Zigzags with Bürgi, Bernoulli, Euler and the Seidel-Entringer-Arnol'd triangle
The first word of the title, i.e., ``zigzag, in a way, plays the role of a lantern whose light illuminates the path among numbers, algebraic structures, figures and graphs which are the very flesh of this work. This article sometimes recalls the fairy tales of childhood, for at each page a mathematical diamond or at least a fragment of a pearl shines and the reader, astonished as a traveler in an ``undiscovered country, falls into a kind of meditation. I shall just indicate the main steps of such voyage: (1) Jost Bürgi's \textit{Artificium} of 1586 (2) Johann Bernoulli's successive involutes (3) Euler numbers and D. André's alternating permutations (4) The Seidel-Entringer-Arnol'd-triangle (5) Richard Guy's ``boustrophedon transform. These mathematicians are the stars of a constellation discovered by the authors in the sky of mathematics. After the reading I play the game and I try to push it forth. Hence hereafter I am going to propose a challenge of a kind. For a long time it has been known that the Swiss mathematician Jost Bürgi (1552--1632) found a new method for calculating sines, but he never published his procedure. Historians of science have given up. However, in 2013, Menso Folkerts discovered, in the University Library of Wroclaw (Poland), an autograph in which Bürgi himself explains his algorithm. In modern parlance he describes a linear map between a sequence of non-negative real numbers and a new sequence, represented by a square matrix [\textit{M. Folkerts} et al., Hist. Math. 43, No. 2, 133--147 (2016; Zbl 1343.01011)]. At first sight I realized that the inverse of this matrix is nothing but the so-called Cartan matrix corresponding to the symplectic Lie group of order equal or greater than 3 [\textit{J. E. Humphreys}, Introduction to Lie algebras and representation theory. New York etc.: Springer (1972; Zbl 0254.17004), p. 42--72]. Obviously, Bürgi had no insight into Lie theory and this matrix appears in different contexts in mathematics which are somewhat related. Just a coincidence? Anyway it might be interesting to discover a relationship, if any.
- How Bürgi computed the sines of all integer angles simultaneously in 1586
- Jost Bürgi's methods of calculating sines, and possible transmission from India
- Jost Bürgi's method for calculating sines
- scientific article; zbMATH DE number 1304019
- Sine tables rediscovered -- Bürgi's ``artistic path decoded
- A new operation on sequences: The boustrophedon transform
- A Problem
- Bernoulli-Euler updown numbers associated with function singularities, their combinatorics and arithmetics
- How Bürgi computed the sines of all integer angles simultaneously in 1586
- scientific article; zbMATH DE number 3233639 (Why is no real title available?)
- Johann Bernoulli and the cycloid: a theorem for posterity
- Johann Bernoullis Kreisrektifikation durch Evolventenbildung
- Jost Bürgi's \textit{artificium} of 1586 in modern view, an ingenious algorithm for calculating tables of the sine function
- Jost Bürgi's method for calculating sines
- Solving Ordinary Differential Equations I
- The calculus of snakes and the combinatorics of Bernoulli, Euler and Springer numbers of Coxeter groups
This page was built for publication: Zigzags with Bürgi, Bernoulli, Euler and the Seidel-Entringer-Arnol'd triangle
Report a bug (only for logged in users!)Click here to report a bug for this page (MaRDI item Q2295604)
