To almost everyone this would seem a ridiculous question. Even to most mathematicians the existence of Pi (defined here as the ratio of a circle’s circumference to it’s diameter) is taken for granted. But the question of the existence of the class of number to
I’ve just completed “reading” (listening to) The Black Cloud, by astronomer Fred Hoyle. It has been refreshing to discover a book – science fiction at that – which I can enthusiastically recommend to almost any reader. Hoyle was a successful astronomer who turned to writing
Over this winter vacation, I’ve been intellectually focused on some background mathematics supporting my work in detection. One of my projects is reading through a rather introductory text on probability by Athanasios Papoulis (1965). I’ve found the opening sections of this book very philosophically relevant,