Advanced Mathematical Thinking has played a central role in the development of human civilization for over two millennia. Yet in all that time the serious study of the nature of advanced mathematical thinking what it is, how it functions in the minds of expert mathematicians, how it can be encouraged and improved in the developing minds of students has been limited to the reflections of a few significant individuals scattered throughout the history of mathematics. In the twentieth century the theory of mathematical education during the compulsory years of schooling to age 16 has developed its...

In Nineteen Eighty-Four George Orwell gives a description of different forms of suppression. We learn about the telescreens placed everywhere, through which it is possible for Big-Brother to watch the inhabitants of Oceania. However, it is not only important to control the activities of the inhabitants, it is important as well to control their thoughts, and the Thought Police are on guard. This is a very direct form of monitoring and control, but Orwell also outlines a more imperceptible and calculated line of thought control. In the Appendix to Nineteen Eighty-Four Orwell explains some struc...

This book is the culmination of some ten years' theoretical and empirical investigation. Throughout this period, we have come into contact with many who have stimulated our thinking, some of whom belong to the community of Mathematics Educators. Our membership of that community has challenged us to make sense of some deep issues related to mathematical learning, especially the cognitive and pedagogical faces of mathematical meaning making. Alongside this community, we are privileged to have been part of another, whose members are centrally concerned both with mathematics and educa tion. Yet...

This book represents a thoroughly comprehensive treatment of computational intelligence from an electrical power system engineer's perspective. Thorough, well-organised and up-to-date, it examines in some detail all the important aspects of this very exciting and rapidly emerging technology, including: expert systems, fuzzy logic, artificial neural networks, genetic algorithms and hybrid systems.
Written in a concise and flowing manner, by experts in the area of electrical power systems who have had many years of experience in the application of computational intelligence for solving...

In Greek geometry, there is an arithmetic of magnitudes in which, in terms of numbers, only integers are involved. This theory of measure is limited to exact measure. Operations on magnitudes cannot be actually numerically calculated, except if those magnitudes are exactly measured by a certain unit. The theory of proportions does not have access to such operations. It cannot be seen as an "arithmetic" of ratios. Even if Euclidean geometry is done in a highly theoretical context, its axioms are essentially semantic. This is contrary to Mahoney's second characteristic. This cannot be said of...

In the broad field of supramolecular chemistry, the design and hence the use of chemosensors for ion and molecule recognition have developed at an extroardinary rate. This imaginative and creative area which involves the interface of different disciplines, e.g. organic and inorganic chemistry, physical chemistry, biology, medicine, environmental science, is not only fundamental in nature. It is also clear that progress is most rewarding for several new sensor applications deriving from the specific signal delivered by the analyte-probe interaction. Indeed, if calcium sensing in real time for...

At a time when the importance of lifelong education is becoming recognised around the world, this is the first book to explore an important but hitherto neglected area: adult mathematics education. This book is about adults learning mathematics wherever and in whatever circumstances they do so. It brings together researchers in the field and aims to lay the foundations for study and further research and practice in this fast-developing area. It aims to situate research and practice in adults learning mathematics within the wider field of lifelong learning and lifelong education and to be...

To a large extent, it lies, no doubt, in what is presented in this work under the title of meta lever, a method which it is certainly interesting to develop and further refine. There exists in mathematics courses a strange prudery which forbids one to ask questions such as, Why are we doing this? -, At what is the objective aimed? -, whereas it is usually easy to reply to such questions, to keep them in mind, and to show that one can challenge these questions and modify the objectives to be more productive or more useful. If we don t do this we give a false impression of a gratuitous or...

A team of researchers centred at the University of Melbourne, each with particular areas of expertise, contributed their analyses of a shared collection of videotape, interview, and documentary data. The result is a variegated picture of science and mathematics classrooms that challenges a research tradition that converges on the truth. In this book, we surround you with different images of the classroom. It is hoped that some will address issues of interest, some will confirm beliefs you have long held, some will challenge these same beliefs, and some may surprise you.

The...

The main aim of this book is to present recent ideas in logic centered around the notion of a consequence operation. We wish to show these ideas in a factually and materially connected way, i.e., in the form of a consistent theory derived from several simple assumptions and definitions. These ideas have arisen in many research centers. The thorough study of their history can certainly be an exciting task for the historian of logic; in the book this aspect of the theory is being played down. The book belongs to abstract algebraic logic, the area of research that explores to a large extent...