50 Mathematical Ideas You Really Need to Know (50 Ideas)

Beginning with zero itself and concluding with the last great unsolved problem, this book introduces the origins of mathematics from Egyptian fractions to Roman numerals; explains the near mystical significance of pi and primes, Fibonacci numbers and the golden ratio; tells you the things they didn’t at school – what calculus, statistics and algebra can actually do, and the very real uses of imaginary numbers; illuminates the big ideas of relativity, chaos theory, fractals, genetics and hyperspace; reveals the unspoken reasoning behind Sudoku and code cracking, lotteries and gambling, money management and compound interest; and explores the latest mind shattering developments, including the solving of Fermat’s last theorem and the million dollar question of the Riemann hypothesis.