The Great Courses – Joy of Thinking: The Beauty and Power of Classical Mathematical Ideas 2019-7

The Great Courses – Joy of Thinking: The Beauty and Power of Classical Mathematical Ideas 2019-7 Downloadly IRSpace

Apr 17, 2025 - 17:40 Updated: Apr 21, 2025 - 07:25

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The Great Courses – Joy of Thinking: The Beauty and Power of Classical Mathematical Ideas 2019-7

Joy of Thinking: The Beauty and Power of Classical Mathematical Ideas, Discover mathematics as an artistic and creative realm that contains some of the greatest ideas of human history. This course explores infinity, the fourth dimension, probability, chaos, fractals, and other fantastic themes. Is it worth Bill Gates’s time to pick up a $100 bill if he sees it on the sidewalk? Amidst the frenzied screaming from the audience on television’s Let’s Make a Deal, is there sound advice to give the contestant trying to decide whether to swim. The world of mathematics contains some of the greatest ideas of humankind—ideas comparable to the works of Shakespeare, Plato, and Michelangelo. These mathematical ideas can add texture, beauty, and wonder to your life. Most importantly, you don’t have to be a mathematician to have access to this world.

The Joy of Thinking is a course about fun, aesthetics, and mystery—about great mathematical ideas that arise from puzzles, observations of everyday life, and habits of curiosity and effective thinking. It is as much about learning to think abstractly as it is about what we traditionally think of as mathematics. You explore the fourth dimension, coincidences, fractals, the allure of number, and geometry, and bring these weighty notions back down to earth to see how they apply to your own life. Rather than focusing on adding figures or creating equations (in fact, there are fewer numbers than you might expect), this course enables you to uncover and grasp insightful strategies for approaching, enjoying, and understanding the world around you.

What you’ll learn

A way to refine our worldview is to become more precise in describing what we see. Each of the classical theories of numbers, geometry, topology, fractals, and probability offer tools.
Numbers accompany us throughout our lives and play a fundamental role in the realm of mathematics. By counting and quantifying, we understand our world with more refinement.
To a mathematician, numbers have their own personalities. This lecture explores the ways they have been used and understood—and have captivated humankind—through the ages.
We see how a hidden order of numbers actually underlies much of nature’s beauty, and explore the remarkable insights available in the pattern known as Fibonacci numbers.