MATH 3560 - History of Mathematics
MATH 3560: History of Mathematics (UNSW). Taught by Professor N. J. Wildberger, this course provides an overview of the history of mathematics, in 17 lectures; meant for a broad audience, not necessarily mathematics majors. Starting with Greek mathematics, Professor N. J. Wildberger discusses Hindu, Chinese and Arabic influences on algebra; the development of coordinate geometry, calculus and mechanics; the course of geometry from projective to non-Euclidean in the 19th century; complex numbers and algebra; differential geometry; and topology. This course roughly follows John Stillwell's book 'Mathematics and its History' (Springer, 3rd ed).
| Lecture 10 - Infinite Series |
We discuss various uses of infinite series in the 17th and 18th centuries. In particular we look at the geometric series, power series of log, the Gregory-Newton interpolation formula, Taylor's formula, the Bernoulli's, Euler's summation of the reciprocals of the squares as pi squared over 6, the harmonic series, product expansion of sinx, the zeta function and Euler's product expansion for it, the exponential function, complex values and finally the circular functions.
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