Strogatz on the "Thinly Veiled Presence of Infinity"

April 8, 2010

In this week's New York Times column, Steven Strogatz delves into the great ideas of calculus with a discussion of circles, pi, and infinity.

"The key to thinking mathematically about curved shapes is to pretend they’re made up of lots of little straight pieces," Strogatz wrote. "That’s not really true, but it works … as long as you take it to the limit and imagine infinitely many pieces, each infinitesimally small.  That’s the crucial idea behind all of calculus."

Read the full column here.

Source: The New York Times (April 4, 2010).

Image Source: Wikimedia