Keith Devlin

A mathematician’s ten-year quest to tell Fibonacci’s storyIn 2000, Keith Devlin set out to research the life and legacy of the medieval mathematician Leonardo of Pisa, popularly known as Fibonacci, wh

Intelligence can be characterised both as the ability to absorb and process information and as the ability to reason. Humans and other animals have both of these abilities to a greater or lesser degree, but the search for artificial intelligence has been hampered by our inability to create a theory that covers both of these characteristics. In this provocative and ground-breaking book, Professor Keith Devlin argues that to obtain a deeper understanding of the nature of intelligence and knowledge acquisition, we must broaden our concept of logic. For these purposes, Devlin introduces the concept of the infon, a quantum of information, and merges it with situations, a mathematical construction generalising the notion of sets developed by Barwise and Perry at Stanford University in order to study the meaning of natural languages. He develops and describes the theory here in general and intuitive terms, and discusses its relevance to a variety of concerns such as artificial intelligence, c

Intelligence can be characterised both as the ability to absorb and process information and as the ability to reason. Humans and other animals have both of these abilities to a greater or lesser degree, but the search for artificial intelligence has been hampered by our inability to create a theory that covers both of these characteristics. In this provocative and ground-breaking book, Professor Keith Devlin argues that to obtain a deeper understanding of the nature of intelligence and knowledge acquisition, we must broaden our concept of logic. For these purposes, Devlin introduces the concept of the infon, a quantum of information, and merges it with situations, a mathematical construction generalising the notion of sets developed by Barwise and Perry at Stanford University in order to study the meaning of natural languages. He develops and describes the theory here in general and intuitive terms, and discusses its relevance to a variety of concerns such as artificial intelligence, c

"Mathematics: The New Golden Age" offers a glimpse of the extraordinary vistas and bizarre universes opened up by contemporary mathematicians: Hilbert's tenth problem and the four-color theorem, Gauss

The description for this book, Finding Fibonacci: The Quest to Rediscover the Forgotten Mathematical Genius Who Changed the World, will be forthcoming.

An account of the Clay Foundation's 2000 competition to solve seven high-level math problems references the Hilbert Problems of 1900 and cites the Millennium Problems' significance in the fields of ma

"The great book of nature," said Galileo, "can be read only by those who know the language in which it was written. And this language is mathematics." In The Language of Mathematics, award-winning au

Why do leopards grow spots when tigers grow stripes? Is the universe round, square, or some other shape? How do the dimples in a golf ball give it greater lift? Is there such a thing as a public mood?

This text covers the parts of contemporary set theory relevant to other areas of pure mathematics. After a review of "naive" set theory, it develops the Zermelo-Fraenkel axioms of the theory before di

Intended for mathematics educators, this volume presents a discussion of the use of video games for teaching middle school math and the challenges facing educational game developers in an era of ever

In the early seventeenth century, the outcome of something as simple as a dice roll was consigned to the realm of unknowable chance. Mathematicians largely agreed that it was impossible to predict th

Why is math so hard? And why, despite this difficulty, are some people so good at it? If there’s some inborn capacity for mathematical thinking—which there must be, otherwise no one could

This text covers the parts of contemporary set theory relevant to other areas of pure mathematics. After a review of "naive" set theory, it develops the Zermelo-Fraenkel axioms of the theory before di

There are two kinds of math: the hard kind and the easy kind. The easy kind, practiced by ants, shrimp, Welsh Corgis — and us — is innate. But what innate calculating skills do we humans

Do you expect to find articles about mathematics in your daily newspaper? If you are a reader of The Guardian you do, or at least you did during the second half of the 1980s. This volume collects many

Keith Devlin and Jonathan Borwein, two well-known mathematicians with expertise in different mathematical specialties but with a common interest in experimentation in mathematics, have joined forces t

In 1202, a 32-year old Italian finished one of the most influential books of all time, which introduced modern arithmetic to Western Europe. Devised in India in the 7th and 8th centuries and brought t

Leonardo of Pisa-better known today as Fibonacci-was the first Westerner to recognize the power of the Hindu-Arabic number system (featuring the numerals 0 through 9), which offered a much simpler met

Before the mid-seventeenth century, scholars generally agreed that it was impossible to predict something by calculating mathematical outcomes. One simply could not put a numerical value on the likel

Devlin (no affiliation given) re-examines Kojeve not as a simple disciple of Hegel, but as a creator of what Devlin calls "rational historicism," a system of thought Devlin believes is the logical out

Since their inception, the Perspectives in Logic and Lecture Notes in Logic series have published seminal works by leading logicians. Many of the original books in the series have been unavailable for years, but they are now in print once again. In this volume, the sixth publication in the Perspectives in Logic series, Keith J. Devlin gives a comprehensive account of the theory of constructible sets at an advanced level. The book provides complete coverage of the theory itself, rather than the many and diverse applications of constructibility theory, although applications are used to motivate and illustrate the theory. The book is divided into two parts: Part I (Elementary Theory) deals with the classical definition of the Lα-hierarchy of constructible sets and may be used as the basis of a graduate course on constructibility theory. and Part II (Advanced Theory) deals with the Jα-hierarchy and the Jensen 'fine-structure theory'.

When Jake Devlin, a mellow, laid-back beach bum, begins writing a controversial novel about Gordon Donne, a reclusive, iconoclastic billionaire who buys the United States and sets out to fix all

The companion to the hit CBS crime series Numb3rs presents the fascinating way mathematics is used to fight real-life crime Using the popular CBS prime-time TV crime series Numb3rs as a springboard,