Available:*
Library | Item Barcode | Call Number | Material Type | Item Category 1 | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Searching... | 30000004803502 | QA403.3 H83 1998 | Open Access Book | Book | Searching... |
Searching... | 30000004803460 | QA403.3 H83 1998 | Open Access Book | Book | Searching... |
On Order
Summary
Summary
This best-selling book introduces a broad audience including scientists and engineers working in a variety of fields as well as mathematicians from other subspecialties to one of the most active new areas of applied mathematics and the story of its discovery and development. Organized in "hypertext fashion," the book tells a story of scientific discovery with separate brief entries for technical terms and explicit appendices in a section called "Beyond Plain English."
Reviews 1
Choice Review
In her new edition (1st ed., CH, Dec'96), Hubbard offers a "multi-scale" exploration of wavelets. She sets as her goal "to make [this material] simultaneously surprising and believable," and on the whole, she succeeds. By dividing the text into two parts, the first, a general-audience discussion, and the second, a more exact presentation including formulas, she manages to introduce wavelets to almost any reader wanting to learn some basics. In each part, she writes on several levels. The first contains a historical development, starting from the discovery of Fourier series early in the 19th century and a discussion of the applications of wavelets in various disciplines, all of which can be understood by readers with no particular mathematical background. But, in addition, this part contains numerous asides (labeled "Beyond Plain English") that connect with the more technical material in the second portion. This more technical part (also titled "Beyond Plain English") begins with the most basic definitions, while still introducing the reader to more advanced topics such as Gibbs phenomena, distributions, and function spaces. The writer, not herself a mathematician, based her work on interviews with leading figures in wavelet research. New to this edition are sections that elaborate on several technical points, e.g., the lifting scheme of Sweldens and some discussion of "brushlets." All levels. J. D. Fehribach; Worcester Polytechnic Institute
