The Real Number System (Dover Books on Mathematics) - Softcover

Olmsted, John

Softcover

ISBN 10: 048682764X ISBN 13: 9780486827643

Publisher: Dover Publications Inc, 2018

Synopsis

Concise but thorough and systematic, this categorical discussion of the real number system presents a series of step-by-step axioms, each illustrated by examples. The highly accessible text is suitable for readers at varying levels of knowledge and experience: advanced high school students and college undergraduates as well as prospective high school and college instructors. The abundance of examples and the wealth of exercises―more than 300, all with answers provided―make this a particularly valuable book for self-study. The first two chapters examine fields and ordered fields, followed by an introduction to natural numbers and mathematical induction. Subsequent chapters explore composite and prime numbers, integers and rational numbers, congruences and finite fields, and polynomials and rational functions. Additional topics include intervals and absolute value, the axiom of completeness, roots and rational exponents, exponents and logarithms, and decimal expansions. A helpful Appendix concludes the text.

About this title

About the Author

John M. H. Olmsted was Professor of Mathematics at Southern Illinois University in Carbondale, Illinois. He also wrote books on calculus, and Dover publishes his Counterexamples in Analysis, co-written with Bernard R. Gelbaum.

Edition details

• Publisher: Dover Publications Inc
• Publication date: 2018
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 048682764X
• ISBN 13: 9780486827643
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 240