She's the Chief of Staff at a retirement home, which doesn't sound odd on its own, but when you consider it's a retirement home for witches and other paranormals, the strange factor ratchets up.  And, with a facility full of partly senile but still powerful witches, things go hilariously awry fast. This e-book contains the first three books in the Sunnyside Retired Witches Community series. Book 1: A Bottle Full of Djinn: Zoey Rivers has a pretty great job as Head of Staff at Sunnyside Retired Witches Community. She's good at handling the magical messes that are part and parcel of providing a home for elderly (and some slightly senile) witches. But when the messes turn from slightly sloppy to hugely horrible, Zoey realizes there's more involved than just her residents. If she doesn't figure out who's causing havoc at the Home, the place might not be standing for much longer. If you love crime capers with magic, mayhem, and mystery, you'll adore Zoey Rivers and her comical crew of witch retirees. Please note: This book is a crime caper, not a murder mystery. Book 2: Loony Town: Caring for elderly witches at the retirement home in Sunnyside, California is a full-time job for Zoey Rivers. But when one of them is blitzing, causing magic to act even weirder than normal, things get…well, downright wacky. And when a local insurance agent winds up dead, some of the people Zoey is responsible for become the prime suspects. As the zaniness of the magical blips continues and things get crazier and crazier, Zoey has to work fast and try to stay one step ahead to keep her charges out of jail, figure out who is causing the chaotic blitzing so she can fix it, and also figure out who the real killer is. It’s a tough job, but she's determined to do it. The people who live at Sunnyside Retired Witches Community are counting on her. And she’s not about to let them down now. Book 3: Mummy Issues: Sunnyside Retirement Witches Community gets its fair share of visitors. Some of them like the entertainment and others enjoy volunteering. But when one of the sight-seers ends up dead, Zoey Rivers has to figure out what happened. The residents come up with a fantastic idea: Since the retirement complex seems to have more than its fair share of murders, they figure it might be a good idea to have a psychic on staff. So, Zoey hires Iris. And all the information she pulls from the ghosts of the growing list of victims points to Zoey herself. Except the clues aren't pointing to her. They're fingering someone she'd thought was long dead.Sunnyside Retirement Witches Community gets its fair share of visitors. Some of them like the entertainment and others enjoy volunteering. But when one of the sight-seers ends up dead, Zoey Rivers has to figure out what happened. The residents come up with a fantastic idea: Since the retirement complex seems to have more than its fair share of murders, they figure it might be a good idea to have a psychic on staff. So, Zoey hires Iris. And all the information she pulls from the ghosts of the growing list of victims points to Zoey herself. Except the clues aren't pointing to her. They're fingering someone she'd thought was long dead.

    Hand argues that extraordinarily rare events are anything but. In fact, they’re commonplace. Not only that, we should all expect to experience a miracle roughly once every month.     But Hand is no believer in superstitions, prophecies, or the paranormal. His definition of “miracle” is thoroughly rational. No mystical or supernatural explanation is necessary to understand why someone is lucky enough to win the lottery twice, or is destined to be hit by lightning three times and still survive. All we need, Hand argues, is a firm grounding in a powerful set of laws: the laws of inevitability, of truly large numbers, of selection, of the probability lever, and of near enough.     Together, these constitute Hand’s groundbreaking Improbability Principle. And together, they explain why we should not be so surprised to bump into a friend in a foreign country, or to come across the same unfamiliar word four times in one day. Hand wrestles with seemingly less explicable questions as well: what the Bible and Shakespeare have in common, why financial crashes are par for the course, and why lightning does strike the same place (and the same person) twice. Along the way, he teaches us how to use the Improbability Principle in our own lives—including how to cash in at a casino and how to recognize when a medicine is truly effective.     An irresistible adventure into the laws behind “chance” moments and a trusty guide for understanding the world and universe we live in, The Improbability Principle will transform how you think about serendipity and luck, whether it’s in the world of business and finance or you’re merely sitting in your backyard, tossing a ball into the air and wondering where it will land.

    Weinberg adds new insights and highlights the similarities and differences between now and then. Using a conversational style that invites the reader to join him, Weinberg reunites with some of his most insightful writings on the human side of software engineering.Topics include egoless programming, intelligence, psychological measurement, personality factors, motivation, training, social problems on large projects, problem-solving ability, programming language design, team formation, the programming environment, and much more.Dorset House Publishing is proud to make this important text available to new generations of programmers -- and to encourage readers of the first edition to return to its valuable lessons.

    You can think of Python as your tool to solve problems that are far beyond the capability of a spreadsheet. It is an easy-to-use and easy-to learn programming language that is freely available on Windows, Macintosh, and Linux computers. There are free downloadable copies of this book in various electronic formats and a self-paced free online course where you can explore the course materials. All the supporting materials for the book are available under open and remixable licenses. This book is designed to teach people to program even if they have no prior experience.

    R has traditionally been difficult for non-statisticians to learn, and most R books assume far too much knowledge to be of help. R for Everyone is the solution. Drawing on his unsurpassed experience teaching new users, professional data scientist Jared P. Lander has written the perfect tutorial for anyone new to statistical programming and modeling. Organized to make learning easy and intuitive, this guide focuses on the 20 percent of R functionality you'll need to accomplish 80 percent of modern data tasks. Lander's self-contained chapters start with the absolute basics, offering extensive hands-on practice and sample code. You'll download and install R; navigate and use the R environment; master basic program control, data import, and manipulation; and walk through several essential tests. Then, building on this foundation, you'll construct several complete models, both linear and nonlinear, and use some data mining techniques. By the time you're done, you won't just know how to write R programs, you'll be ready to tackle the statistical problems you care about most. COVERAGE INCLUDES - Exploring R, RStudio, and R packages - Using R for math: variable types, vectors, calling functions, and more - Exploiting data structures, including data.frames, matrices, and lists - Creating attractive, intuitive statistical graphics - Writing user-defined functions - Controlling program flow with if, ifelse, and complex checks - Improving program efficiency with group manipulations - Combining and reshaping multiple datasets - Manipulating strings using R's facilities and regular expressions - Creating normal, binomial, and Poisson probability distributions - Programming basic statistics: mean, standard deviation, and t-tests - Building linear, generalized linear, and nonlinear models - Assessing the quality of models and variable selection - Preventing overfitting, using the Elastic Net and Bayesian methods - Analyzing univariate and multivariate time series data - Grouping data via K-means and hierarchical clustering - Preparing reports, slideshows, and web pages with knitr - Building reusable R packages with devtools and Rcpp - Getting involved with the R global community

    In the beginning was Josh Levine, an idealistic programming genius who dreamed of wresting control of the market from the big exchanges that, again and again, gave the giant institutions an advantage over the little guy. Levine created a computerized trading hub named Island where small traders swapped stocks, and over time his invention morphed into a global electronic stock market that sent trillions in capital through a vast jungle of fiber-optic cables. By then, the market that Levine had sought to fix had turned upside down, birthing secretive exchanges called dark pools and a new species of trading machines that could think, and that seemed, ominously, to be slipping the control of their human masters. Dark Pools is the fascinating story of how global markets have been hijacked by trading robots--many so self-directed that humans can't predict what they'll do next.

    The experienced author team have reviewed the core text, expanded the Applications of Biology chapters, and added two new chapters on practical skills. Each chapter now has a set of exam-style practice questions, as well as questions to help review the material. Also included are advice on how to revise and prepare for the examinations, multiple choice questions, revision summaries and answers to all book questions.

    A simple web search picks out a handful of relevant needles from the world's biggest haystack: the billions of pages on the World Wide Web. Uploading a photo to Facebook transmits millions of pieces of information over numerous error-prone network links, yet somehow a perfect copy of the photo arrives intact. Without even knowing it, we use public-key cryptography to transmit secret information like credit card numbers; and we use digital signatures to verify the identity of the websites we visit. How do our computers perform these tasks with such ease? This is the first book to answer that question in language anyone can understand, revealing the extraordinary ideas that power our PCs, laptops, and smartphones. Using vivid examples, John MacCormick explains the fundamental "tricks" behind nine types of computer algorithms, including artificial intelligence (where we learn about the "nearest neighbor trick" and "twenty questions trick"), Google's famous PageRank algorithm (which uses the "random surfer trick"), data compression, error correction, and much more. These revolutionary algorithms have changed our world: this book unlocks their secrets, and lays bare the incredible ideas that our computers use every day.

    Professors Gary Marcus and Ernest Davis have spent their careers at the forefront of AI research and have witnessed some of the greatest milestones in the field, but they argue that a computer winning in games like Jeopardy and go does not signal that we are on the doorstep of fully autonomous cars or superintelligent machines. The achievements in the field thus far have occurred in closed systems with fixed sets of rules. These approaches are too narrow to achieve genuine intelligence. The world we live in is wildly complex and open-ended. How can we bridge this gap? What will the consequences be when we do? Marcus and Davis show us what we need to first accomplish before we get there and argue that if we are wise along the way, we won't need to worry about a future of machine overlords. If we heed their advice, humanity can create an AI that we can trust in our homes, our cars, and our doctor's offices. Reboot provides a lucid, clear-eyed assessment of the current science and offers an inspiring vision of what we can achieve and how AI can make our lives better.

    

    Fishing, swimming, golf, tennis. Seems like the ideal location for a former secret agent posing as a retired police officer and part-time private investigator. Until people start disappearing. Suggested reading order for the Nicholas Colt series: COLT LADY 52 POCKET-47 CROSSCUT SNUFF TAG 9 KEY DEATH BLOOD TATTOO SYCAMORE BLUFF THE JACK REACHER FILES: FUGITIVE THE JACK REACHER FILES: VELOCITY (Novella) THE BLOOD NOTEBOOKS Note: Although published at a later date, the events in COLT and LADY 52 precede those in Jude Hardin's debut thriller POCKET-47. All of the books listed work as stand-alone thrillers, depending on reader preference. Nicholas Colt also appears in several short stories, including the one titled RATTLED and the one titled RACKED. Praise for Jude Hardin’s Thrillers: POCKET-47 sucked me in and held me enthralled. Author Jude Hardin keeps the pace frantic, the thrills non-stop, but best of all is his hero, the wonderfully ironic Nicholas Colt. This is a character I'm eager to follow through many adventures to come. —Tess Gerritsen, New York Times bestselling author of ICE COLD. The best PI debut I've read in years, fit to share shelf space with the best of Ross Macdonald, Sue Grafton, and Robert B. Parker. POCKET-47 is so hot you may burn your hands reading. Highly recommended. —J.A. Konrath, author of the Jack Daniels mysteries Hardin gets everything right in his powerhouse thriller debut, which introduces rock star–turned–PI Nicholas Colt. —Publishers Weekly on POCKET-47 KEY DEATH is an exhilarating thriller that punches way above its weight. It hits you hard and fast with crackling suspense, hair-raising twists and stunning revelations. Word of advice: don't start on this one unless you're prepared to stay up all night. —John Ling, author of THE BLASPHEMER Colt is a physical, no-holds-barred PI, reminiscent of Robert B. Parker's Spenser and Lee Child's Jack Reacher, and his debut is action-packed. With a hefty toll of dead bodies, some described in cringe-inducing detail, this is crime fiction at its rawest. Hard-boiled connoisseurs should make Colt's acquaintance now. —Booklist on POCKET-47 With CROSSCUT, Jude Hardin takes the PI novel and psychological suspense to a new, unrestrained level. Fast, fierce, and relentless. —David Morrell, New York Times bestselling creator of Rambo

    Now, more than ever before, our country needs to see full legalization of medical/recreational marijuana and hemp. Any way you look at it, for whoever is using it, marijuana is a medicinal plant, in abundant supply. Every month and every year that goes by, we find out more positive things about it. Medicinal marijuana has been demonized through the years but obviously this plant has a great deal of positive attributes, and it’s also a renewable resource. Being a cash crop, marijuana is bad for the pharmaceutical industry. Is Big Pharma pressuring the government to continue to deny sick people access? If so, that’s truly a crime against American citizens. And as Ventura writes: “Our government won’t do the right thing and legalize marijuana unless we the people demand it, because there are so many people within our government on the payroll, all thanks to the War on Drugs." Jesse Ventura’s Marijuana Manifesto calls for an end to the War on Drugs. Just because something is illegal, that doesn’t mean it goes away, it just means that criminals run it. Legalizing marijuana and marijuana dispensaries will serve to rejuvenate our pathetic economy, and just might make people a little happier. Ventura’s book will show us all how we can take our country back.

    The text converts all programming code into the C++ language.

    Rather than a "how to" for hands-on techies, the book entices lay-readers and experts alike by covering new case studies and the latest state-of-the-art techniques.You have been predicted — by companies, governments, law enforcement, hospitals, and universities. Their computers say, "I knew you were going to do that!" These institutions are seizing upon the power to predict whether you're going to click, buy, lie, or die.Why? For good reason: predicting human behavior combats financial risk, fortifies healthcare, conquers spam, toughens crime fighting, and boosts sales.How? Prediction is powered by the world's most potent, booming unnatural resource: data. Accumulated in large part as the by-product of routine tasks, data is the unsalted, flavorless residue deposited en masse as organizations churn away. Surprise! This heap of refuse is a gold mine. Big data embodies an extraordinary wealth of experience from which to learn.Predictive analytics unleashes the power of data. With this technology, the computer literally learns from data how to predict the future behavior of individuals. Perfect prediction is not possible, but putting odds on the future — lifting a bit of the fog off our hazy view of tomorrow — means pay dirt.In this rich, entertaining primer, former Columbia University professor and Predictive Analytics World founder Eric Siegel reveals the power and perils of prediction: -What type of mortgage risk Chase Bank predicted before the recession. -Predicting which people will drop out of school, cancel a subscription, or get divorced before they are even aware of it themselves. -Why early retirement decreases life expectancy and vegetarians miss fewer flights. -Five reasons why organizations predict death, including one health insurance company. -How U.S. Bank, European wireless carrier Telenor, and Obama's 2012 campaign calculated the way to most strongly influence each individual. -How IBM's Watson computer used predictive modeling to answer questions and beat the human champs on TV's Jeopardy! -How companies ascertain untold, private truths — how Target figures out you're pregnant and Hewlett-Packard deduces you're about to quit your job. -How judges and parole boards rely on crime-predicting computers to decide who stays in prison and who goes free. -What's predicted by the BBC, Citibank, ConEd, Facebook, Ford, Google, IBM, the IRS, Match.com, MTV, Netflix, Pandora, PayPal, Pfizer, and Wikipedia. A truly omnipresent science, predictive analytics affects everyone, every day. Although largely unseen, it drives millions of decisions, determining whom to call, mail, investigate, incarcerate, set up on a date, or medicate.Predictive analytics transcends human perception. This book's final chapter answers the riddle: What often happens to you that cannot be witnessed, and that you can't even be sure has happened afterward — but that can be predicted in advance?Whether you are a consumer of it — or consumed by it — get a handle on the power of Predictive Analytics.

    Disciples of Darwin have explained how natural selection produced plants, but what about the human mind?In From Bacteria to Bach and Back, Daniel C. Dennett builds on recent discoveries from biology and computer science to show, step by step, how a comprehending mind could in fact have arisen from a mindless process of natural selection. A crucial shift occurred when humans developed the ability to share memes, or ways of doing things not based in genetic instinct. Competition among memes produced thinking tools powerful enough that our minds don’t just perceive and react, they create and comprehend.An agenda-setting book for a new generation of philosophers and scientists, From Bacteria to Bach and Back will delight and entertain all those curious about how the mind works.