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History of Maths for Beginners
In the comments on my recent post on books on the history of maths Fernando Q. Gouvêa jumped in to draw attention to the book Math Through the Ages: A Gentle History for Teachers and Othe…
The book that I acquired is the paperback Dover reprint from 2019 of the second edition from Oxton House Publishers, Farmington, Maine, it has a recommended price in the USA of $18, which is certainly affordable for its intended audience, school, college and university students. It sketches the development of mathematics in Mesopotamia, Egypt, China, Ancient Greece, India, and the Islamic Empires, before leaping to Europe in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries and from there is fairly large steps down to the present day. 16 Shapes by the Numbers: Coordinate Geometry Another good synopsis covering both Fermat and Descartes and includes the important fact that the Cartesian system was actually popularised by the expanded Latin edition of La Géométrie put together by Frans van Schooten jr.
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