Within this two-volume edition, Professor Smith covers the entire history of mathematics in the Near and Far East and the West, from primitive number concepts to the calculus. His account is distinguished by impeccable scholarship combined with unusual clarity and readability. Footnotes add many technical points outside the book's actual line of development and direct the reader to disputed matters and source readings. Hundreds of illustrations from Egyptian papyri, Hindu, Chinese, and Japanese manuscripts, Greek and Roman texts, Medieval treatises, maps, portraits, etc. are used along with modern graphs and diagrams. Every major figure from Euclid to Descartes, Gauss, and Riemann and hundreds of lesser-known figures — Theon of Smyrna, Rabbi ben Ezra, Radulph of Laon, Mersenns, Benedetti, and more — are considered both with respect to specific problems and with an awareness of their overall influence on mathematics. Volume II: Special Topics, considering mathematics in terms of arithmetic geometry, algebra, trig, calculus, calculating machines, and other specific fields and problems. 192 Topics for Discussion. 195 illustrations. Index.

This handy guide will take abacus users from beginner to master level in a very short time. Though the Japanese abacus may appear mysterious or even primitive, this intriguing tool is capable of amazing speed and accuracy. it is still widely used throughout the shop and markets of Asia and its popularity shows no sign of decline. This volume is designed for the student desiring a greater understanding of the abacus and its calculative functions. The text provides thorough explanations of the advanced operations involving negative numbers, decimals, different units of measurement, and square roots. Diagrams illustrate bead manipulation, and numerous exercises provide ample practice. Concise and easy-to-follow, this book will improve your abacus skills and help you perform calculations with greater efficiency and precision.

"During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, English numerical practices underwent a complex transformation with wide-ranging impacts on English society and modes of thought. At the beginning of the early modern period, English men and women believed that God had made humans universally numerate, although numbers were not central to their everyday lives. Over the next two centuries, rising literacy rates and the increasing availability of printed books revolutionized modes of arithmetical education, upended the balance between the multiple symbolic systems used to express popular numeracy, and contributed to a wider transformation in numbers as a technology of knowledge"--

Through a multidisciplinary collection of case studies, this book explores the effects of the digital age on medieval and early modern studies. Divided into five parts, the book examines how people, medieval and modern, engage with medieval media and technology through an exploration of the theory underpinning audience interactions with historical materials in the past and the real-world engagement of a twenty-first century audience with medieval and early modern studies through the multimodal lens of a vast digital landscape. Each case study reveals the diversity of medieval media and technology and challenges readers to consider new types of literacy competencies as scholarly, rigorous methods of engaging in pre-modern investigations of materiality. Essays in the first section engage in the examination of medieval media, mediation, and technology from a theoretical framework, while the second section explores how digitization, smart technologies, digital mapping, and the internet have shaped medieval and early modern studies today. The book will be of interest to students in undergraduate or graduate intermediate or advanced courses as well as scholars, in medieval studies, art history, architectural history, medieval history, literary history, and religious history.

This is the story of the intellectual and social life of a community, and of its interactions with the wider world. For 800 years mathematics has been researched and studied at Oxford, and the subject and its teaching have undergone profound changes during that time. This highly readable and beautifully illustrated book reveals the richness and influence of Oxford's mathematical tradition and the fascinating characters who helped to shape it. The story begins with the founding of the university of Oxford and the establishing of the medieval curriculum, in which mathematics had an important role. The Black Death, the advent of printing, the founding of the university of Cambridge, and the Newtonian revolution all had a great influence on the later development of mathematics at Oxford. So too did many well-known figures: Robert Boyle, Christopher Wren, Edmond Halley, Benjamin Jowett, Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, G. H. Hardy, to name but a few. Later chapters bring us to the twentieth century, and the book ends with some entertaining reminiscences by Sir Michael Atiyah of the thirty years he spent as an Oxford mathematician.

Recent research has revealed new information about the Welsh Tudor mathematician, Robert Recorde who invented the equals sign (=) – what inspired his work and what was its influence on the development of mathematics education in the English-speaking world. The findings of that research, presented at a commemorative conference in 2008, form the core of this publication. The book begins with an account of Recorde’s life and an overview of his work in mathematics, medicine and cosmography. Individual chapters concentrate on each of his books in turn, taken chronologically, and are supplemented by chapters that present historical perspectives of Recorde’s work and its wider European links and one that sets Recorde’s work within the general knowledge economy.