Turing's Cathedral: The Origins of the Digital Universe
George Dyson - 2012
In Turing’s Cathedral, George Dyson focuses on a small group of men and women, led by John von Neumann at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey, who built one of the first computers to realize Alan Turing’s vision of a Universal Machine. Their work would break the distinction between numbers that mean things and numbers that do things—and our universe would never be the same. Using five kilobytes of memory (the amount allocated to displaying the cursor on a computer desktop of today), they achieved unprecedented success in both weather prediction and nuclear weapons design, while tackling, in their spare time, problems ranging from the evolution of viruses to the evolution of stars. Dyson’s account, both historic and prophetic, sheds important new light on how the digital universe exploded in the aftermath of World War II. The proliferation of both codes and machines was paralleled by two historic developments: the decoding of self-replicating sequences in biology and the invention of the hydrogen bomb. It’s no coincidence that the most destructive and the most constructive of human inventions appeared at exactly the same time. How did code take over the world? In retracing how Alan Turing’s one-dimensional model became John von Neumann’s two-dimensional implementation, Turing’s Cathedral offers a series of provocative suggestions as to where the digital universe, now fully three-dimensional, may be heading next.
How to Think Like a Mathematician
Kevin Houston - 2009
Working through the book you will develop an arsenal of techniques to help you unlock the meaning of definitions, theorems and proofs, solve problems, and write mathematics effectively. All the major methods of proof - direct method, cases, induction, contradiction and contrapositive - are featured. Concrete examples are used throughout, and you'll get plenty of practice on topics common to many courses such as divisors, Euclidean algorithms, modular arithmetic, equivalence relations, and injectivity and surjectivity of functions. The material has been tested by real students over many years so all the essentials are covered. With over 300 exercises to help you test your progress, you'll soon learn how to think like a mathematician.
Absolute Java
Walter J. Savitch - 2003
Praised for providing an engaging balance of thoughtful examples and explanatory discussion, ?best-selling author Walter Savitch explains concepts and techniques in a straightforward style using understandable language and code enhanced by a suite of pedagogical tools.? "Absolute Java "is appropriate for both introductory and intermediate programming courses introducing Java.
Real-World Functional Programming: With Examples in F# and C#
Tomas Petricek - 2009
Microsoft's new F# is a true functional language and C# uses functional language features for LINQ and other recent advances.Real-World Functional Programming is a unique tutorial that explores the functional programming model through the F# and C# languages. The clearly presented ideas and examples teach readers how functional programming differs from other approaches. It explains how ideas look in F#-a functional language-as well as how they can be successfully used to solve programming problems in C#. Readers build on what they know about .NET and learn where a functional approach makes the most sense and how to apply it effectively in those cases.The reader should have a good working knowledge of C#. No prior exposure to F# or functional programming is required.Purchase of the print book comes with an offer of a free PDF, ePub, and Kindle eBook from Manning. Also available is all code from the book.
The Golden Ticket: P, Np, and the Search for the Impossible
Lance Fortnow - 2013
Simply stated, it asks whether every problem whose solution can be quickly checked by computer can also be quickly solved by computer. The Golden Ticket provides a nontechnical introduction to P-NP, its rich history, and its algorithmic implications for everything we do with computers and beyond. Lance Fortnow traces the history and development of P-NP, giving examples from a variety of disciplines, including economics, physics, and biology. He explores problems that capture the full difficulty of the P-NP dilemma, from discovering the shortest route through all the rides at Disney World to finding large groups of friends on Facebook. The Golden Ticket explores what we truly can and cannot achieve computationally, describing the benefits and unexpected challenges of this compelling problem.
Visual Complex Analysis
Tristan Needham - 1997
Aimed at undergraduate students in mathematics, physics, and engineering, the book's intuitive explanations, lack ofadvanced prerequisites, and consciously user-friendly prose style will help students to master the subject more readily than was previously possible. The key to this is the book's use of new geometric arguments in place of the standard calculational ones. These geometric arguments are communicatedwith the aid of hundreds of diagrams of a standard seldom encountered in mathematical works. A new approach to a classical topic, this work will be of interest to students in mathematics, physics, and engineering, as well as to professionals in these fields.
Networks: An Introduction
M.E.J. Newman - 2010
The rise of the Internet and the wide availability of inexpensive computers have made it possible to gather and analyze network data on a large scale, and the development of a variety of new theoretical tools has allowed us to extract new knowledge from many different kinds of networks.The study of networks is broadly interdisciplinary and important developments have occurred in many fields, including mathematics, physics, computer and information sciences, biology, and the social sciences. This book brings together for the first time the most important breakthroughs in each of these fields and presents them in a coherent fashion, highlighting the strong interconnections between work in different areas.Subjects covered include the measurement and structure of networks in many branches of science, methods for analyzing network data, including methods developed in physics, statistics, and sociology, the fundamentals of graph theory, computer algorithms, and spectral methods, mathematical models of networks, including random graph models and generative models, and theories of dynamical processes taking place on networks.
99 Bottles of OOP
Sandi Metz - 2016
This book fills that gap. It explains the process of writing good code, and teaches you to achieve beautifully programmed ends by way of extremely practical means. What It's About99 Bottles of OOP is a practical guide to writing cost-effective, maintainable, and pleasing object-oriented code. It explores: Recognizing when code is "good enough"Getting the best value from Test-Driven Development (TDD)Doing proper refactoring, not random "rehacktoring"Locating concepts buried in codeFinding names that convey deeper meaning Safely altering code by following the "Flocking Rules" Simplifying new additions with the Open/Closed PrincipleAvoiding conditionals by obeying the Liskov Substitution PrincipleMaking targeted improvements by reducing Code SmellsWhat Makes It Unique?We are practical people. We love beautiful code but we're committed to getting things done. 99 Bottles of OOP enables both of these desires. It teaches a practical technique for getting things done that leads, naturally and inevitably, to beautiful code.This book contains an extended refactoring, and it details the rationale behind every change. It is a hands-on workbook rather than a list of theoretical ideas. It explains how to use the principles of object-oriented design to guide, not just the final arrangement of code, but each decision about what line of code to write next.It teaches the theory of what good OO looks like, but even better, it supplies step-by-step guidance about how to achieve it.Who Should Read It?The lessons work for programmers with a broad range of experience, from rank novice to grizzled veteran. The code examples are written in Ruby, but this book is not about Ruby--it's about object-oriented programming and design. Regardless of your background, applying these techniques will make your code easier to understand, simpler to change, and more satisfying to contemplate.
How to Solve It: Modern Heuristics
Zbigniew Michalewicz - 2004
Publilius Syrus, Moral Sayings We've been very fortunate to receive fantastic feedback from our readers during the last four years, since the first edition of How to Solve It: Modern Heuristics was published in 1999. It's heartening to know that so many people appreciated the book and, even more importantly, were using the book to help them solve their problems. One professor, who published a review of the book, said that his students had given the best course reviews he'd seen in 15 years when using our text. There can be hardly any better praise, except to add that one of the book reviews published in a SIAM journal received the best review award as well. We greatly appreciate your kind words and personal comments that you sent, including the few cases where you found some typographical or other errors. Thank you all for this wonderful support.
Linear Algebra and Its Applications [with CD-ROM]
David C. Lay - 1993
The Tcp/IP Guide: A Comprehensive, Illustrated Internet Protocols Reference
Charles Kozierok - 2005
It details the core protocols that make TCP/IP internetworks function, and the most important classical TCP/IP applications. Its personal, easy-going writing style lets anyone understand the dozens of protocols and technologies that run the Internet, with full coverage of PPP, ARP, IP, IPv6, IP NAT, IPSec, Mobile IP, ICMP, RIP, BGP, TCP, UDP, DNS, DHCP, SNMP, FTP, SMTP, NNTP, HTTP, Telnet and much more. The author offers not only a detailed view of the TCP/IP protocol suite, but also describes networking fundamentals and the important OSI Reference Model.
In Pursuit of the Traveling Salesman: Mathematics at the Limits of Computation
William J. Cook - 2011
In this book, William Cook takes readers on a mathematical excursion, picking up the salesman's trail in the 1800s when Irish mathematician W. R. Hamilton first defined the problem, and venturing to the furthest limits of today's state-of-the-art attempts to solve it. He also explores its many important applications, from genome sequencing and designing computer processors to arranging music and hunting for planets.In Pursuit of the Traveling Salesman travels to the very threshold of our understanding about the nature of complexity, and challenges you yourself to discover the solution to this captivating mathematical problem.
Discrete Mathematics with Applications
Susanna S. Epp - 1990
Renowned for her lucid, accessible prose, Epp explains complex, abstract concepts with clarity and precision. This book presents not only the major themes of discrete mathematics, but also the reasoning that underlies mathematical thought. Students develop the ability to think abstractly as they study the ideas of logic and proof. While learning about such concepts as logic circuits and computer addition, algorithm analysis, recursive thinking, computability, automata, cryptography, and combinatorics, students discover that the ideas of discrete mathematics underlie and are essential to the science and technology of the computer age. Overall, Epp's emphasis on reasoning provides students with a strong foundation for computer science and upper-level mathematics courses.
Head First Design Patterns
Eric Freeman - 2004
At any given moment, somewhere in the world someone struggles with the same software design problems you have. You know you don't want to reinvent the wheel (or worse, a flat tire), so you look to Design Patterns--the lessons learned by those who've faced the same problems. With Design Patterns, you get to take advantage of the best practices and experience of others, so that you can spend your time on...something else. Something more challenging. Something more complex. Something more fun. You want to learn about the patterns that matter--why to use them, when to use them, how to use them (and when NOT to use them). But you don't just want to see how patterns look in a book, you want to know how they look "in the wild". In their native environment. In other words, in real world applications. You also want to learn how patterns are used in the Java API, and how to exploit Java's built-in pattern support in your own code. You want to learn the real OO design principles and why everything your boss told you about inheritance might be wrong (and what to do instead). You want to learn how those principles will help the next time you're up a creek without a design pattern. Most importantly, you want to learn the "secret language" of Design Patterns so that you can hold your own with your co-worker (and impress cocktail party guests) when he casually mentions his stunningly clever use of Command, Facade, Proxy, and Factory in between sips of a martini. You'll easily counter with your deep understanding of why Singleton isn't as simple as it sounds, how the Factory is so often misunderstood, or on the real relationship between Decorator, Facade and Adapter. With Head First Design Patterns, you'll avoid the embarrassment of thinking Decorator is something from the "Trading Spaces" show. Best of all, in a way that won't put you to sleep! We think your time is too important (and too short) to spend it struggling with academic texts. If you've read a Head First book, you know what to expect--a visually rich format designed for the way your brain works. Using the latest research in neurobiology, cognitive science, and learning theory, Head First Design Patterns will load patterns into your brain in a way that sticks. In a way that lets you put them to work immediately. In a way that makes you better at solving software design problems, and better at speaking the language of patterns with others on your team.
Algebra
Aurelio Baldor - 1983
This revised edition includes a CD-Rom with exercises that will help the student have a better understanding of equations, formulas, etc.