Number-Crunching

ow do technicians repair broken communications cables at the bottom of the ocean without actually seeing them? What´s the likelihood of plucking a needle out of a haystack the size of the Earth? And is it possible to use computers to create a universal library of everything ever written or every photo ever taken? These are just some of the intriguing questions that best-selling popular math writer Paul Nahin tackles in Number-Crunching. Through brilliant math ideas and entertaining stories, Nahin demonstrates how odd and unusual math problems can be solved by bringing together basic physics ideas and today´s powerful computers. Some of the outcomes discussed are so counterintuitive they will leave readers astonished.