The Handy Math Answer Book

Arrow paradox, 121

Art, 373–74

Aryabhata I, 22

Asimov, Isaac, 455

Association for Symbolic

Logic, 446

Associative property, 142

Assyrians, 8, 10

Assyro-Babylonians, 8

Asteroids, 30

Astrology, 383, 387

Astrometry, 294

Astronomical units, 289–90

Astronomy

astronomical units,

289–90

astrophysics, 287

Claudius Ptolemaeus, 16

De revolutionibus orbium

coelestium, 288

distances from Earth to

other planets, 292

distances from Earth to

stars, 292, 293 (ill.)

distances from Earth to

Sun and Moon, 288

extrasolar planets,

293–94

Halley’s Comet, 289, 290

(ill.)

Hertszprung-Russell dia-

gram, 292

Hipparchus of Rhodes,

287–88

Hubble constant, 290

Kepler’s Laws of Plane-

tary Motion, 288–89

Laplace, Pierre-Simon de,

289

light years, 290

Mars Climate Orbiter, 293

size of distance object,

292–93

Sun’s light, 291

Titius-Bode Law, 291, 291

(table), 292 (ill.)

Astronomy(magazine), 451

Astrophysics, 287

Asymptotes, 219–20

Asymptotic curve, 199

Atanassoff, John Vincent,

362–63

Atomic formula, 112

Atomic mass, 284

Atomic number, 284

Augustus Caesar, 62

Autarigh, 359

Automatic Tabulating

Machine, 358–59

Average deviation, 260

AVN Model, 314

Avogadro, Lorenzo Romano

Amedeo Carlo, 285

Avogadro’s number, 285

Avoirdupois, 48

Axiomatic set theory, 122,

161

Axiomatic system. See also

Logic; Set theory

axioms, 115

conclusion, 119

corollaries, 117

deduction, 118 (ill.),

118–19

definition of, 115–16

Euclid, 116

existence theorems, 117

fallacy, 120

induction, 118–19

lemmas, 117

modus ponens, 119

paradox, 120–21

postulates, 115

proof, 117–18

theorems, 117

undefined term, 116

Axioms, 32, 115, 161

B

Babbage, George, 357

Babbage, Henry Provost,

355–56

Babylonian numbering sys-

tem, 8–9

Babylonians, 7, 9, 10, 45, 166

Bach, Johann Sebastian, 454

Balancing a checkbook,

411–12

Banville, John, 455

Bar codes, 412, 413 (ill.)

Bar graphs, 264, 265 (ill.)

Barleycorn, 43, 43 (ill.)

Barometers, 404

Barometric pressure, 307,

307 (ill.)

Barrow, Isaac, 210, 211 (ill.)

Bartering, 388

Base, 86, 87, 144, 183

Base angles, 183

Base numbers, 5, 6, 6 (table),

8

Base SI units, 51–52 (table),

51–53

Base-60 system, 6–7, 56

Baseball, 434–35, 435 (ill.)

Bases, 318

Basic calculus, 212

Basketball, 436

Bathtub, Archimedes in, 19

Bathtub curve, 344, 344 (ill.)

Batting average, 434

Bayes, Thomas, 250

Bayes’s theorem, 250–51

Beast number (666), 386

A Beautiful Mind(movie),

457

A Beautiful Mind: The Life of

Mathematical Genius and

Nobel Laureate John Nash

(Nasar), 453

Bell-shaped curve, 261–62,

262 (ill.), 401

Berner, Rotraut Susanne,

456

Bernoulli family, 28–29, 30

Berry, Clifford E., 362–63

Betting odds, 428–29

Biconditional, 109

Big Ben, 58, 58 (ill.)

Bills of Mortality, 319

Binary operations, 141

Binary operator, 109–10

Binary system, 6, 88, 88

(table), 360–61, 361 (table)

Binomial, 150

Bioinformatics, 317

Biology

bases, 318

bioinformatics, 317

computational, 316–17

definition of, 314 485

INDEX

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