Table of Contents and Sample Pages

Below is the table of contents for Math through the Ages. Click on the links to see the sample pages.
The full preface and selected other pages are viewable.

• Preface
• History in the Mathematics Classroom
• The History of Mathematics in a Large Nutshell

• Beginnings
• Greek Mathematics
• Meanwhile, in India
• Arabic Mathematics
• Medieval Europe
• The 15th and 16th Centuries
• Algebra Comes of Age
• Calculus and Applied Mathematics
• Rigor and Professionalism
• Abstraction, Computers, and New Applications
• Mathematics Today

• Sketches

1. Keeping Count: Writing Whole Numbers
2. Reading and Writing Arithmetic: Where the Symbols Came From
3. Nothing Becomes a Number: The Story of Zero
4. Broken Numbers: Writing Fractions
5. Something Less Than Nothing?: Negative Numbers
6. By Tens and Tenths: Metric Measurement
7. Measuring the Circle: The Story of p
8. The Cossic Art: Writing Algebra with Symbols
9. Linear Thinking: Solving First Degree Equations
10. A Square and Things: Quadratic Equations
11. Intrigue in Renaissance Italy: Solving Cubic Equations
12. A Cheerful Fact: The Pythagorean Theorem
13. A Marvelous Proof: Fermat's Last Theorem
14. On Beauty Bare: Euclid's Plane Geometry
15. In Perfect Shape: The Platonic Solids
16. Shapes by the Numbers: Coordinate Geometry
17. Impossible, Imaginary, Useful: Complex Numbers
18. Half Is Better: Sine and Cosine
19. Strange New Worlds: The Non-Euclidean Geometries
20. In the Eye of the Beholder: Projective Geometry
21. What's in a Game?: The Start of Probability Theory
22. Making Sense of Data: Statistics Becomes a Science
23. Machines that Think?: Electronic Computers
24. The Arithmetic of Reasoning: Logic and Boolean Algebra
25. Beyond Counting: Infinity and the Theory of Sets

• What to Read Next

• The Reference Shelf
• Fifteen Historical Books You Ought to Read
• Internet and Other Media

• Bibliography

• Index