Matrix Groups for Undergraduates


Book Description

Matrix groups touch an enormous spectrum of the mathematical arena. This textbook brings them into the undergraduate curriculum. It makes an excellent one-semester course for students familiar with linear and abstract algebra and prepares them for a graduate course on Lie groups. Matrix Groups for Undergraduates is concrete and example-driven, with geometric motivation and rigorous proofs. The story begins and ends with the rotations of a globe. In between, the author combines rigor and intuition to describe the basic objects of Lie theory: Lie algebras, matrix exponentiation, Lie brackets, maximal tori, homogeneous spaces, and roots. This second edition includes two new chapters that allow for an easier transition to the general theory of Lie groups.




Frames for Undergraduates


Book Description

"The early chapters contain the topics from linear algebra that students need to know in order to read the rest of the book. The later chapters are devoted to advanced topics, which allow students with more experience to study more intricate types of frames. Toward that end, a Student Presentation section gives detailed proofs of fairly technical results with the intention that a student could work out these proofs independently and prepare a presentation to a class or research group. The authors have also presented some stories in the Anecdotes section about how this material has motivated and influenced their students."--BOOK JACKET.




Using the Mathematics Literature


Book Description

This reference serves as a reader-friendly guide to every basic tool and skill required in the mathematical library and helps mathematicians find resources in any format in the mathematics literature. It lists a wide range of standard texts, journals, review articles, newsgroups, and Internet and database tools for every major subfield in mathematics and details methods of access to primary literature sources of new research, applications, results, and techniques. Using the Mathematics Literature is the most comprehensive and up-to-date resource on mathematics literature in both print and electronic formats, presenting time-saving strategies for retrieval of the latest information.




Elementary Geometry


Book Description

Plane geometry is developed from its basic objects and their properties and then moves to conics and basic solids, including the Platonic solids and a proof of Euler's polytope formula. Particular care is taken to explain symmetry groups, including the description of ornaments and the classification of isometries.




Numbers and Functions


Book Description

New mathematics often comes about by probing what is already known. Mathematicians will change the parameters in a familiar calculation or explore the essential ingredients of a classic proof. Almost magically, new ideas emerge from this process. This book examines elementary functions, such as those encountered in calculus courses, from this point of view of experimental mathematics. The focus is on exploring the connections between these functions and topics in number theory and combinatorics. There is also an emphasis throughout the book on how current mathematical software can be used to discover and interesting properties of these functions. The book provides a transition between elementary mathematics and more advanced topics, trying to make this transition as smooth as possible. Many topics occur in the book, but they are all part of a bigger picture of mathematics. By delving into a variety of them, the reader will develop this broad view. The large collection of problems is an essential part of the book. The problems vary from routine verifications of facts used in the text to the exploration of open questions. Book jacket.




Lectures on Quantum Mechanics for Mathematics Students


Book Description

Describes the relation between classical and quantum mechanics. This book contains a discussion of problems related to group representation theory and to scattering theory. It intends to give a mathematically oriented student the opportunity to grasp the main points of quantum theory in a mathematical framework.




All the Mathematics You Missed


Book Description




A View from the Top


Book Description

Based on a capstone course that the author taught to upper division undergraduate students with the goal to explain and visualize the connections between different areas of mathematics and the way different subject matters flow from one another, this book is suitable for those with a basic knowledge of high school mathematics.




Methods of Mathematical Physics


Book Description

This book is a reissue of classic textbook of mathematical methods.




Six Themes on Variation


Book Description

The calculus of variations is a beautiful subject with a rich history and with origins in the minimization problems of calculus. Although it is now at the core of many modern mathematical fields, it does not have a well-defined place in most undergraduate mathematics curricula. This volume should nevertheless give the undergraduate reader a sense of its great character and importance. Interesting functionals, such as area or energy, often give rise to problems whose most natural solution occurs by differentiating a one-parameter family of variations of some function. The critical points of the functional are related to the solutions of the associated Euler-Lagrange equation. These differential equations are at the heart of the calculus of variations and its applications to wave mechanics, minimal surfaces, soap bubbles, and modeling traffic flow. All are readily accessible to advanced undergraduates. This book is derived from a workshop sponsored by Rice University. It is suitable for advanced undergraduates, graduate students and research mathematicians interested in the calculus of variations and its applications to other subjects.