Book picks similar to
Theory of Probability by Harold Jeffreys


mathematics
math
probability-and-ai
philosophy-nonfiction

Order Out of Chaos: Man's New Dialogue with Nature


Ilya Prigogine - 1984
    Stengers and Prigogine show how the two great themes of classic science, order and chaos, which coexisted uneasily for centuries, are being reconciled in a new and unexpected synthesis.

Isaac Newton


James Gleick - 2003
    When he died in London in 1727 he was so renowned he was given a state funeral—an unheard-of honor for a subject whose achievements were in the realm of the intellect. During the years he was an irascible presence at Trinity College, Cambridge, Newton imagined properties of nature and gave them names—mass, gravity, velocity—things our science now takes for granted. Inspired by Aristotle, spurred on by Galileo’s discoveries and the philosophy of Descartes, Newton grasped the intangible and dared to take its measure, a leap of the mind unparalleled in his generation.James Gleick, the author of Chaos and Genius, and one of the most acclaimed science writers of his generation, brings the reader into Newton’s reclusive life and provides startlingly clear explanations of the concepts that changed forever our perception of bodies, rest, and motion. Ideas so basic to the twenty-first century we literally take them for granted.

Chaos and Fractals: New Frontiers of Science


Heinz-Otto Peitgen - 1992
    At the time we were hoping that our approach of writing a book which would be both accessible without mathematical sophistication and portray these exiting new fields in an authentic manner would find an audience. Now we know it did. We know from many reviews and personal letters that the book is used in a wide range of ways: researchers use it to acquaint themselves, teachers use it in college and university courses, students use it for background reading, and there is also a substantial audience of lay people who just want to know what chaos and fractals are about. Every book that is somewhat technical in nature is likely to have a number of misprints and errors in its first edition. Some of these were caught and brought to our attention by our readers. One of them, Hermann Flaschka, deserves to be thanked in particular for his suggestions and improvements. This second edition has several changes. We have taken out the two appendices from the firstedition. At the time of the first edition Yuval Fishers contribution, which we published as an appendix was probably the first complete expository account on fractal image compression. Meanwhile, Yuvals book Fractal Image Compression: Theory and Application appeared and is now the publication to refer to.

Single Variable Essential Calculus: Early Transcendentals


James Stewart - 1995
    In writing the book James Stewart asked himself:What is essential for a three-semester calculus course for scientists and engineers? Stewart's SINGLE VARIABLE ESSENTIAL CALCULUS: EARLY TRANSCENDENTALS offers a concise approach to teaching calculus, focusing on major concepts and supporting those with precise definitions, patient explanations, and carefully graded problems. SINGLE VARIABLE ESSENTIAL CALCULUS: EARLY TRANSCENDENTALS is only 850 pages-two-thirds the size of Stewart's other calculus texts (CALCULUS, FIFTH EDITION AND CALCULUS, EARLY TRANSCENDENTALS, Fifth Edition)-yet it contains almost all of the same topics. The author achieved this relative brevity mainly by condensing the exposition and by putting some of the features on the website www.StewartCalculus.com. Despite the reduced size of the book, there is still a modern flavor: Conceptual understanding and technology are not neglected, though they are not as prominent as in Stewart's other books. SINGLE VARIABLE ESSENTIAL CALCULUS: EARLY TRANSCENDENTALS has been written with the same attention to detail, eye for innovation, and meticulous accuracy that have made Stewart's textbooks the best-selling calculus texts in the world.

Proofs and Refutations: The Logic of Mathematical Discovery


Imre Lakatos - 1976
    Much of the book takes the form of a discussion between a teacher and his students. They propose various solutions to some mathematical problems and investigate the strengths and weaknesses of these solutions. Their discussion (which mirrors certain real developments in the history of mathematics) raises some philosophical problems and some problems about the nature of mathematical discovery or creativity. Imre Lakatos is concerned throughout to combat the classical picture of mathematical development as a steady accumulation of established truths. He shows that mathematics grows instead through a richer, more dramatic process of the successive improvement of creative hypotheses by attempts to 'prove' them and by criticism of these attempts: the logic of proofs and refutations.

Never at Rest: A Biography of Isaac Newton


Richard S. Westfall - 1980
    Professor Westfall treats all aspects of Newton's career, but his account centres on a full description of Newton's achievements in science. Thus the core of the work describes the development of the calculus, the experimentation that altered the direction of the science of optics, and especially the investigations in celestial dynamics that led to the law of universal gravitation.

Love and Math: The Heart of Hidden Reality


Edward Frenkel - 2013
    In this heartfelt and passionate book, Frenkel shows that mathematics, far from occupying a specialist niche, goes to the heart of all matter, uniting us across cultures, time, and space.Love and Math tells two intertwined stories: of the wonders of mathematics and of one young man’s journey learning and living it. Having braved a discriminatory educational system to become one of the twenty-first century’s leading mathematicians, Frenkel now works on one of the biggest ideas to come out of math in the last 50 years: the Langlands Program. Considered by many to be a Grand Unified Theory of mathematics, the Langlands Program enables researchers to translate findings from one field to another so that they can solve problems, such as Fermat’s last theorem, that had seemed intractable before.At its core, Love and Math is a story about accessing a new way of thinking, which can enrich our lives and empower us to better understand the world and our place in it. It is an invitation to discover the magic hidden universe of mathematics.

Probability, Random Variables and Stochastic Processes with Errata Sheet


Athanasios Papoulis - 2001
    Unnikrishna Pillai of Polytechnic University. The book is intended for a senior/graduate level course in probability and is aimed at students in electrical engineering, math, and physics departments. The authors' approach is to develop the subject of probability theory and stochastic processes as a deductive discipline and to illustrate the theory with basic applications of engineering interest. Approximately 1/3 of the text is new material--this material maintains the style and spirit of previous editions. In order to bridge the gap between concepts and applications, a number of additional examples have been added for further clarity, as well as several new topics.

Quantum Mechanics and Path Integrals


Richard P. Feynman - 1965
    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.

Introduction to Logic


Harry J. Gensler - 2001
    Harry Gensler engages students with the basics of logic through practical examples and important arguments both in the history of philosophy and from contemporary philosophy. Using simple and manageable methods for testing arguments, students are led step-by-step to master the complexities of logic.The companion LogiCola instructional program and various teaching aids (including a teacher's manual) are available from the book's website: www.routledge.com/textbooks/gensler_l...

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.

The Clockwork Universe: Isaac Newton, the Royal Society, and the Birth of the Modern World


Edward Dolnick - 2011
    A meld of history and science, this book is a group portrait of some of the greatest minds who ever lived as they wrestled with nature’s most sweeping mysteries. The answers they uncovered still hold the key to how we understand the world.At the end of the seventeenth century—an age of religious wars, plague, and the Great Fire of London—when most people saw the world as falling apart, these earliest scientists saw a world of perfect order. They declared that, chaotic as it looked, the universe was in fact as intricate and perfectly regulated as a clock. This was the tail end of Shakespeare’s century, when the natural land the supernatural still twined around each other. Disease was a punishment ordained by God, astronomy had not yet broken free from astrology, and the sky was filled with omens. It was a time when little was known and everything was new. These brilliant, ambitious, curious men believed in angels, alchemy, and the devil, and they also believed that the universe followed precise, mathematical laws—-a contradiction that tormented them and changed the course of history.The Clockwork Universe is the fascinating and compelling story of the bewildered geniuses of the Royal Society, the men who made the modern world.

Alan Turing: The Enigma


Andrew Hodges - 1983
    His breaking of the German U-boat Enigma cipher in World War II ensured Allied-American control of the Atlantic. But Turing's vision went far beyond the desperate wartime struggle. Already in the 1930s he had defined the concept of the universal machine, which underpins the computer revolution. In 1945 he was a pioneer of electronic computer design. But Turing's true goal was the scientific understanding of the mind, brought out in the drama and wit of the famous "Turing test" for machine intelligence and in his prophecy for the twenty-first century.Drawn in to the cockpit of world events and the forefront of technological innovation, Alan Turing was also an innocent and unpretentious gay man trying to live in a society that criminalized him. In 1952 he revealed his homosexuality and was forced to participate in a humiliating treatment program, and was ever after regarded as a security risk. His suicide in 1954 remains one of the many enigmas in an astonishing life story.

Fluid Mechanics


Pijush K. Kundu - 1990
    New to this third edition are expanded coverage of such important topics as surface boundary interfaces, improved discussions of such physical and mathematical laws as the Law of Biot and Savart and the Euler Momentum Integral. A very important new section on Computational Fluid Dynamics has been added for the very first time to this edition. Expanded and improved end-of-chapter problems will facilitate the teaching experience for students and instrutors alike. This book remains one of the most comprehensive and useful texts on fluid mechanics available today, with applications going from engineering to geophysics, and beyond to biology and general science. * Ample, useful end-of-chapter problems.* Excellent Coverage of Computational Fluid Dynamics.* Coverage of Turbulent Flows.* Solutions Manual available.

Elliptic Tales: Curves, Counting, and Number Theory


Avner Ash - 2012
    The Clay Mathematics Institute is offering a prize of $1 million to anyone who can discover a general solution to the problem. In this book, Avner Ash and Robert Gross guide readers through the mathematics they need to understand this captivating problem.The key to the conjecture lies in elliptic curves, which are cubic equations in two variables. These equations may appear simple, yet they arise from some very deep--and often very mystifying--mathematical ideas. Using only basic algebra and calculus while presenting numerous eye-opening examples, Ash and Gross make these ideas accessible to general readers, and in the process venture to the very frontiers of modern mathematics. Along the way, they give an informative and entertaining introduction to some of the most profound discoveries of the last three centuries in algebraic geometry, abstract algebra, and number theory. They demonstrate how mathematics grows more abstract to tackle ever more challenging problems, and how each new generation of mathematicians builds on the accomplishments of those who preceded them. Ash and Gross fully explain how the Birch and Swinnerton-Dyer Conjecture sheds light on the number theory of elliptic curves, and how it provides a beautiful and startling connection between two very different objects arising from an elliptic curve, one based on calculus, the other on algebra.