Jack E. Graver – författare

The initial purposes of this 1983 text were to develop mathematical topics relevant to the study of the incidence and symmetry structures of geometrical objects and to expand the reader's geometric intuition. The two fundamental mathematical topics employed in this endeavor are graph theory and the theory of transformation groups. Part I, Incidence, starts with two sections on the basics of graph theory and continues with a variety of specific applications of graph theory. Following this, the text becomes more theoretical; here graph theory is used to study surfaces other than the plane and the sphere. Part II, Symmetry, starts with a section on rigid motions or symmetries of the plane, which is followed by another on the classification of planar patterns. Additionally, an overview of symmetry in three-dimensional space is provided, along with a reconciliation of graph theory and group theory in a study of enumeration problems in geometry.

This book presents rigidity theory in a historical context. The combinatorial aspects of rigidity are isolated and framed in terms of a special class of matroids, which are a natural generalization of the connectivity matroid of a graph. This book includes an introduction to matroid theory and an extensive study of planar rigidity. The final chapter is devoted to higher-dimensional rigidity, highlighting the main open questions. Also included is an extensive annotated bibliography with over 150 entries. This book is aimed at graduate students and researchers in graph theory and combinatorics or in fields which apply the structural aspects of these subjects in architecture and engineering. Accessible to those who have had an introduction to graph theory at the senior or graduate level, this book is suitable for a graduate course in graph theory.

This book is intended as a bridge between high school and college mathematics. The contents have been chosen to demonstrate the relationships among topics from the high school curriculum, including topics that may be part of a fourth year non-calculus mathematics course and first and second year college courses. As the title indicates, the common thread of this work is the linear function. The two parts of the book are devoted, in turn, to: the linear function of a real variable and the linear function of a 2-dimensional vector variable. A second common thread is the visualization of these functions as transformations of 1- or 2-dimensional Euclidean space. The topics, examples, and problems have all been chosen to encourage the integration of the major topics from the high school curriculum. Another feature of this book is that it includes proofs. Specifically, not the formal “two column proofs” often included in the study of geometry in high school, but the more informal, but nevertheless rigorous, step-by-step explanations of why what we believe to be true is indeed true. One of the common complaints of the colleges is that a large majority of incoming freshmen do not have algebra as a usable tool. In this book, algebra is seen to be an essential tool for the further study of mathematics. Algebraic skills are strengthened by constantly using algebra and by seeing the application of algebra in a variety of settings.