Between Human and Machine Feedback, Control, and Computing before Cybernetics

Today, we associate the relationship between feedback, control, and computing with Norbert Wiener's 1948 formulation of cybernetics. But the theoretical and practical foundations for cybernetics, control engineering, and digital computing were laid earlie...

 Companion encyclopedia of the history and philosophy of the mathematical sciences - Volume I

Mathematics is one of the most basic-and most ancient-types of knowledge. Yet the details of its historical development remain obscure to all but a few specialists. The two-volume Companion Encyclopedia of the History and Philosophy of the Mathematical Sc...

 Exploding Disk Cannons, Slimemobiles, and 32 Other Projects for Saturday Science

These curious and offbeat science experiments provide Saturday scientists of all ages with new ways to mess up the basement and gross out mom-all in the name of education! Accomplished physicist and science writer Neil A. Downie presents a wide variety...

 Adventures in group theory Rubik's Cube, Merlin's Machine, and Other Mathematical Toys

Group theory deals with symmetry, in the most abstract form possible. It is a core part of the undergraduate math curriculum, and forms part of the training of theoretical physicists and chemical crystallographers. Group theory has tended to be very dry-u...

 The Algebra of Probable Inference

Exract from the preface This essay had its beginning in an article of mine published in 1946 in the American Journal of Physics. The axioms of probability were formulated there and its rules were derived from them by Boolean algebra, as in the first part ...

 Pascal's arithmetical triangle

Imagine having some marbles, pebbles, or other objects that you want to lay out in a neat triangular pattern. How many do you need to end up with a complete triangle? Three will do; so will 6, 10, 15, and . . . These numbers are called triangular numbers....