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The Penguin Dictionary of Curious and Interesting Numbers

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An informative compendium of numbers

This is a great "dip into" book. It starts of with -1 and i. and then zero, and then onto Euler's constant, the Divine Proportion, pi, right up to 109,418,989,131,512,359,209 (which is the largest n digit number that is also an nth power) and beyond. An Amicable number? Paganini (yes him with the violin) as a sixteen year old schoolboy he discovered a pair of them which had been missed by Descartes, Fermat and Euler! Sociable numbers? Lucky Numbers and the sieve of Eratosthenes? This is not just a list of numbers, but is brought to life by a wealth of historical and mathematical information (and good writing). It has a list of mathematicians, a decent glossary, and a good index, and some of the more important numbers have several pages of notes. Although I recommend it as a "dip into" book, it's glossary and index make it a fairly decent short reference book too.

Additional Info

  • Year Published: 1986
  • ISBN: 0-14-008029-5
  • Author: David Wells
  • Publisher: Penguin Books
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