Without a doubt, the development of the computer was a massive leap forward in humankind's progress and will stand as one of the twentieth century's greatest achievements. But how many of us know how it really works? "Turing And The Computer" offers a brilliant encapsulation of the groundwork that led to the invention of the computer as we know it, and an absorbing account of the man who helped develop it, only to be largely forgotten after his death. Eccentric and principled, Turing would lay aside a brilliant career in mathematics to serve his country by breaking German codes during the Second World War. Openly homosexual, he would later be put on trial on indecency charges and forced to undergo hormone treatments that wrecked his body and his spirit. But the modern machine he helped create lives on.Concise and thoroughly compelling, "Turing And The Computer" is for all those curious about the philosophy and mechanics behind the now indispensable computer, and for anyone awed by the spark of invention that inspires its birth.

    This brief, accessible introduction describes some of the most interesting research in the field and also enables readers to implement and experiment with genetic algorithms on their own. It focuses in depth on a small set of important and interesting topics--particularly in machine learning, scientific modeling, and artificial life--and reviews a broad span of research, including the work of Mitchell and her colleagues.The descriptions of applications and modeling projects stretch beyond the strict boundaries of computer science to include dynamical systems theory, game theory, molecular biology, ecology, evolutionary biology, and population genetics, underscoring the exciting general purpose nature of genetic algorithms as search methods that can be employed across disciplines.An Introduction to Genetic Algorithms is accessible to students and researchers in any scientific discipline. It includes many thought and computer exercises that build on and reinforce the reader's understanding of the text. The first chapter introduces genetic algorithms and their terminology and describes two provocative applications in detail. The second and third chapters look at the use of genetic algorithms in machine learning (computer programs, data analysis and prediction, neural networks) and in scientific models (interactions among learning, evolution, and culture; sexual selection; ecosystems; evolutionary activity). Several approaches to the theory of genetic algorithms are discussed in depth in the fourth chapter. The fifth chapter takes up implementation, and the last chapter poses some currently unanswered questions and surveys prospects for the future of evolutionary computation.

    Now with the second edition, readers will find information on key new topics such as neural networks and statistical pattern recognition, the theory of machine learning, and the theory of invariances. Also included are worked examples, comparisons between different methods, extensive graphics, expanded exercises and computer project topics.An Instructor's Manual presenting detailed solutions to all the problems in the book is available from the Wiley editorial department.

    Indeed, such equations are crucial to mathematical physics. Although simplifications can be made that reduce these equations to ordinary differential equations, nevertheless the complete description of physical systems resides in the general area of partial differential equations.This highly useful text shows the reader how to formulate a partial differential equation from the physical problem (constructing the mathematical model) and how to solve the equation (along with initial and boundary conditions). Written for advanced undergraduate and graduate students, as well as professionals working in the applied sciences, this clearly written book offers realistic, practical coverage of diffusion-type problems, hyperbolic-type problems, elliptic-type problems, and numerical and approximate methods. Each chapter contains a selection of relevant problems (answers are provided) and suggestions for further reading.

    Alternating passages of extraordinarily lucid mathematical exposition with chapters of elegantly composed biography and history, Prime Obsession is a fascinating and fluent account of an epic mathematical mystery that continues to challenge and excite the world.

    This is the amazing story of how the "map problem" was solved.The problem posed in the letter came from a former student: What is the least possible number of colors needed to fill in any map (real or invented) so that neighboring counties are always colored differently? This deceptively simple question was of minimal interest to cartographers, who saw little need to limit how many colors they used. But the problem set off a frenzy among professional mathematicians and amateur problem solvers, among them Lewis Carroll, an astronomer, a botanist, an obsessive golfer, the Bishop of London, a man who set his watch only once a year, a California traffic cop, and a bridegroom who spent his honeymoon coloring maps. In their pursuit of the solution, mathematicians painted maps on doughnuts and horseshoes and played with patterned soccer balls and the great rhombicuboctahedron. It would be more than one hundred years (and countless colored maps) later before the result was finally established. Even then, difficult questions remained, and the intricate solution--which involved no fewer than 1,200 hours of computer time--was greeted with as much dismay as enthusiasm.Providing a clear and elegant explanation of the problem and the proof, Robin Wilson tells how a seemingly innocuous question baffled great minds and stimulated exciting mathematics with far-flung applications. This is the entertaining story of those who failed to prove, and those who ultimately did prove, that four colors do indeed suffice to color any map.

    Employing an irresistible cast of dragon-riding Vikings, lizard-throwing giants, and feuding aliens, the renowned illustrator Grady Klein and the award-winning statistician Alan Dabney teach you how to collect reliable data, make confident statements based on limited information, and judge the usefulness of polls and the other numbers that you're bombarded with every day. If you want to go beyond the basics, they've created the ultimate resource: "The Math Cave," where they reveal the more advanced formulas and concepts.Timely, authoritative, and hilarious, The Cartoon Introduction to Statistics is an essential guide for anyone who wants to better navigate our data-driven world.

    Written by two of the field's true pioneers, Spacetime Physics can extend and enhance coverage of specialty relativity in the classroom. This thoroughly up-to-date, highly accessible overview covers microgravity, collider accelerators, satellite probes, neutron detectors, radioastronomy, and pulsars.  The chapter on general relativity with new material on gravity waves, black holes, and cosmology.

    The story of information begins in a time profoundly unlike our own, when every thought and utterance vanishes as soon as it is born. From the invention of scripts and alphabets to the long-misunderstood talking drums of Africa, Gleick tells the story of information technologies that changed the very nature of human consciousness. He provides portraits of the key figures contributing to the inexorable development of our modern understanding of information: Charles Babbage, the idiosyncratic inventor of the first great mechanical computer; Ada Byron, the brilliant and doomed daughter of the poet, who became the first true programmer; pivotal figures like Samuel Morse and Alan Turing; and Claude Shannon, the creator of information theory itself. And then the information age arrives. Citizens of this world become experts willy-nilly: aficionados of bits and bytes. And we sometimes feel we are drowning, swept by a deluge of signs and signals, news and images, blogs and tweets. The Information is the story of how we got here and where we are heading.

    The book makes clear that applied microeconometrics is about the estimation of marginal and treatment effects, and that parametric estimation is simply a means to this end. It also clarifies the distinction between causality and statistical association. The book focuses specifically on cross section and panel data methods. Population assumptions are stated separately from sampling assumptions, leading to simple statements as well as to important insights. The unified approach to linear and nonlinear models and to cross section and panel data enables straightforward coverage of more advanced methods. The numerous end-of-chapter problems are an important component of the book. Some problems contain important points not fully described in the text, and others cover new ideas that can be analyzed using tools presented in the current and previous chapters. Several problems require the use of the data sets located at the author's website.

    

    How to make sense of them? The answer lies in mathematical modeling, a science with applications in a host of biological systems. Soccermatics brings the two together in a fascinating, mind-bending synthesis.What's the similarity between an ant colony and Total Football, Dutch style? How is the Barcelona midfield linked geometrically? And how can we relate the mechanics of a Mexican Wave to the singing of cicadas in an Australian valley? Welcome to the world of mathematical modeling, expressed brilliantly by David Sumpter through the prism of soccer. Soccer is indeed more than a game and this book is packed with game theory. After reading it, you will forever watch the game with new eyes.

    The Times called it elegant, discursive, and littered with quotes and allusions from Aquinas via Gershwin to Woolf and The Philadelphia Inquirer praised it as absolutely scintillating. In this delightful new book, Robert Kaplan, writing together with his wife Ellen Kaplan, once again takes us on a witty, literate, and accessible tour of the world of mathematics. Where The Nothing That Is looked at math through the lens of zero, The Art of the Infinite takes infinity, in its countless guises, as a touchstone for understanding mathematical thinking. Tracing a path from Pythagoras, whose great Theorem led inexorably to a discovery that his followers tried in vain to keep secret (the existence of irrational numbers); through Descartes and Leibniz; to the brilliant, haunted Georg Cantor, who proved that infinity can come in different sizes, the Kaplans show how the attempt to grasp the ungraspable embodies the essence of mathematics. The Kaplans guide us through the Republic of Numbers, where we meet both its upstanding citizens and more shadowy dwellers; and we travel across the plane of geometry into the unlikely realm where parallel lines meet. Along the way, deft character studies of great mathematicians (and equally colorful lesser ones) illustrate the opposed yet intertwined modes of mathematical thinking: the intutionist notion that we discover mathematical truth as it exists, and the formalist belief that math is true because we invent consistent rules for it. Less than All, wrote William Blake, cannot satisfy Man. The Art of the Infinite shows us some of the ways that Man has grappled with All, and reveals mathematics as one of the most exhilarating expressions of the human imagination.

    The new edition provides invitations - not requirements - to use technology, as well as new conceptual problems, and new projects that focus on writing and working in teams.

    Feynman starts with an intuitive view of fundamental quantum mechanics, gradually introducing path integrals. Later chapters explore more advanced topics, including the perturbation method, quantum electrodynamics, and statistical mechanics. 1965 edition, emended in 2005.