linear combination

Atoms in Mathematics and Science, Part 3: Power Series

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We’ve been talking about reductionism in the past couple of posts, and we’ll continue the story by discussing power series in this post. The idea behind reductionism in mathematics is to identify some elementary “objects” and to express a complicated “thing” in terms of the elementary things. The intention is either to make it easier … Read more

Atoms in Mathematics and Science; The Concept of a Basis

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One of the most important tools that mathematicians and scientists use to cope with the daunting complexity of the world goes by the name of reductionism. That is, one first identifies the key parts of a complex system, then one strives to understand the parts, and finally one strives to understand how the parts fit … Read more