Friday, November 11, 2022

Fantastic Numbers and Where to Find Them: A Cosmic Quest from Zero to Infinity

The key phrase in the title is "Where to Find Them". This is not just a theoretical math book, but a book of math with a focus of real application. We can find minutely small numbers as we drill down to the smallest building blocks that make up matter. We can also go to huge numbers as we add all those up or start exploring the immense reaches of the universe and different parallel ones. (The "multiverse of madness" comes to mind.) There are also very large numbers like googol, googol-plex and Graham's number. (I still have trouble getting my mind wrapped around Knuth's multiple-uparrow notation. It is just "really big") There is ample discussion of the scientists that came to important conclusions. (It seems almost fitting that some would go mad contemplating infinity.) Sometimes it is the "untrained" mathematicians that have come up with great insights.  

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