Abstract
OUR readers have seen from time to time in our “Society” Notices the titles of papers read before this young but from the outset vigorous body, and must have often wished for a more intimate acquaintance with their contents (as the odoriferous steam issuing from the cookshop tempts the hungry “Arab” to enter and feed). We are glad to find, from the volume before us, that the Society is in a position to print its Proceedings, for we now know how interesting the papers are. They are not, like some other papers nearer home, caviare to the general, but they deal with matters which come home to every mathematical teacher. Mr. Mackay writes on the circles associated with the triangle, viewed from their centres of similitude; Mr. Muir, on the condensation of a special continuant; Dr. Macfarlane, on voting; Prof. Chrystal, on an application of matrices to spherical geometry, on a problem in partition of numbers, &c. Mr. Allardice furnishes some useful notes on spherical geometry and trigonometry; Mr. Browning, some illustrations of harmonic section; Mr. Barclay, notes on the teaching of elementary geometry (abstract only), and Mr. Traill, proofs of the theorems as far as “Euclid” i. 32, from first principles. Other papers are: a good concise account of Pascal's “Essais pour les Coniques” by Mr. Macdonald; the hypothesis of Le Bel and Van't Hoff, by Prof. Crum Brown; on the representation of the physical properties of substances by means of surfaces, by Mr. Peddie; and a joint account of the problem “La Tour d'Hanoi” (one of displacements), by Messrs. Allardice and Fraser. With these Proceedings are bound up Prof. Tait's introductory address on Listing's “Topo-logie,” which, our readers will remember, has been published in the Philosophical Magazine (January 1884, pp. 30–46, with plates), and Mr. Muir's Presidential Address entitled “The Promotion of Research; with Special Reference to the Present State of the Scottish Universities and Secondary Schools” (delivered February 8, 1884).
Proceedings of the Edinburgh Mathematical Society.
Second Session, 1883–84.
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Proceedings of the Edinburgh Mathematical Society . Nature 31, 148 (1884). https://doi.org/10.1038/031148b0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/031148b0