advances of technology in our society today, we cannot be sure that the
rote skill-sets we deem of value today will be relevant to the situations and
environments students will face in their future careers. We need to teach
our students to be reflective, to be flexible, and to have the confidence to
adapt to new contexts and new situations. I hope that this text, in some
small ways, offers a sense of the creative aspect to mathematical thinking
and does indeed gently encourage the reader to think deeply about concepts, even familiar ones.
Encyclopedia of Mathematics contains more than 800 entries arranged
in alphabetical order. The aim of the historical notes, culture-specific articles, and the biographical portraits included as entries, apart from providing historical context, is to bring a sense of the joy that mathematics has
brought people in the past. The back matter of this text contains a timeline
listing major accomplishments throughout the historical development of
mathematics, a list of current mathematics organizations of interest to students and teachers, and a bibliography.
viii Introduction