Frank Blume

Logic, Sets, and Numbers Frank Blume

Logic, Sets, and Numbers is a brief introduction to abstract mathematics that is meant to familiarize the reader with the formal and conceptual rigor that higher-level undergraduate and graduate textbooks commonly employ. Beginning with formal logic and a fairly extensive discussion of concise formulations of mathematical statements, the text moves on to cover general patterns of proofs, elementary set theory, mathematical induction, cardinality, as well as, in the final chapter, the creation of the various number systems from the integers up to the complex numbers. On the whole, the book's intent is not only to reveal the nature of mathematical abstraction, but also its inherent beauty and purity.