TY - GEN AU - Finch, Steven R. TI - Mathematical constants II, Vol. 169 SN - 9781108470599 U1 - 513 PY - 2019/// CY - Cambridge PB - Cambridge University Press KW - Mathematics KW - Number KW - Inequalities KW - Probability KW - Geometry KW - Topology KW - Combinatorics N1 - Includes bibliographical references and index N2 - Famous mathematical constants include the ratio of circular circumference to diameter, pi=​3.14 ..., and the natural logarithmic base, e=​2.178 ... Students and professionals usually can name at most a few others, but there are many more buried in the literature and awaiting discovery. How do such constants arise, and why are they important? Here Steven Finch provides 136 essays, each devoted to a mathematical constant or a class of constants, from the well known to the highly exotic. Topics covered include the statistics of continued fractions, chaos in nonlinear systems, prime numbers, sum-free sets, isoperimetric problems, approximation theory, self-avoiding walks and the Ising model (from statistical physics), binary and digital search trees (from theoretical computer science), the Prouhet-Thue-Morse sequence, complex analysis, geometric probability and the traveling salesman problem. This book will be helpful both to readers seeking information about a specific constant, and to readers who desire a panoramic view of all constants coming from a particular field, for example combinatorial enumeration or geometric optimization. Unsolved problems appear virtually everywhere as well. This is an outstanding scholarly attempt to bring together all significant mathematical constants in one place ER -