The pioneering work of French mathematician Pierre de Fermat has attracted the attention of mathematicians for over 350 years. This book was written in honor of the 400th anniversary of his birth, providing readers with an overview of the many properties of Fermat numbers and demonstrating their applications in areas such as number theory, probability theory, geometry, and signal processing. This book introduces a general mathematical audience to basic mathematical ideas and algebraic methods connected with the Fermat numbers.

Mathematical modeling plays an essential role in science and engineering. Costly and time consuming experiments (if they can be done at all) are replaced by computational analysis. In industry, commercial codes are widely used. They are flexible and can be adjusted for solving specific problems of interest. Solving large problems with tens or hundreds of thousands unknowns becomes routine. The aim of analysis is to predict the behavior of the engineering and physical reality usually within the constraints of cost and time. Today, human cost and time are more important than computer cost. This...

"Based on the proceedings of the first conference on superconvergence held recently at the University of Jyvaskyla, Finland. Presents reviewed papers focusing on superconvergence phenomena in the finite element method. Surveys for the first time all known superconvergence techniques, including their proofs."

These proceedings originated from a conference commemorating the 50th anniversary of the publication of Richard Courant's seminal paper, Variational Methods for Problems of Equilibrium and Vibration. These papers address fundamental questions in numerical analysis and the special problems that occur in applying the finite element method to various fields of science and engineering.