History of Mathematics : A Supplement

General textbooks, attempting to cover three thousand or so years of mathematical history, must necessarily oversimplify almost everything, which can scarcely promote a critical approach to the subject. History of Mathematics offers deeper coverage of key select topics, providing students with material that could encourage more critical thinking. It also includes proofs of important results typically neglected in the modern history of mathematics curriculum.

Coverage includes:

• A new approach to the historical development of the natural numbers, which was only settled in the 19th century
• Construction problems of antiquity, with a proof that the angle cannot be trisected nor the cube duplicated by ruler and compass alone
• A modern recounting of a Chinese word problem from the 13th century, illustrating the need for consulting multiple sources

Lighter material, including historically interesting (and hard to find) poems and humorous song lyrics with mathematical themes.