Laboratories in mathematical experimentation: a bridge to higher mathematics
The mathematics faculty of the Mount Holyoke College, who co-authored this text, rightly believe that ``the best way to learn mathematics is to do mathematics. In order to share with mathematics majors their understanding of the process of doing mathematics, they implemented a required course and wrote this text, commendable achievements to be sure. The book presents 16 ``labs that cover diverse topics from iteration and modular arithmetic to \(p\)-adic numbers and series. Each lab encourages the reader to do simple experimentation, most of the time with the required use of a computer, generalize observations, conjecture results and sometimes prove them. The approach is very informal, in fact, sometimes too informal and not sufficiently rigorous, in the reviewer's opinion. For example, the authors write (page 182): ``Informally, we say that a sequence \(a_k\) converges to a limit \(L\) if the terms of the sequence get arbitrarily close to \(L\) as \(k\) gets arbitrarily large (approaches positive infinity). The authors proceed with what they call ``a somewhat philosophical exercise, which consists of asking the reader to write what this informal definition ``means to you. A formal definition never appears in the book at all! The book is full of expressions like ``getting nearer and nearer (p. 2), or ``a `nice' function (meaning the one for which the definite integral exists, p. 157). The reviewer is in complete agreement with the authors that such courses and books are a must in mathematical education. In fact demonstrating what mathematics is and what mathematicians do has been the main aim of the reviewer's books ``How Does One Cut a Triangle? (1990), ``Geometric Etudes in Combinatorial Mathematics (1991, jointly with V. Boltyanski) and ``Mathematical Coloring Book (due in 1998). The shortage of experimentation and constructions in college and secondary texts make for a welcome appearance of this book. It is hoped, that deeper, more rigorous and exciting ``lab text will be forthcoming in the future from Mount Holyoke and Springer-Verlag.
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