Description
This book illustrates the application of Number Theory to practical problems in physics, digital information processing. computing, cryptography, acoustics, crystallography (quasicrystals), fractals and self-similarity. Its aim is to widen the horizon of readers with a minimum of mathematicasl training to the basic facts of number theory. The otpics treated informally, stressing intuition rather then formal proofs. The book demonstrates that there are a surprising numbe rof applications of a field which is tradiationally considered raterh abstract, and from this realization readers are led to a depp appreciation of tzhe usefulness of finite mathematics and its multi-faeted interactions with the real world. The Second Edition includes much new material on self-similarity, factals, quasicrystals, Cantor sets, Hausdorff dimensions, detemrinicstic chaos, errof-free computation, spread-spectrum communication systems, optimal ambiguity functions for radar and sonar, and Fibonacci numbers. From the reviews "A lighthearted and readable volume with a wide range of applications to which the author has been a püroductive contributor - useful mathematics given outside the formalities of theorem and proof. Philip Morrison - Scientific American NTS***
