Increasingly, the decisions that affect our lives--where we go to school, whether we can get a job or a loan, how much we pay for health insurance--are being made not by humans, but by machines. In theory, this should lead to greater fairness: Everyone is judged according to the same rules.But as mathematician and data scientist Cathy O'Neil reveals, the mathematical models being used today are unregulated and uncontestable, even when they're wrong. Most troubling, they reinforce discrimination--propping up the lucky, punishing the downtrodden, and undermining our democracy in the process.

    Who invented zero? Why are there 60 seconds in a minute? Can a butterfly's wings really cause a storm on the far side of the world? In 50 concise essays, Professor Tony Crilly explains the mathematical concepts that allow use to understand and shape the world around us.

    The book takes us from the Greeks' earliest scientific observations through Einstein and beyond in an inspiring celebration of human curiosity. It ends with the quest for the Higgs boson, nicknamed the God Particle, which scientists hypothesize will help unlock the last secrets of the subatomic universe. With a new preface by Lederman, The God Particle will leave you marveling at our continuing pursuit of the infinitesimal.

    That’s a mistake, Tim Harford says in The Data Detective. We shouldn’t be suspicious of statistics—we need to understand what they mean and how they can improve our lives: they are, at heart, human behavior seen through the prism of numbers and are often “the only way of grasping much of what is going on around us.” If we can toss aside our fears and learn to approach them clearly—understanding how our own preconceptions lead us astray—statistics can point to ways we can live better and work smarter.As “perhaps the best popular economics writer in the world” (New Statesman), Tim Harford is an expert at taking complicated ideas and untangling them for millions of readers. In The Data Detective, he uses new research in science and psychology to set out ten strategies for using statistics to erase our biases and replace them with new ideas that use virtues like patience, curiosity, and good sense to better understand ourselves and the world. As a result, The Data Detective is a big-idea book about statistics and human behavior that is fresh, unexpected, and insightful.

    

    Birth of a Theorem is Villani’s own account of the years leading up to the award. It invites readers inside the mind of a great mathematician as he wrestles with the most important work of his career.But you don’t have to understand nonlinear Landau damping to love Birth of a Theorem. It doesn’t simplify or overexplain; rather, it invites readers into collaboration. Villani’s diaries, emails, and musings enmesh you in the process of discovery. You join him in unproductive lulls and late-night breakthroughs. You’re privy to the dining-hall conversations at the world’s greatest research institutions. Villani shares his favorite songs, his love of manga, and the imaginative stories he tells his children. In mathematics, as in any creative work, it is the thinker’s whole life that propels discovery—and with Birth of a Theorem, Cédric Villani welcomes you into his.

    Using illustrations and examples from science fiction pulp magazines and comic books, The Amazing Story of Quantum Mechanics explains the fundamental principles of quantum mechanics that underlie the world we live in.Watch a Video

    Many of the innovations that we think of as hallmarks of Western science had their roots in the Arab world of the middle ages, a period when much of Western Christendom lay in intellectual darkness. Jim al- Khalili, a leading British-Iraqi physicist, resurrects this lost chapter of history, and given current East-West tensions, his book could not be timelier. With transporting detail, al-Khalili places readers in the hothouses of the Arabic Enlightenment, shows how they led to Europe's cultural awakening, and poses the question: Why did the Islamic world enter its own dark age after such a dazzling flowering?

    Based on a National Magazine Award-winning article, this masterful biography of Hungarian-born Paul Erdos is both a vivid portrait of an eccentric genius and a layman's guide to some of this century's most startling mathematical discoveries.

    But the quiet resort is about to become the venue for a brutal clash between dangerous men who feed on violence and a woman of honour who won’t back down.Ex-firearms cop, Carolina Carrasco, is reluctantly chaperoning precocious teenager Miguel on a snowboarding trip when a group of heavy-duty criminals moves in next door. So does Robin King, a journalist chasing a career-defining interview with the gang’s leader, the notorious Jean Haim.A chance event leads Carolina and Haim into a deadly game of cat and mouse. When Haim targets Miguel, Carolina unleashes in defending him and there is only one way it can end.Snow Rush is a fast, violent, sexy origin story for Carolina Carrasco, a hero who works, loves, and always, always shoots straight.

    

    Addressing readers with both a general and scholarly interest in mathematics, Nahin weaves into this narrative entertaining historical facts, mathematical discussions, and the application of complex numbers and functions to important problems.

    Full of extraordinary facts and astonishing stories, The Body: A Guide for Occupants is a brilliant, often very funny attempt to understand the miracle of our physical and neurological make up.A wonderful successor to A Short History of Nearly Everything, this book will have you marvelling at the form you occupy, and celebrating the genius of your existence, time and time again.

     Memories of her first love resurface occasionally, disturbing her present life. Unable to fully love Sreenivas with the insane intensity she had felt for Suresh, she is conflicted and living in a parallel world, always tormented by the probability of a what-if! It is at this time that her school friends plan a high school reunion, which Suresh would also be attending. Nirmala sees this as an opportunity to bring a closure to that chapter of her life. But she is torn by the uncertainty and the upheaval this might cause. She fears that her meeting with her ex-boyfriend might ruthlessly tear apart the delicate fabric of her marriage. And at the reunion, her world turns on its head. Suresh is found dead. Was it suicide? If not, who was the murderer? Nirmala is crippled by the shock. But blame quickly falls on her as the ex with a motive and before she realizes she is in the police net. How does she manage to escape? And what effect does this have on her marriage?

    Two paths headed in opposite directions. But could a blind date give them the love they both secretly want?Dr. Zoey Brown had a bucket list for when she finished her Emergency Medicine fellowship:• Review multiple offers to work at a leading city hospital. Check.• Go on a long overdue vacation. Double check.• Well, a blind date was nowhere on her list after being burned one too many times.At her friend's urging, she ends up in western Dexin Valley to check out a new ER center. Two weeks of relaxing vacation with no strings attached wasn't supposed to be hard, right?Yet she hadn't counted on being roped into a blind date with Dex Dexin, the one man who’d witnessed her most embarrassing moment on arrival in town.Dex Dexin was hoping to find a wife soon who would share his love of the ranch but planned to do so on his own terms, as a man who valued his privacy.But a chance encounter with Zoey sets off a chain reaction that has him tripping all over himself in situations that make him want to retreat into his shell.Yet he can’t seem to forget her.As they rediscover more of themselves, will the afraid-to-commit Zoey and the semi-recluse Dex give love a chance even if it means finding it through a blind date?