beginning with the classic thought experiment of Hilbert's hotel-the place where you can (almost) always find a room, if you don't mind being moved from room to room over the course of the night-she explores the wild and woolly world of the infinitely large and the infinitely small. Along the way she considers weighty questions like why some numbers are uncountable or why infinity plus one is not the same as one plus infinity. She finds insight in some unlikely examples: planning a dinner party for 7 billion people using a chessboard, making a chicken-sandwich sandwich, and creating infinite cookies from a finite ball of dough all tell you more about math than you could have imagined. An irresistible book on the universe's biggest possible topic, Beyond Infinity will beguile and bewitch you, and show all of us how one little symbol can hold the biggest idea of all.
Main title:
Beyond infinity : an expedition to the outer limits of mathematics / Eugenia Cheng.
Author:
Cheng, Eugenia, author
Imprint:
New York : Basic Books, [2017]©2017
Collation:
x, 284 pages : illustrations ; 22 cm.
Notes:
Includes index.
Contents:
The journey. What is infinity? ; Playing with infinity ; What infinity is not ; Infinity slips away from us Again ; Counting up to infinity ; Some things are more infinite than others ; Counting beyond infinity ; Comparing infinities ; What infinity is -- The Sights. Where is infinity? ; Things that are nearly infinity ; Infinite dimensions ; Infinite-dimensional categories ; The infinitesimally small ; When infinity nearly caused mathematics to fall apart (and maybe also your brain) ; Weirdness ; Where infinity is.
ISBN:
9780465094813 (hardback)
Dewey class:
511.3
Language:
English
Added title:
Subject:
BRN:
454010
| Location | Collection | Call number | Status/Desc |
|---|---|---|---|
| Kathleen Syme Carlton | -Science and Nature | SCIENCE 511.3 CHEN | Available |