Paperback | November 2014 | ISBN: 9780691163529
248 pp. | 6 x 9 | 113 color illus. 19 halftones. 19 line illus. 2 tables
What is the shortest possible route for a traveling salesman seeking to visit each city on a list exactly once and return to his city of origin? It sounds simple enough, yet the traveling salesman problem is one of the most intensely studied puzzles in applied mathematics--and it has defied solution to this day. In this book, William Cook takes readers on a mathematical excursion, picking up the salesman's trail in the 1800s when Irish mathematician W. R. Hamilton first defined the problem, and venturing to the furthest limits of today's state-of-the-art attempts to solve it. He also explores its many important applications, from genome sequencing and designing computer processors to arranging music and hunting for planets.
In Pursuit of the Traveling Salesman travels to the very threshold of our understanding about the nature of complexity, and challenges you yourself to discover the solution to this captivating mathematical problem.
William J. Cook is professor of combinatorics and optimization at the University of Waterloo. He is the coauthor of The Traveling Salesman Problem: A Computational Study (Princeton).
Hardcover | August 2014 | ISBN: 9780691161853
376 pp. | 7 x 10 |
Quaternions are a number system that has become increasingly useful for representing the rotations of objects in three-dimensional space and has important applications in theoretical and applied mathematics, physics, computer science, and engineering. This is the first book to provide a systematic, accessible, and self-contained exposition of quaternion linear algebra. It features previously unpublished research results with complete proofs and many open problems at various levels, as well as more than 200 exercises to facilitate use by students and instructors. Applications presented in the book include numerical ranges, invariant semidefinite subspaces, differential equations with symmetries, and matrix equations.
Designed for researchers and students across a variety of disciplines, the book can be read by anyone with a background in linear algebra, rudimentary complex analysis, and some multivariable calculus. Instructors will find it useful as a complementary text for undergraduate linear algebra courses or as a basis for a graduate course in linear algebra. The open problems can serve as research projects for undergraduates, topics for graduate students, or problems to be tackled by professional research mathematicians. The book is also an invaluable reference tool for researchers in fields where techniques based on quaternion analysis are used.
Leiba Rodman is professor of mathematics at the College of William & Mary. His books include Matrix Polynomials, Algebraic Riccati Equations, and Indefinite Linear Algebra and Applications.
Paperback | August 2014 | ISBN: 9780691162522
Hardcover | August 2014 | ISBN: 9780691162515
416 pp. | 6 x 9 | 7 line illus
This book develops a new theory of multi-parameter singular integrals associated with Carnot-Caratheodory balls. Brian Street first details the classical theory of Calderon-Zygmund singular integrals and applications to linear partial differential equations. He then outlines the theory of multi-parameter Carnot-Caratheodory geometry, where the main tool is a quantitative version of the classical theorem of Frobenius. Street then gives several examples of multi-parameter singular integrals arising naturally in various problems. The final chapter of the book develops a general theory of singular integrals that generalizes and unifies these examples. This is one of the first general theories of multi-parameter singular integrals that goes beyond the product theory of singular integrals and their analogs. Multi-parameter Singular Integrals will interest graduate students and researchers working in singular integrals and related fields.
Brian Street is assistant professor of mathematics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Hardcover | January 2015 | ISBN: 9780691163819
360 pp. | 6 x 9 | 300 line illus.
The fascinating world of graph theory goes back several centuries and revolves around the study of graphs--mathematical structures showing relations between objects. With applications in biology, computer science, transportation science, and other areas, graph theory encompasses some of the most beautiful formulas in mathematics--and some of its most famous problems. For example, what is the shortest route for a traveling salesman seeking to visit a number of cities in one trip? What is the least number of colors needed to fill in any map so that neighboring regions are always colored differently? Requiring readers to have a math background only up to high school algebra, this book explores the questions and puzzles that have been studied, and often solved, through graph theory. In doing so, the book looks at graph theory's development and the vibrant individuals responsible for the field's growth.
Introducing graph theory's fundamental concepts, the authors explore a diverse plethora of classic problems such as the Lights Out Puzzle, the Minimum Spanning Tree Problem, the Konigsberg Bridge Problem, the Chinese Postman Problem, a Knight's Tour, and the Road Coloring Problem. They present every type of graph imaginable, such as bipartite graphs, Eulerian graphs, the Petersen graph, and trees. Each chapter contains math exercises and problems for readers to savor.
An eye-opening journey into the world of graphs, this book offers exciting problem-solving possibilities for mathematics and beyond.
Arthur Benjamin is professor of mathematics at Harvey Mudd College. His books include Secrets of Mental Math and Proofs That Really Count. Gary Chartrand is professor emeritus of mathematics at Western Michigan University. Ping Zhang is professor of mathematics at Western Michigan University. Chartrand and Zhang are the coauthors of several books, including A First Course in Graph Theory and Discrete Mathematics.
Hardcover | January 2015 | ISBN: 9780691154237
480 pp. | 6 x 9 | 10 line illus.
What do pure mathematicians do, and why do they do it? Looking beyond the conventional answers--for the sake of truth, beauty, and practical applications--this book offers an eclectic panorama of the lives and values and hopes and fears of mathematicians in the twenty-first century, assembling material from a startlingly diverse assortment of scholarly, journalistic, and pop culture sources.
Drawing on his personal experiences and obsessions as well as the thoughts and opinions of mathematicians from Archimedes and Omar Khayyam to such contemporary giants as Alexander Grothendieck and Robert Langlands, Michael Harris reveals the charisma and romance of mathematics as well as its darker side. In this portrait of mathematics as a community united around a set of common intellectual, ethical, and existential challenges, he touches on a wide variety of questions, such as: Are mathematicians to blame for the 2008 financial crisis? How can we talk about the ideas we were born too soon to understand? And how should you react if you are asked to explain number theory at a dinner party?
Disarmingly candid, relentlessly intelligent, and richly entertaining, Mathematics without Apologies takes readers on an unapologetic guided tour of the mathematical life, from the philosophy and sociology of mathematics to its reflections in film and popular music, with detours through the mathematical and mystical traditions of Russia, India, medieval Islam, the Bronx, and beyond.
Michael Harris is professor of mathematics at the Universite Paris Diderot and Columbia University. He is the author or coauthor of more than seventy mathematical books and articles.