Search results for ""author john davey""

Written by highly respected authors and suitable for a wide range of abilities, this practical and engaging Students’ Book offers students complete support.   

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From Newton's Law of Gravity to the Black-Scholes model used by bankers to predict the markets, equations, are everywhere -- and they are fundamental to everyday life.Seventeen Equations that Changed the World examines seventeen ground-breaking equations that have altered the course of human history. He explores how Pythagoras's Theorem led to GPS and Satnav; how logarithms are applied in architecture; why imaginary numbers were important in the development of the digital camera, and what is really going on with Schrödinger's cat. Entertaining, surprising and vastly informative, Seventeen Equations that Changed the World is a highly original exploration -- and explanation -- of life on earth.

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A new partnership of biologists and mathematicians is picking apart the hidden complexity of animals and plants to throw fresh light on the behaviour of entire organisms, how they interact and how changes in biological diversity affect the planet's ecological balance. Mathematics offers new and sometimes startling perspectives on evolution and how patterns of inheritance and population work out over time-scales ranging from millions to hundreds of years - as well as what's going on to change us right now. Ian Stewart, in characteristically clear and entertaining fashion, explores these and a whole range of pertinent issues, including how far genes control behaviour and the nature of life itself. He shows how far mathematicians and biologists are succeeding in tackling some of the most difficult scientific problems the human race has ever confronted and where their research is currently taking us.

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The war on heresy obsessed medieval Europe in the centuries after the first millennium. R. I. Moore's vivid narrative focuses on the motives and anxieties of those who declared and conducted the war: what were the beliefs and practices they saw as heretical? How might such beliefs have arisen? And why were they such a threat? In western Europe at AD 1000 heresy had barely been heard of. Yet within a few generations accusations had become commonplace and institutions were being set up to identify and suppress beliefs and practices seen as departures from true religion. Popular accounts of events, most notably of the Albigensian Crusade led by Europe against itself, have assumed the threats posed by the heretical movements were only too real. Some scholars by contrast have tried to show that reports of heresy were exaggerated or even fabricated: but if they are correct why was the war on heresy launched at all? And why was it conducted with such pitiless ferocity? To find the answers to these and other questions R. I. Moore returns to the evidence of the time. His investigation forms the basis for an account as profound as it is startlingly original.

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There are some mathematical problems whose significance goes beyond the ordinary - like Fermat's Last Theorem or Goldbach's Conjecture - they are the enigmas which define mathematics. The Great Mathematical Problems explains why these problems exist, why they matter, what drives mathematicians to incredible lengths to solve them and where they stand in the context of mathematics and science as a whole. It contains solved problems - like the Poincaré Conjecture, cracked by the eccentric genius Grigori Perelman, who refused academic honours and a million-dollar prize for his work, and ones which, like the Riemann Hypothesis, remain baffling after centuries. Stewart is the guide to this mysterious and exciting world, showing how modern mathematicians constantly rise to the challenges set by their predecessors, as the great mathematical problems of the past succumb to the new techniques and ideas of the present.

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‘One of the best plays ever written about the First World War’ GUARDIAN ‘To say that it leaves you emotionally shattered feels like an insult to those bygone souls and the horrors the faced, but quietly shattering it is, all the same’ DAILY TELEGRAPH A battalion of 1,000 young men raised in 1914 from volunteers in the Accrington area of East Lancashire go to war. They are destined to see their first real action on 1st July 1916 on the first day of the Battle of the Somme, still regarded as the greatest British military disaster with huge loss of life. Not many return to Accrington alive or intact. Whelan’s play traces these men’s history through individual stories, but his special interest lies in the lives of the women left behind, battling with their own problems, deprived of their relationships with husbands and lovers, undertaking traditionally male roles, and kept in doubt by the misinformation of wartime propaganda. Their moving stories interweave in scenes that are often comic, but which reach a devastating climax as the news of the disastrous battle finally reaches them. Commentary and notes by John Davey.

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