The Prime Number Conspiracy

Author: Thomas Lin
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262536358
Category : Mathematics
Languages : en
Pages : 331

Book Description
The Pulitzer Prize–winning magazine’s stories of mathematical explorations show that inspiration strikes haphazardly, revealing surprising solutions and exciting discoveries—with a foreword by James Gleick These stories from Quanta Magazine map the routes of mathematical exploration, showing readers how cutting-edge research is done, while illuminating the productive tension between conjecture and proof, theory and intuition. The stories show that, as James Gleick puts it in the foreword, “inspiration strikes willy-nilly.” One researcher thinks of quantum chaotic systems at a bus stop; another suddenly realizes a path to proving a theorem of number theory while in a friend's backyard; a statistician has a “bathroom sink epiphany” and discovers the key to solving the Gaussian correlation inequality. Readers of The Prime Number Conspiracy, says Quanta editor-in-chief Thomas Lin, are headed on “breathtaking intellectual journeys to the bleeding edge of discovery strapped to the narrative rocket of humanity's never-ending pursuit of knowledge.” Winner of the 2022 Pulitzer Prize for Explanatory Reporting, Quanta is the only popular publication that offers in-depth coverage of the latest breakthroughs in understanding our mathematical universe. It communicates mathematics by taking it seriously, wrestling with difficult concepts and clearly explaining them in a way that speaks to our innate curiosity about our world and ourselves. Readers of this volume will learn that prime numbers have decided preferences about the final digits of the primes that immediately follow them (the “conspiracy” of the title); consider whether math is the universal language of nature (allowing for “a unified theory of randomness”); discover surprising solutions (including a pentagon tiling proof that solves a century-old math problem); ponder the limits of computation; measure infinity; and explore the eternal question “Is mathematics good for you?” Contributors Ariel Bleicher, Robbert Dijkgraaf, Kevin Hartnett, Erica Klarreich, Thomas Lin, John Pavlus, Siobhan Roberts, Natalie Wolchover Copublished with Quanta Magazine

Conspiracy Theory in America

Author: Lance deHaven-Smith
Publisher: University of Texas Press
ISBN: 0292743793
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 273

Book Description
Asserts that the Founders' hard-nosed realism about the likelihood of elite political misconduct—articulated in the Declaration of Independence—has been replaced by today's blanket condemnation of conspiracy beliefs as ludicrous by definition.

Conspiracy of One

Author: Jim Moore
Publisher: Summit Publishing Group
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 266

Book Description
A chronicle of one man's investigation into the assassination of President Kennedy and his conclusion.

Real Enemies

Author: Kathryn S. Olmsted
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 019972024X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 335

Book Description
Many Americans believe that their own government is guilty of shocking crimes. Government agents shot the president. They faked the moon landing. They stood by and allowed the murders of 2,400 servicemen in Hawaii. Although paranoia has been a feature of the American scene since the birth of the Republic, in Real Enemies Kathryn Olmsted shows that it was only in the twentieth century that strange and unlikely conspiracy theories became central to American politics. In particular, she posits World War I as a critical turning point and shows that as the federal bureaucracy expanded, Americans grew more fearful of the government itself--the military, the intelligence community, and even the President. Analyzing the wide-spread suspicions surrounding such events as Pearl Harbor, the JFK assassination, Watergate, and 9/11, Olmsted sheds light on why so many Americans believe that their government conspires against them, why more people believe these theories over time, and how real conspiracies--such as the infamous Northwoods plan--have fueled our paranoia about the governments we ourselves elect.

Closing the Gap

Author: Vicky Neale
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0191092436
Category : Mathematics
Languages : en
Pages : 171

Book Description
In 2013, a little known mathematician in his late 50s stunned the mathematical community with a breakthrough on an age-old problem about prime numbers. Since then, there has been further dramatic progress on the problem, thanks to the efforts of a large-scale online collaborative effort of a type that would have been unthinkable in mathematics a couple of decades ago, and the insight and creativity of a young mathematician at the start of his career. Prime numbers have intrigued, inspired and infuriated mathematicians for millennia. Every school student studies prime numbers and can appreciate their beauty, and yet mathematicians' difficulty with answering some seemingly simple questions about them reveals the depth and subtlety of prime numbers. Vicky Neale charts the recent progress towards proving the famous Twin Primes Conjecture, and the very different ways in which the breakthroughs have been made: a solo mathematician working in isolation and obscurity, and a large collaboration that is more public than any previous collaborative effort in mathematics and that reveals much about how mathematicians go about their work. Interleaved with this story are highlights from a significantly older tale, going back two thousand years and more, of mathematicians' efforts to comprehend the beauty and unlock the mysteries of the prime numbers.

Foolproof, and Other Mathematical Meditations

Author: Brian Hayes
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 026203686X
Category : Mathematics
Languages : en
Pages : 245

Book Description
A non-mathematician explores mathematical terrain, reporting accessibly and engagingly on topics from Sudoku to probability. Brian Hayes wants to convince us that mathematics is too important and too much fun to be left to the mathematicians. Foolproof, and Other Mathematical Meditations is his entertaining and accessible exploration of mathematical terrain both far-flung and nearby, bringing readers tidings of mathematical topics from Markov chains to Sudoku. Hayes, a non-mathematician, argues that mathematics is not only an essential tool for understanding the world but also a world unto itself, filled with objects and patterns that transcend earthly reality. In a series of essays, Hayes sets off to explore this exotic terrain, and takes the reader with him. Math has a bad reputation: dull, difficult, detached from daily life. As a talking Barbie doll opined, “Math class is tough.” But Hayes makes math seem fun. Whether he's tracing the genealogy of a well-worn anecdote about a famous mathematical prodigy, or speculating about what would happen to a lost ball in the nth dimension, or explaining that there are such things as quasirandom numbers, Hayes wants readers to share his enthusiasm. That's why he imagines a cinematic treatment of the discovery of the Riemann zeta function (“The year: 1972. The scene: Afternoon tea in Fuld Hall at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey”), explains that there is math in Sudoku after all, and describes better-than-average averages. Even when some of these essays involve a hike up the learning curve, the view from the top is worth it.

The Implosion Conspiracy

Author: Louis Nizer
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : True Crime
Languages : en
Pages : 528

Book Description
The espionage trial of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg with its multiple twist and turns. This is been called the greatest spy story of the 20th century.

Secrets, Plots & Hidden Agendas

Author: Paul T. Coughlin
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780830816248
Category : Conspiracies
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Book Description
Paul Coughlin summarizes the main ideas conspiracy theorists have about a one-world government, the role of the media, endtimes teaching and the Jewish community, offering clear, objective data about secret plots.

Call It Conspiracy

Author: Larry Abraham
Publisher: Dauphin Publications
ISBN: 9781939438447
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 352

Book Description
The story you are about to read is true. The names have not been changed to protect the guilty. This book may have the effect of changing your life. After reading this book, you will never look at national and world events in the same way again. Call It Conspiracy will be a very controversial book. At first it will receive little publicity and those whose plans are exposed in it will try to kill it by the silent treatment. For reasons that become obvious as you read this book, it will not be reviewed in all the "proper" places or be available on your local bookstand. However, there is nothing these people can do to stop a grassroots book distributing system. Eventually it will be necessary for the people and organizations named in this book to try to blunt its effect by attacking it or the author. They have a tremendous vested interest in keeping you from discovering what they are doing. And they have the big guns of the mass media at their disposal to fire the barrages at Call It Conspiracy. By sheer volume, the "experts" will try to ridicule you out of investigating for yourself as to whether or not the information in this book is true. They will ignore the fact that the author admits that some of his ideas are about to conjecture because the people who know the truth are not about to confess. They will find a typographical error or argue some point that is open to debate. If necessary, they will lie in order to protect themselves by smearing this book. Psychologically many people would prefer to believe those who pooh-pooh the information herein because we all like to ignore bad news. We do so at our own peril! In this edition, Larry Abraham has at last revised, None Dare Call It Conspiracy, and brought it up to date. The events of the last fifteen years have served Larry's thesis quite well. As far as Larry is concerned, the history of 1970-85 has been a kind of giant grab-bag of goodies that reinforce his original thesis. The arguments for the existence of a conspiracy are stronger today than they have ever been, especially when we lay them alongside of what was said and written before. Therefore, chapters one through seven are going to remain the same as in the original book, None Dare Call It Conspiracy. The bracketed updates are new, and so are chapters eight through thirteen, plus the various appendices.

Prime Numbers

Author: David Wells
Publisher: Wiley
ISBN: 0471718920
Category : Mathematics
Languages : en
Pages : 288

Book Description
A fascinating journey into the mind-bending world of prime numbers Cicadas of the genus Magicicada appear once every 7, 13, or 17 years. Is it just a coincidence that these are all prime numbers? How do twin primes differ from cousin primes, and what on earth (or in the mind of a mathematician) could be sexy about prime numbers? What did Albert Wilansky find so fascinating about his brother-in-law's phone number? Mathematicians have been asking questions about prime numbers for more than twenty-five centuries, and every answer seems to generate a new rash of questions. In Prime Numbers: The Most Mysterious Figures in Math, you'll meet the world's most gifted mathematicians, from Pythagoras and Euclid to Fermat, Gauss, and Erd?o?s, and you'll discover a host of unique insights and inventive conjectures that have both enlarged our understanding and deepened the mystique of prime numbers. This comprehensive, A-to-Z guide covers everything you ever wanted to know--and much more that you never suspected--about prime numbers, including: * The unproven Riemann hypothesis and the power of the zeta function * The "Primes is in P" algorithm * The sieve of Eratosthenes of Cyrene * Fermat and Fibonacci numbers * The Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search * And much, much more