John McCleary

Hover over the image to zoom. Click the image for a popup.Email a Friend About This ItemLogin to Submit a Review inShare John McCleary In Exercises in (Mathematical) Style, the author investigates the world of that familiar set of numbers, the binomial coefficients. While the reader learns some of the properties, relations, and generalizations of the numbers of Pascal's triangle, each story explores a different mode of discourse - from arguing algebraically, combinatorially, geometrically, or by induction, contradiction, or recursion to discovering mathematical facts in poems, music, letters, and various styles of stories. The author follows the example of Raymond Queneau's Exercises in Style, giving the reader 99 stories in various styles. The ubiquitous nature of binomial coefficients leads the tour through combinatorics, number theory, algebra, analysis, and even topology. The book celebrates the joy of writing and the joy of mathematics, found by engaging the rich properties of this simple set of numbers.

Exercises in (Mathematical) Style

How many dimensions does our universe require for a comprehensive physical description? In 1905, Poincare argued philosophically about the necessity of the three familiar dimensions, while recent research is based on 11 dimensions or even 23 dimensions. The notion of dimension itself presented a basic problem to the pioneers of topology. Cantor asked if dimension was a topological feature of Euclidean space. To answer this question, some important topological ideas were introduced by Brouwer, giving shape to a subject whose development dominated the twentieth century. The basic notions in topology are varied and a comprehensive grounding in point-set topology, the definition and use of the fundamental group, and the beginnings of homology theory requires considerable time. The goal of this book is a focused introduction through these classical topics, aiming throughout at the classical result of the Invariance of Dimension. This text is based on the author's course given at Vassar College and is intended for advanced undergraduate students. It is suitable for a semester-long course on topology for students who have studied real analysis and linear algebra. It is also a good choice for a capstone course, senior seminar, or independent study.

Continuity and Dimension

A First Course in Topology

A thoroughly revised second edition of a textbook for a first course in differential/modern geometry that introduces methods within a historical context.

Geometry from a Differentiable Viewpoint

The development of geometry from Euclid to Euler to Lobachevsky, Bolyai, Gauss and Riemann is a story that is often broken into parts – axiomatic geometry, non-Euclidean geometry and differential geometry. This poses a problem for undergraduates: Which part is geometry? What is the big picture to which these parts belong? In this introduction to differential geometry, the parts are united with all of their interrelations, motivated by the history of the parallel postulate. Beginning with the ancient sources, the author first explores synthetic methods in Euclidean and non-Euclidean geometry and then introduces differential geometry in its classical formulation, leading to the modern formulation on manifolds such as space-time. The presentation is enlivened by historical diversions such as Huygens's clock and the mathematics of cartography. The intertwined approaches will help undergraduates understand the role of elementary ideas in the more general, differential setting. This thoroughly revised second edition includes numerous new exercises and a new solution key. New topics include Clairaut's relation for geodesics and the use of transformations such as the reflections of the Beltrami disk.

James D. Stasheff

Since the work of Stasheff and Sugawara in the 1960s on recognition of loop space structures on $H$-spaces, the notion of higher homotopies has grown to be a fundamental organizing principle in homotopy theory, differential graded homological algebra and even mathematical physics. This book presents the proceedings from a conference held on the occasion of Stasheff's 60th birthday at Vassar in June 1996. It offers a collection of very high quality papers and includes some fundamental essays on topics that open new areas. It's features include: accessible to a broad audience interested in mathematics and physics; offers a comprehensive overview of Stasheff's work; and, contains papers on very current research topics, including operads, combinatorial polyhedra and moduli spaces.

Proceedings of an International Conference June 13-15, 1996 at Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, New York, to Honor the Sixtieth Birthday of Jim Stasheff

Higher Homotopy Structures in Topology and Mathematical Physics

John Mac Cleary

This book offers a new treatment of differential geometry which is designed to make the subject approachable for advanced undergraduates.

John McCleary

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