Taking the reader on a wondrous journey through the invisible universe that surrounds us--a universe made visible by mathematics--Devlin shows us what keeps a jumbo jet in the air, explains how we can see and hear a football game on TV, and allows us to predict the weather, the behavior of the stock market, and the outcome of elections. Microwave ovens, telephone cables, children's toys, pacemakers, automobiles, and computers--all operate on mathematical principles. Far from a dry and esoteric subject, mathematics is a rich and living part of our culture.

A new and unique way of understanding the translation of concepts and natural language into mathematical expressions Transforming a body of text into corresponding mathematical expressions and models is traditionally viewed and taught as a mathematical problem; it is also a task that most find difficult. The Language of Mathematics: Utilizing Math in Practice reveals a new way to view this process—not as a mathematical problem, but as a translation, or language, problem. By presenting the language of mathematics explicitly and systematically, this book helps readers to learn mathematics¿and improve their ability to apply mathematics more efficiently and effectively to practical problems in their own work. Using parts of speech to identify variables and functions in a mathematical model is a new approach, as is the insight that examining aspects of grammar is highly useful when formulating a corresponding mathematical model. This book identifies the basic elements of the language of mathematics, such as values, variables, and functions, while presenting the grammatical rules for combining them into expressions and other structures. The author describes and defines different notational forms for expressions, and also identifies the relationships between parts of speech and other grammatical elements in English and components of expressions in the language of mathematics. Extensive examples are used throughout that cover a wide range of real-world problems and feature diagrams and tables to facilitate understanding. The Language of Mathematics is a thought-provoking book of interest for readers who would like to learn more about the linguistic nature and aspects of mathematical notation. The book also serves as a valuable supplement for engineers, technicians, managers, and consultants who would like to improve their ability to apply mathematics effectively, systematically, and efficiently to practical problems.

The book emerges from several contemporary concerns in mathematics, language, and mathematics education. However, the book takes a different stance with respect to language by combining discussion of linguistics and mathematics using examples from each to illustrate the other. The picture that emerges is of a subject that is much more contingent, much more relative, much more subject to human experience than is usually accepted. Another way of expressing this, is that the thesis of the book takes the idea of mathematics as a human creation, and, using the evidence from language, comes to more radical conclusions than most writers allow.

The Language of Mathematics was awarded the E.W. Beth Dissertation Prize for outstanding dissertations in the fields of logic, language, and information. It innovatively combines techniques from linguistics, philosophy of mathematics, and computation to give the first wide-ranging analysis of mathematical language. It focuses particularly on a method for determining the complete meaning of mathematical texts and on resolving technical deficiencies in all standard accounts of the foundations of mathematics. "The thesis does far more than is required for a PhD: it is more like a lifetime's work packed into three years, and is a truly exceptional achievement." Timothy Gowers

This volume examines mathematics as a product of the human mind and analyzes the language of "pure mathematics" from various advanced-level sources. Through analysis of the foundational texts of mathematics, it is demonstrated that math is a complex literary creation, containing objects, actors, actions, projection, prediction, planning, explanation, evaluation, roles, image schemas, metonymy, conceptual blending, and, of course, (natural) language. The book follows the narrative of mathematics in a typical order of presentation for a standard university-level algebra course, beginning with analysis of set theory and mappings and continuing along a path of increasing complexity. At each stage, primary concepts, axioms, definitions, and proofs will be examined in an effort to unfold the tell-tale traces of the basic human cognitive patterns of story and conceptual blending. This book will be of interest to mathematicians, teachers of mathematics, cognitive scientists, cognitive linguists, and anyone interested in the engaging question of how mathematics works and why it works so well.

By mathematics of language is meant the mathematical properties that may, under certain assumptions about modeling, be attributed to human languages and related symbolic systems, as well as the increasingly active and autonomous scholarly discipline that studies such things. More specifically, the use of techniques developed in a variety of pure and applied mathematics, including logic and the theory of computation, in the discovery and articulation of insights into the structure of language. Some of the contributions to this volume deal primarily with foundational issues, others with specific models and theoretical issues. A few are concerned with semantics, but most focus on syntax. The papers in this volume reveal applications of the several fields of the theory of computation (formal languages, automata, complexity), formal logic, topology, set theory, graph theory, and statistics. The book also shows a keen interest in developing mathematical models that are especially suited to natural languages.

This is a textbook for an undergraduate mathematics major transition course from technique-based mathematics (such as Algebra and Calculus) to proof-based mathematics. It motivates the introduction of the formal language of logic and set theory and develops the basics with examples, exercises with solutions and exercises without. It then moves to a discussion of proof structure and basic proof techniques, including proofs by induction with extensive examples. An in-depth treatment of relations, particularly equivalence and order relations completes the exposition of the basic language of mathematics. The last chapter treats infinite cardinalities. An appendix gives some complement on induction and order, and another provides full solutions of the in-text exercises. The primary audience is undergraduate mathematics major, but independent readers interested in mathematics can also use the book for self-study.

A volume in Research in Mathematics Education Series Editor Barbara J. Dougherty, Iowa State University Marketing description: Issues of language in mathematics learning and teaching are important for both practical and theoretical reasons. Addressing issues of language is crucial for improving mathematics learning and teaching for students who are bilingual, multilingual, or learning English. These issues are also relevant to theory: studies that make language visible provide a complex perspective of the role of language in reasoning and learning mathematics. What is the relevant knowledge base to consider when designing research studies that address issues of language in the learning and teaching of mathematics? What scholarly literature is relevant and can contribute to research? In order to address issues of language in mathematics education, researchers need to use theoretical perspectives that integrate current views of mathematics learning and teaching with current views on language, discourse, bilingualism, and second language acquisition. This volume contributes to the development of such integrated approaches to research on language issues in mathematics education by describing theoretical perspectives for framing the study of language issues and methodological issues to consider when designing research studies. The volume provides interdisciplinary reviews of the research literature from four very different perspectives: mathematics education (Moschkovich), Cultural-Historical-Activity Theory (Gutierrez, Sengupta-Irving, & Dieckmann), systemic functional linguistics (Schleppegrell), and assessment (Solano-Flores). This volume offers graduate students and researchers new to the study of language in mathematics education an introduction to resources for conceptualizing, framing, and designing research studies. For those already involved in examining language issues, the volume provides useful and critical reviews of the literature as well as recommendations for moving forward in designing research. Lastly, the volume provides a basis for dialogue across multiple research communities engaged in collaborative work to address these pressing issues.

Covers all areas, including operations on languages, context-sensitive languages, automata, decidability, syntax analysis, derivation languages, and more. Numerous worked examples, problem exercises, and elegant mathematical proofs. 1983 edition.