Deals with numbers from the point of view of computation, beginning with the earliest number concepts from ancient Mesopotamian, Chinese, and Mayan mathematicians. It describes the origin and diffusion of Arabic numerals, and it concludes with a discussion of the way that the number system is represented within computers.

Numbers, Revised Edition deals with numbers from the point of view of computation, beginning with the earliest number concepts from ancient Mesopotamian, Chinese, and Mayan mathematicians. It describes the origin and diffusion of Arabic numerals, and it concludes with a discussion of the way that the number system is represented within computers. A new section describes some of the IEEE standards for floating point arithmetic, and a more detailed discussion of the work of G del and Turing has been added to this edition. Irrational numbers and the idea of infinity are also examined in this in-depth guide.