Author: Paolo Alessandrini

The book tells the fascinating story of the great mathematical ideas, developed over the centuries, that form the foundation of modern artificial intelligence.

The author aims to answer a crucial question: how–and above all, why–does the heart of AI work? How do these powerful mathematical ideas interact with each other to give rise to machines capable of learning, predicting, and thinking?

Through a narrative that alternates between history and mathematics, Alessandrini reveals how great minds of the past, such as Cardano, Descartes, Newton, Bayes, Grassmann, and Levi-Civita, laid the theoretical foundations of modern AI.

The author ranges from the geometry of soccer balls to the combinatorics of tournament calendars, going through the physics of goal shots, the mathematics of sports betting, and the theory of games in penalty kicks.

The book is structured along the lines of a soccer match, with a pre-match stage, a first half, half-time, a second half, extra time, penalty kicks and the after match. That’s not all, since a lot of mathematics is embedded in the game of soccer: numbers, statistics and technology are now rapidly acquiring an important role on the pitches, as evidenced by the increasing significance of systems such as VAR or match analysis.

Every chapter starts with a soccer anecdote, which paves the way to questions where mathematics plays the main role.

The beauty of mathematics is generally linked to the idea of simplicity, perfection and harmony; but mathematics can also be unsettling, shocking or even monstrous. The aim of this book is to show that many branches of mathematics do indeed reach into the dark side.

The book is presented as a sort of bestiary, much like its mediaeval namesakes; it takes readers on a journey to discover incredible numerical “creatures”, illustrating their quirks, deformities and unlikely features. Divided into fourteen chapters (each one dedicated to a kind of mathematical creature), the book lays out the never-ending challenges faced by mathematicians over the centuries in their attempt to explain and tame numbers, in a no-holds-barred war that sometimes morphs into a tormented love story or a long tale of magicians and spells made of formulas and theorems.

The topics have been selectedbased on their degree of “monstrosity” and form a puzzle bound to appeal to novice and experienced readers alike. The author moves from negative numbers to infinity; presents geometries that seem to defy common sense, from Escher’s drawings to fractals; and explores disconcerting logical paradoxes. They are all surprising and unexpected mathematical monsters – and this is the real secret to their shocking beauty.

This is an unusual journey through mathematics in a rock & roll setting, where Arithmetic, Algebra and Geometry become easy and fun to understand thanks to the many mathematical ideas in the songs and records of world-famous rockstars.

The book is divided by topic, each dealing with a specific branch of mathematics and taking the reader on a step-by-step journey from the natural numbers of Rock around the clock that kicked off the history of rock, to the prime numbers of We will rock you and the geometry of The dark side of the moon.

Each chapter begins with an anecdote, an event or a record from the history of rock that provides the musical setting to introduce and explore a related mathematical concept.