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Chapman University

Mathematics, Physics, and Computer Science Faculty Articles and Research

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Full-Text Articles in Arts and Humanities

The Merchant And The Mathematician: Commerce And Accounting, Graziano Gentili, Luisa Simonutti, Daniele C. Struppa Jan 2023

The Merchant And The Mathematician: Commerce And Accounting, Graziano Gentili, Luisa Simonutti, Daniele C. Struppa

Mathematics, Physics, and Computer Science Faculty Articles and Research

In this article we describe the invention of double-entry bookkeeping (or partita doppiaas it was called in Italian), as a fertile intersection between mathematics and early commerce. We focus our attention on this seemingly simple technique that requires only minimal mathematical expertise, but whose discovery is clearly the result of a mathematical way of thinking, in order to make a conceptual point about the role of mathematics as the humus from which disciplines as different as operations research, computer science, and data science have evolved.


The Infinite Is The Chasm In Which Our Thoughts Are Lost: Reflections On Sophie Germain's Essays, Adam Glesser, Bogdan D. Suceavă, Mihaela Vajiac Jan 2020

The Infinite Is The Chasm In Which Our Thoughts Are Lost: Reflections On Sophie Germain's Essays, Adam Glesser, Bogdan D. Suceavă, Mihaela Vajiac

Mathematics, Physics, and Computer Science Faculty Articles and Research

"Sophie Germain (1776–1831) is quite well-known to the mathematical community for her contributions to number theory [17] and elasticity theory (e.g., see [2, 5]). On the other hand, there have been few attempts to understand Sophie Germain as an intellectual of her time, as an independent thinker outside of academia, and as a female mathematician in France, facing the prejudice of the time of the First Empire and of the Bourbon Restoration, while pursuing her thoughts and interests and writing on them. Sophie Germain had to face a double challenge: the mathematical difficulty of the problems she approached and the …