Heine Halberstam

Sieve Methods discusses the methods used to sieve out certain numbers, especially primes. I would say it requires a lot of background in number theory or some Analysis. In that vein, I would say I am not quite prepared to follow the contents of this book. As a Dover Publications reprint of an edition from 1974, it is quite good. It didn’t look like there were any typesetting errors or anything, though the first portion of the book counts up all the mistakes that were made in it and puts the corrections to those mistakes. There isn’t really much to say about this book. As far as Sieve Methods go, I was familiar with the Sieve of Erathosthenes where you take a number and try to divide it by the previous numbers to find if it is prime. I just hadn’t ever seen the proper mathematical expression for that. Apparently, they had come a long way since ancient times. As a side note, I especially liked how the book explained the symbols and notation used in the very first section.

To conclude, the book wasn’t bad, it just wasn’t very transparent about what it was.… (mehr)