How does homebanking work? How are board games developed? How reliable can wind energy get? How do we discover forged paintings? Do smart girls stay single? How dangerous can a bioterrorist get? In all these questions (and many others), mathematics plays a crucial role in the search for an answer.
This book tells the story behind twenty of these questions. This is explicitly not a mathematics book, but a book about the crucial role that mathematics plays in devising the creative solutions the world needs. The questions are divided into three categories: home, garden and kitchen mathematics; mathematics for the workplace; and mathematics for tomorrow's society. The themes illustrate not only the incredibly broad applicability of mathematics in the world around us, but also the great diversity of useful mathematical techniques.
Author(s): Giovanni Samaey, Joos P. L. Vandewalle
Edition: 1
Publisher: Springer
Year: 2023
Language: English
Pages: 190
City: New York, NY
Tags: Mathematical Thinking; Mathematical Interpretation; Numbers; Creative Solutions
Foreword
Acknowledgment
Introduction
Contents
Part I: Mathematics in Everyday Life
Chapter 1: Worry-Free Online Shopping
Chapter 2: Reach Everyone, Anywhere, in Just Six Steps
Chapter 3: Are the Polls Right?
Chapter 4: Cochlear Implants Help the Deaf Hear Again
Chapter 5: Google PageRank, or the Needle in the Haystack
Chapter 6: Fun and Game Theory
Part II: Mathematics in the Workplace
Chapter 7: High Winds on High Mills
Chapter 8: Reducing Factory Noise
Chapter 9: Virtual Architecture and Engineering
Chapter 10: The Art of Forgery
Chapter 11: The Right Bike in the Right Place
Chapter 12: Can Computers Detect Fraud? (And Do We Want Them To?)
Chapter 13: Industrial Fortune Tellers Predict Profit
Part III: Mathematics for Tomorrow’s Society
Chapter 14: Do Smart Girls Stay Single Longer?
Chapter 15: What If There’s More Data Than Storage?
Chapter 16: Driving Without a Driver
Chapter 17: How Vulnerable Are Our Banking Systems?
Chapter 18: Can We Predict Climate Change?
Chapter 19: War and Peace
Chapter 20: Pandemics: From Ebola and HIV to Bioterrorism and the Coronavirus
Bibliographic References
Index
