199 - Österreichische Mathematische Gesellschaft

G. Schuppener, K. Mačák: Prager Jesuiten-Mathematik von 1600 bis 1740.
Leipziger Universitätsverlag, 2002, 232 S. ISBN 3-936522-18-9 P/b 32,–.
Mit dieser Monographie geben die Autoren anhand des Prager Klementinums
einen ersten, zusammenfassenden Überblick zur jesuitischen Mathematik in den
böhmischen Ländern. Leitmotiv sind dabei die (rekonstruierten) mathematischen
Bestände der Bibliothek dieses 1556 im vormaligen Dominikanerkloster St. Clemens
eingerichteten Jesuitenkollegs und davon vor allem die (vermutlich) dort
entstandenen mathematischen Schriften (Bücher und Handschriften). Genauer
eingegangen wird auf Matthaeus Coppylius (Vorlesungen), Johannes Hancke
(vollkommene Zahlen), Ignatius Mühlwentzel (ein Lehrbuch), Caspar Knittel
(Kombinatorik), und Jakub Kresa (Trigonometrie).
P. Schmitt (Wien)
H. Tijms: Understanding Probability. Chance Rules in Everyday Life. Cambridge
University Press, 2004, X+380 S. ISBN 0-521-83329-9 H/b £ 40,–, ISBN
0-521-54036-4 P/b £ 18,99*.
The book has 14 chapters in two parts plus appendices such as recommended
readings, answers to problems, and a bibliography. The first part, titled “Probability
in Action”, contains chapters on The Law of Large Numbers and Simulations,
Probabilities in Everyday Life, Rare Events and Lotteries, Probability and Statistics
and Chance Trees and Bayes’ Rule. This part introduces the elementary ideas
and concepts of probability and gives illustrations that have the potential of being
familiar to the reader. The drunkard’s walk, the Kelly betting system, and Benford’s
law are examples of such illustrations; examples from gambling are used as
well, not with the intention to acquaint the reader with combinatorics, but again
to illustrate probability. This first part, about two thirds of the book, is readable
with little mathematical background. The second part on Essentials of Probability
includes the more technical concepts such as expected value, joint and multivariate
distributions, and generating functions. It requires a deeper understanding
of mathematics than the first part. Each chapter of the book is accompanied by
a large number of good exercises that help to develop the understanding of the
reader. As the preface states, several examples and exercises are inspired by material
from the well known Dartmouth website Chance News. Henk Tijms is not
only an outstanding scientist but also engaged in popularizing applied probability
in Dutch high schools. The book is an extremely well-done result of carefully
designing an introduction to probablity and an excellent choice if a textbook for
a first course in probability for students from a wide area of disciplines is to be
chosen.
P. Hackl (Wien)
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