The book of numbers

John H. Conway, Richard Guy9780387979939, 0-387-97993-X

In this book, John Horton Conway, creator of the famous game of Life, and one of the most original thinkers in mathematics, joins up with Richard K. Guy, whose broad understanding of the subject is often dressed up in playful expository language. Together they lead the reader on an imaginative, often astonishing tour of the landscape of numbers.The Book of Numbers is just that-an engagingly written, heavily illustrated introduction to the fascinating, sometimes surprising properties of numbers and number patterns. The book opens up a world of topics, theories, and applications, exploring intriguing aspects of real numbers, systems, arrays and sequences, and much more. Readers will be able to use figures to figure out figures (do arithmetic and algebra by geometry), rub elbows with famous families of numbers, prove the primacy of primes, fathom the fruitfulness of fractions, imagine imaginary numbers, investigate the infinite and infinitesimal, and more…Conway and Guy, who are co-authors (with E.R. Berlekamp) of Winning Ways For Your Mathematical Plays, combine their unusual talents to present readers with mathematical topics that are infused with their unique perspectives, little-known numbers, clever insights, and historical curiosities. For math buffs looking to explore new twists and turns in number theory, The Book of Numbers promises to be a richly rewarding reading experience.John Horton Conway is Professor of Mathematics at Princeton University. Among his many publications and books are Winning Ways For Your Mathematical Plays (with E.R. Berlekamp and Richard Guy), On Numbers and Games, and Sphere Packing, Lattices, and Groups (with N.G.A. Sloane).Richard K. Guy is Professor Emeritus in the Department of Mathematics at the University of Calgary, Alberta. With more than 200 publications and ten books published, Guy is universally known for his work with unsolved problems and number theory.