Bücher von George Polya

The description for this book, Isoperimetric Inequalities in Mathematical Physics. (AM-27), Volume 27, will be forthcoming.

In the winter of 1978, Professor George P61ya and I jointly taught Stanford University's introductory combinatorics course. Enumerative combinatorics deals with the counting of combinatorial objects. Existential combinatorics studies the existence or nonexistence of combinatorial configurations.

A guide to the practical art of plausible reasoning, this book has relevance in every field of intellectual activity. Professor Polya, a world-famous mathematician from Stanford University, uses mathematics to show how hunches and guesses play an important part in even the most rigorously deductive science. He explains how solutions to problems can be guessed at; good guessing is often more important than rigorous deduction in finding correct solutions. Vol. II, on Patterns of Plausible Inference, attempts to develop a logic of plausibility. What makes some evidence stronger and some weaker? How does one seek evidence that will make a suspected truth more probable? These questions involve philosophy and psychology as well as mathematics.

Explains how to become a 'good guesser'. This work explores techniques of guessing, inductive reasoning, and reasoning by analogy, and the role they play in the most rigorous of deductive disciplines.

Few mathematical books are worth translating 50 years after original publication. It was published in German in 1924, and its English edition was widely acclaimed when it appeared in 1972. In the past, more of the leading mathematicians proposed and solved problems than today.

From the reviews: "The work is one of the real classics of this century; it has had much influence on teaching, on research in several branches of hard analysis, particularly complex function theory, and it has been an essential indispensable source book for those seriously interested in mathematical problems."