DanA>I would like to second Neil's recommendation of this book. It is indeed a great book, totally readable and totally fascinating. I seem to recall it arose from a series of lectures Kac gave at Haverford College. --Dan On Apr 17, 2015, at 8:11 AM, Neil Sloane <njasloane@gmail.com> wrote: That identity is at the start (page 1, line 1) of one of the true great math books, Mark Kac's Statistical Independence in Prob., Analysis and Number Theory. He attributes it to Vieta.<njas But the cover art http://img2.imagesbn.com/p/9780883850251_p0_v1_s260x420.jpg is really stupid. --rwg