Mathematical Induction: If Student k Understands It, Will Student k + 1?

Medieval Europe was a meeting place for the Christian, Jewish, and Islamic civilizations, and the fertile intellectual exchange of these cultures can be seen in the mathematical developments of the time. This book presents original Latin, Hebrew, and Arabic sources of medieval mathematics, and shows their cross-cultural influences. Most of the Hebrew and Arabic sources appear here in translation for the first time. Readers will discover key mathematical revelations, foundational texts, and sophisticated writings by Latin, Hebrew, and Arabic-speaking mathematicians, including Abner of Burgos's elegant arguments proving results on the conchoid—a curve previously unknown in medieval Europe; Levi ben Gershon's use of mathematical induction in combinatorial proofs; Al-Muʾtaman Ibn Hūd's extensive survey of mathematics, which included proofs of Heron's Theorem and Ceva's Theorem; and Muhyī al-Dīn al-Maghribī's interesting proof of Euclid's parallel postulate. The book includes a general introduction, section introductions, footnotes, and references.

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Regions-based Two-dimensional Continua: The Euclidean Case

10.1093/oso/9780198712749.003.0005 ◽

2018 ◽

Author(s):

Geoffrey Hellman ◽

Stewart Shapiro

Keyword(s):

Mathematical Induction ◽

Dimensional Case ◽

Two Dimensional ◽

Entire Space ◽

Euclidean Case ◽

Free Basis ◽

One Dimensional ◽

Archimedean Property ◽

The One

This chapter develops a Euclidean, two-dimensional, regions-based theory. As with the semi-Aristotelian account in Chapter 2, the goal here is to recover the now orthodox Dedekind–Cantor continuum on a point-free basis. The chapter derives the Archimedean property for a class of readily postulated orientations of certain special regions, what are called “generalized quadrilaterals” (intended as parallelograms), by which the entire space is covered. Then the chapter generalizes this to arbitrary orientations, and then establishes an isomorphism between the space and the usual point-based one. As in the one-dimensional case, this is done on the basis of axioms which contain no explicit “extremal clause”, and we have no axiom of induction other than ordinary numerical (mathematical) induction.

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