Encounter With Mathematics - Tapa blanda

Geared toward students with a solid background in high school mathematics, this text offers a historical, scientific, and cultural framework for the basics of mathematics encountered at the university level. It features nine chapters that range from number theory to applications. Each chapter starts with a historical overview, presents a concise but complete account of some elementary facts, and proceeds to the subject's modern status?including, if possible, recent research. Most chapters conclude with a passage or two from historical mathematical papers.
Three more general chapters include the introductory section, which addresses models and reality, and the final chapter, which discusses the sociology, psychology, and teaching of mathematics. A chapter on seventeenth-century mathematics provides a detailed historical background to infinitesimal calculus.