The Nine Chapters on the Mathematical Art has been the most important mathematical source in China for the past 2000 years, comparable in significance to Euclid's Elements in the West. The Nine Chapters quickly acquired a distinguished reputation, and was the standard mathematics textbook in China and the surrounding regions until Western science was introduced in about 1600. This volume contains the first complete English translation of the Nine Chapters, together with the illuminating commentary of Liu Hui written in the 3rd century AD and other early century commentaries and further insights provided by the translators. The Nine Chapters contains 246 problems and their solutions, which fall into nine categories that are firmly based on practical needs. There are methods for solving problems in areas such as land measurement, construction, agriculture, commerce, and taxation, while the Chinese commentators provide the algorithms needed to solve the problems, and explanations of how the algorithms work. The translators' commentary provides clear and accessible background material for the Western reader, explanations of technicalities, and notes on the treatment of similar or identical mathematical problems in other countries. This first, full-English translation gives us an idea of the distinctive style and important contributions that have been made by traditional Chinese mathematics.

This book is made up of two parts, the first devoted to general, historical and cultural background, and the second to the development of each subdiscipline that together comprise Chinese mathematics. The book is uniquely accessible, both as a topical reference work, and also as an overview that can be read and reread at many levels of sophistication by both sinologists and mathematicians alike.

After two volumes mainly introductory, Dr Needham now embarks upon his systematic study of the development of the natural sciences in China. The Sciences of the Earth follow: geography and cartography, geology, seismology and mineralogy. Dr Needham distinguishes parallel traditions of scientific cartography and religious cosmography in East and West, discussing orbocentric wheel-maps, the origins of the rectangular grid system, sailing charts and relief maps, Chinese survey methods, and the impact of Renaissance cartography on the East. Finally-and here Dr Needham's work has no Western predecessors-there are full accounts of the Chinese contribution to geology and mineralogy.

A monumental accomplishment in the history of non-Western mathematics, The Chinese Roots of Linear Algebra explains the fundamentally visual way Chinese mathematicians understood and solved mathematical problems. It argues convincingly that what the West "discovered" in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries had already been known to the Chinese for 1,000 years. Accomplished historian and Chinese-language scholar Roger Hart examines Nine Chapters of Mathematical Arts—the classic ancient Chinese mathematics text—and the arcane art of fangcheng, one of the most significant branches of mathematics in Imperial China. Practiced between the first and seventeenth centuries by anonymous and most likely illiterate adepts, fangcheng involves manipulating counting rods on a counting board. It is essentially equivalent to the solution of systems of N equations in N unknowns in modern algebra, and its practice, Hart reveals, was visual and algorithmic. Fangcheng practitioners viewed problems in two dimensions as an array of numbers across counting boards. By "cross multiplying" these, they derived solutions of systems of linear equations that are not found in ancient Greek or early European mathematics. Doing so within a column equates to Gaussian elimination, while the same operation among individual entries produces determinantal-style solutions. Mathematicians and historians of mathematics and science will find in The Chinese Roots of Linear Algebra new ways to conceptualize the intellectual development of linear algebra.

This lighthearted work uses a variety of practical applications and puzzles to take a look at today's mathematical trends. In nine chapters, Professor Pedoe covers mathematical games, chance and choice, automatic thinking, and more.

From the editors of the popular Making Mathematics with Needlework, this book presents projects that highlight the relationship between types of needlework and mathematics. Chapters start with accessible overviews presenting the interplay between mathematical concepts and craft expressions. Following sections explain the mathematics in more detail, and provide suggestions for classroom activities. Each chapter ends with specific crafting instructions. Types of needlework included are knitting, crochet, needlepoint, cross-stitch, quilting, temari balls, beading, tatting, and string art. Instructions are written as ordinary patterns, so the formatting and language will be familiar to crafters.