Review of books on 0,1,pi, e: here, Review of a book on i: here. Review of a book on square root of 2: here. Review of a book on phi: here. Review of a book on gamma (whats gamma?): here. If there is some mathematical constant that has had a book on it that I have not included, please comment.
Here is my choice ranked in order of how important they are.
- 0. Addition is more basic then multiplication so the additive identity comes before the multiplicative identity.
- 1. Multiplicative identity.
- -1. Negative numbers--- what would we do without them? One could even argue that subtraction is more important than multiplication and make this number 2 on the list. There is no book on -1 that I know of, but it is still too important to not put on this list.
- pi. Without pi we wouldn't have circles!
- e. Ah-ha- the pi vs. e debate. You can read about it here or even listen to a real debate here. I would go with pi since the level of math it is on is more basic then the level of math that e is on.
- gamma. What is this constant? It is the difference in the limit between natural log of n and 1 + 1/2 + ... + 1/n. How important is it? I read the book on it pointed to above. The book is pretty good but it mostly talks about related topics- logs, Zeta functions, pi. So I still don't see why gamma is worth a book. I suspect that there are more math constants that are more important that just happened to not have books written about them. Or they have and I don't know about them.
- phi. There is the notion that the Golden Ratio pops up in math and in nature all the time. And there are those who disagree.
- square root of 2. This is interesting historically as the first irrational number, but I don't think it has much mathematical significance.
This book contains information on many interesting constants. Of course the ones GASARCH lists above are the first ones treated in Finch's book.
ReplyDeleteI would put the number "2" on the list in position 5.5, after e and before phi.
ReplyDelete(1) Where would we be without binary, i.e. 2ary, operators such as "+" and "*"?
(2) The constant 2 shows up disproportionately, often indirectly as "even" and "odd".
(3) It's the first prime.
What number is i?
ReplyDeletei is the complex number such that i^2=-1.
ReplyDeletenot the but a complex number such that i^2=-1. Otherwise, i=-i.
ReplyDeleteI meant "What position on the list is i?".
ReplyDeleteAs Harrison said in the last post, 24 is a very interesting number. There's even a whole TV show about it. =)
ReplyDeleteWHOOPS- I meant to put i
ReplyDeleteafter e, but this can all be debated, as we are doing.
bill g.
As Harrison said in the last post, 24 is a very interesting number. There's even a whole TV show about it. =)
ReplyDeleteGo leech lattice, go!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leech_lattice
Omega is an interesting number that has a book written about it (MetaMath):
ReplyDeletehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaitin%27s_constant
What happened to the pi versus 2pi debate? No one is going to claim that 2pi is the most interesting number?
ReplyDeleteI meant to put i after e
ReplyDeleteI thought that "i" comes before "e" except when it sounds like "a" as in "neighbor" and "weigh"
I can't stand the term 'complex numbers'.
ReplyDeleteWe don't refer to the elements of other fields as 'numbers'.
The oracle to the halting problem...
ReplyDelete...with its digits alternating with those of pi. (Throw in countably many more numbers if you like.)
What about Chaitin's Omega? He practically wrote a whole book about it.
ReplyDeleteChaitin is too much in love with himself for anything he says to be taken seriously.
ReplyDeleteWhat about the very large number 337736875876935471466319632506024463200.00000080231935662524957710441240659. It can be found at OEIS A161771, http://www.research.att.com/~njas/sequences/A161771
ReplyDeleteIt involves the 24d space of the Leech Lattice and a square term of 'Ramunujan constant'. It has many interesting properties.