Hidden lemmas in the early history of infinite series

Euler, Fourier, Poisson and Cauchy appear to have used, in a more or less implicit form, some facts on infinitely small quantities. Attempting to state and prove several lemmata, I shall discuss their relationships to interchanges of limits in series and integrals. Early methods of summation for divergent series and integrals, including a conjecture of Poisson, are discussed.Dedicated to Professor Otto Haupt with best wishes on his 100th birthday.     

Laminations,or how to build a quantum-logic-valued model of set theory

An explicit construction of the colimit of a filtered diagram in the category of topoi and logical morphisms is given and then used to construct a family of topoi with a fixed Boolean algebra of truth values but with varying amounts of cocompleteness. This same construction, when applied to the diagram of complete Boolean algebras in a quantum logic Q gives a partial topos, a noncategory which is a close to being a model of set theory with algebra of truth values Q as a noncategory can be.     

The early history of convergence acceleration methods

The history of convergence acceleration methods in the 17th century is surveyed. Acceleration methods are classified into three categories.     

Laplaza sets, or how to select coherence diagrams for pseudo algebras

We define a general concept of pseudo algebras over theories and 2-theories. A more restrictive such a notion was introduced in [Po Hu, Igor Kriz, Conformal field theory and elliptic cohomology, Adv. Math. 189 (2) (2004) 325-412, http://www.math.lsa.umich.edu/~ikriz/], but as noticed by M. Gould, did not capture the desired examples. The approach taken in this paper corrects the mistake by introducing a more general concept, allowing more flexibility in selecting coherence diagrams for pseudo algebras.     

The multi-league sports scheduling problem,or how to schedule thousands of matches

We consider the simultaneous scheduling of multiple sport leagues, with interdependencies arising from teams in different leagues belonging to the same club. Teams from the same club share the same venue with limited capacity. We minimize the total capacity violation in polynomial time when each league has the same, even number of teams. We introduce two generalizations: one where teams from a club have to play according to the same pattern, and one where club capacities differ throughout the season.     

A numerically stable, structure preserving method for computing the eigenvalues of real Hamiltonian or symplectic pencils

A new method is presented for the numerical computation of the generalized eigenvalues of real Hamiltonian or symplectic pencils and matrices. The method is numerically backward stable and preserves the structure (i.e., Hamiltonian or symplectic). In the case of a Hamiltonian matrix the method is closely related to the square reduced method of Van Loan, but in contrast to that method which may suffer from a loss of accuracy of order , where is the machine precision, the new method computes the eigenvalues to full possible accuracy. Received April 8, 1996 / Revised version received December 20, 1996     

Glen van Brummelen,The mathematics of the heavens and the earth: the early history of trigonometry

In this article, I try to show how the operation of compounding of ratios as performed with the method of Proposition VIII.4 of Euclid's Elements, has possibly taken shape from experiments on the monochord. This fact, together with the systematic and exclusive use of Proposition VIII.4 in the harmonic field, strengthens the thesis concerning the connection between harmonic theory and Book VIII. A misinterpretation by Zarlino, the most important music theorist of the Renaissance, will help us explain how the musical model may have been partially responsible for the disconnection between compounding and multiplication present in the Elements in spite of the link established by Proposition VIII.5.     

E.W. Chittenden and the early history of general topology

E.W. Chittenden's work and its influence on the early history of general topology are examined. Particular attention is given to his work in metrization theory and its role in the background of the Aleksandrov-Uryson Metrization Theorem. A recounting of Professor Chittenden's career, a list of his students and his publications and a chronology in the early history of General Topology are also included.     

On the expected surface area of the Wiener sausage

For parallel neighborhoods of the paths of the d ‐dimensional Brownian motion, so‐called Wiener sausages, formulae for the expected surface area are given for any dimension d ≥ 2. It is shown by means of geometric arguments that the expected surface area is equal to the first derivative of the mean volume of the Wiener sausage with respect to its radius (© 2009 WILEY‐VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)     

Laws of the iterated logarithm for high-dimensional wiener sausage

Let {β(s), s ≥ 0} be the standard Brownian motion in ℝ ^d with d ≥ 4 and let |W _r (t)| be the volume of the Wiener sausage associated with {β(s), s ≥ 0} observed until time t. From the central limit theorem of Wiener sausage, we know that when d ≥ 4 the limit distribution is normal. In this paper, we study the laws of the iterated logarithm for | W_r (t) | - \mathbbE| W_r (t) |\left| {W_r (t)} \right| - \mathbb{E}\left| {W_r (t)} \right| in this case.     

The antecedents of old Babylonian place notation and the early history of Babylonian mathematics

This article is devoted to the elucidation of a little known phenomenon which profoundly affected the development of ancient mathematics, in spite of the fact that we are now unable to document those effects in detail. I try to show that Babylonian place notation, far from being a creation of the Old Babylonian period (ca. 2000-1600 BC), actually has roots deep in the third millenium and was, in fact, invented before the end of the Third Dynasty of Ur (ca. 2112-2004 BC). In the latter part of the paper, I try to demonstrate that, contrary to prevailing opinion, the origins of Babylonian mathematics can now be traced back to the middle of the third millennium BC. In doing so, I wish to call to the attention of historians of mathematics the importance of the Sumero-Akkadian background to Babylonian mathematics and to underscore the importance for historical research of the basic principle that nature and her children make no leaps.     

Asymptotics of the generating function for the volume of the Wiener sausage

Summary We consider the generating function of the voltime of the Wiener sausageC (t), which is the -neighbourhood of the Wiener path in the time interval [0,t]. For <0, the limiting behavior fort, up to logarithmic equivalence, had been determined in a celebrated work of Donsker and Varadhan. For >0 it had been investigated by van den Berg and Tóth, but in contrast to the case <0, there is no simple expression for the exponential rate known. We determine the asymptotic behaviour of this rate for small and large .