Mathematical Stories II - Recursion, Divisibility and Proofs

Using field-tested, carefully crafted units of study, the authors in this essential teach fundamental mathematical techniques that are relevant well beyond the elementary school years. In this Volume II, the Gaussian summation formula and a recursion formula are derived and applied. Tasks on divisibility, prime factors and divisors follow. For calculating with remainders, the modulo calculation is introduced and applied. Students learn to perform proofs in a variety of contexts. As in Volume I, "Graphs, Games, and Proofs," the tasks encourage mathematical thinking skills, imagination, and creativity. The detailed sample solutions are designed for non-mathematicians. This book is a translation of the original German 1st edition Mathematische Geschichten II Rekursion, Teilbarkeit und Beweise by Susanne Schindler-Tschirner and Werner Schindler, published by Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden GmbH, part of Springer Nature in 2019. The translation was done with the help of artificial intelligence (machine translation by the service DeepL.com). A subsequent human revision was done primarily in terms of content, so that the book will read stylistically differently from a conventional translation. Springer Nature works continuously to further the development of tools for the production of books and on the related technologies to support the authors.