Table of Contents
Introduction: The Pope Made Me Write This Book 1
Day 1 Arithmetic
1 Setting Up the Big Bang 15
2 Games Numbers Play 22
3 More Games 32
4 Searching for their Roots 41
5 An Irrational Universe 48
6 Journey into the Imaginary 56
Day 2 Geometry
7 The Universe Needs its Space 67
8 Settling the Complexes 81
9 Fun and Games on the Plane 91
10 Two Questions about the Plane 97
11 Space or Bust 102
12 An Alternative Geometry 107
13 Crocheting Your Universe 113
14 The Fourth and Higher Dimensions 122
Day 3 Algebra
15 Outsourcing 135
16 The Joy of X 140
17 The World of Polynomials 148
18 The Y of Things 160
19 The Algebra of Distance 167
Day 4 Patterns
20 Patterns and Perfection 179
21 Nature's Soft Spot 184
22 The Golden Ratio 192
23 Nature's Relation to Math 198
24 Math and Beauty 210
25 Fractals 216
26 The Why and How of Nature's Patterns 228
Day 5 Physics
27 A Universe Run by Laws 245
28 Time and Space 254
29 The Curvature of Spacetime 264
Day 6 Infinity
30 A Finite Univrese of Numbers 275
31 Close Encounters of the Infinite Kind 280
32 The Matching Game 285
33 Battle of the Cardinalities 295
34 A Smile of Georg's Face 300
35 The End of Mathematics 307
Day 7 Emergence
36 Setting Nature Free 317
Acknowledgments 333
Notes 337
Illustration Credits 355
Index 357