No comments about Music Theory and Mathematics: Chords, Collections, and Transformations (Eastman Studies in Music) (Eastman Studies in Music).

No comments about Convolutions in French Mathematics, 1800-1840: From the Calculus and Mechanics to Mathematical Analysis and Mathematical Physics. Vol.1: The Setting (Science Networks. Historical Studies).

1 comments about Foundations of Diatonic Theory: A Mathematically Based Approach to Music Fundamentals.

1. Part of the Mathematics Across the Curriculum series, Foundations of Diatonic Theory IS mathematically based, but only requires basic math skills. While it claims to serve as a intro or basic music theory text, the first few chapters do not introduce interval names and thus require prior knowledge. On the other hand, it introduces relatively little mathematical skills such as greatest common divisor and coprime, avoiding modulo 12.
   
   This instructional text is based on the latest papers in diatonic set theory. For people who took a music theory intro class and left with more questions than they began, this book is likely what they want. Why major and minor? Why the modes? Why the diatonic scale? Why the diatonic triads and seventh chords? The book leads readers through the discovery of properties of these collections which help explain their general, and some specific, uses and qualities.

1 comments about Narrative Threads: Accounting and Recounting in Andean Khipu (Joe R. and Teresa Lozano Long Series in Latin American and Latino Art and Culture).

1. Over the past several decades scholars have proven without a doubt that the Mayans had a written language -- and taken great strides in deciphering it. Now, what about the Incas and the other pre-Columbian civilizations of the Andes?
   
   This book consists of 15 essays by a dozen scholars about the Incan quipus (or kuipus if you prefer) -- knotted cords in complex arrangements that, everybody agrees, were used to record numbers and statistics. Did they also convey thought? Or in other words did they comprise a "written" language, albeit a very strange one in that their communications resembled a bird's nest more than a book? Were the quipus a mnemonic device only? Or could a narrative be transmitted from person to person?
   
   These scholarly essays examine different aspects of khipus including their history, construction, mathematical theories of their meanings, and factors which might lead to their decipherment. It seems doubtful that we will learn to "read" khipus unless we have the luck to find one in a context that will suggest its meaning. However, it seems also that they truly did constitute a system of communication akin to writing.
   
   I thought this book was fascinating -- although the essays are written in dry careful scholarly prose that can be forbidding. The Incas are one of the most mysterious of the non-Western civilizations and the study of the khipus is a real-life detective tale. Not the least interesting aspect of this is to realize that the Andean civilizations, isolated from the rest of the world, came up with unique -- often odd to our perception -- inventions and technology that worked for them. The khipu instead of writing is one.
   
   Smallchief

No comments about E-Roadmapping : Digital Strategizing for the New Economy.

1 comments about Pushing the Envelope: The American Aircraft Industry.

1. In looking through the discussions of rotary-wing aircraft, the author's clearly superficial understanding of the subject mitigates against taking this book seriously. This book is not authoritative and thus not usable as a reliable reference or springboard for further study.

No comments about The Calculating Passion of Ada Byron.

No comments about Genius, Creativity, and Leadership: Histriometric Inquiries.

No comments about Prime-Detecting Sieves. (LMS-33) (London Mathematical Society Monographs).

No comments about Number stories of long ago: [and] Number puzzles before the log fire, being those given in the number stories of long ago.