Dr. Keith Devlin is a mathematics professor
at Stanford University in California. He
has authored many books in the area of mathematics (and Maths relationship to
other subjects). Some of course are
related to college level mathematics, but others are what I call books on
popular mathematics, books for the general public or for the more educated
public, but not for a mathematics course.
He has been pretty successful will selling the books, so that reflects
well on how well he is able to explain mathematical concepts to the
un-initiated or mathematics enthusiast.
I discovered today that he has a series
of five videos, each about 2 hours long, discussing a brief history of
mathematics, titled “Mathematics: Making the Invisible Visible”. It is from a continuing education course that
he taught in 2012. They are available
free on Youtube, and I highly recommend then for more serious high schoolers,
college students, and adults. The
websites are provided below:
The first video talks about the
development of ancient mathematics (counting and numbers).
The second video talks about the
Fibonacci sequence and the Golden Ratio, especially about which popular beliefs
are true, and which are false.
The third talks about the development
of Algebra and how it is different from arithmetic.
The fourth talks about the development
of Calculus and how it has become so effective a tool for us to use.
The fifth video focuses on how human
beings acquired the ability to do mathematics.
A quick search of Amazon.com can show
you the books he has written. If you are
trying to prepare for Fibonacci Day next month (11/23/2014 – 1, 1, 2, 3, …) I
can recommend “The Man of Numbers” which discusses Leonardo Fibonacci the
mathematical revolution that he kicked off.
Dr. Devlin also teaches a MOOC course
for Corsera (online, non-credit, and FREE) that teaches mathematical
thinking. See www.corsera.org for details.
He authors a monthly article for the
Mathematical Association of America (MAA) called “Devlin’s Angle”. See: http://www.maa.org/community/maa-columns. And he has a website at: http://profkeithdevlin.org/.
Don't forget - check out the Youtube
videos - I think you will enjoy them.
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