Humble Pi: A Comedy of Maths Errors


Matt Parker - 2019
    Most of the time this math works quietly behind the scenes . . . until it doesn't. All sorts of seemingly innocuous mathematical mistakes can have significant consequences.Math is easy to ignore until a misplaced decimal point upends the stock market, a unit conversion error causes a plane to crash, or someone divides by zero and stalls a battleship in the middle of the ocean.Exploring and explaining a litany of glitches, near misses, and mathematical mishaps involving the internet, big data, elections, street signs, lotteries, the Roman Empire, and an Olympic team, Matt Parker uncovers the bizarre ways math trips us up, and what this reveals about its essential place in our world. Getting it wrong has never been more fun.

Data Science For Dummies


Lillian Pierson - 2014
    Data Science For Dummies is the perfect starting point for IT professionals and students interested in making sense of their organization’s massive data sets and applying their findings to real-world business scenarios. From uncovering rich data sources to managing large amounts of data within hardware and software limitations, ensuring consistency in reporting, merging various data sources, and beyond, you’ll develop the know-how you need to effectively interpret data and tell a story that can be understood by anyone in your organization. Provides a background in data science fundamentals before moving on to working with relational databases and unstructured data and preparing your data for analysis Details different data visualization techniques that can be used to showcase and summarize your data Explains both supervised and unsupervised machine learning, including regression, model validation, and clustering techniques Includes coverage of big data processing tools like MapReduce, Hadoop, Dremel, Storm, and Spark It’s a big, big data world out there – let Data Science For Dummies help you harness its power and gain a competitive edge for your organization.

The Mathematical Theory of Communication


Claude Shannon - 1949
    Republished in book form shortly thereafter, it has since gone through four hardcover and sixteen paperback printings. It is a revolutionary work, astounding in its foresight and contemporaneity. The University of Illinois Press is pleased and honored to issue this commemorative reprinting of a classic.

Grokking Algorithms An Illustrated Guide For Programmers and Other Curious People


Aditya Y. Bhargava - 2015
    The algorithms you'll use most often as a programmer have already been discovered, tested, and proven. If you want to take a hard pass on Knuth's brilliant but impenetrable theories and the dense multi-page proofs you'll find in most textbooks, this is the book for you. This fully-illustrated and engaging guide makes it easy for you to learn how to use algorithms effectively in your own programs.Grokking Algorithms is a disarming take on a core computer science topic. In it, you'll learn how to apply common algorithms to the practical problems you face in day-to-day life as a programmer. You'll start with problems like sorting and searching. As you build up your skills in thinking algorithmically, you'll tackle more complex concerns such as data compression or artificial intelligence. Whether you're writing business software, video games, mobile apps, or system utilities, you'll learn algorithmic techniques for solving problems that you thought were out of your grasp. For example, you'll be able to:Write a spell checker using graph algorithmsUnderstand how data compression works using Huffman codingIdentify problems that take too long to solve with naive algorithms, and attack them with algorithms that give you an approximate answer insteadEach carefully-presented example includes helpful diagrams and fully-annotated code samples in Python. By the end of this book, you will know some of the most widely applicable algorithms as well as how and when to use them.

Python Machine Learning


Sebastian Raschka - 2015
    We are living in an age where data comes in abundance, and thanks to the self-learning algorithms from the field of machine learning, we can turn this data into knowledge. Automated speech recognition on our smart phones, web search engines, e-mail spam filters, the recommendation systems of our favorite movie streaming services – machine learning makes it all possible.Thanks to the many powerful open-source libraries that have been developed in recent years, machine learning is now right at our fingertips. Python provides the perfect environment to build machine learning systems productively.This book will teach you the fundamentals of machine learning and how to utilize these in real-world applications using Python. Step-by-step, you will expand your skill set with the best practices for transforming raw data into useful information, developing learning algorithms efficiently, and evaluating results.You will discover the different problem categories that machine learning can solve and explore how to classify objects, predict continuous outcomes with regression analysis, and find hidden structures in data via clustering. You will build your own machine learning system for sentiment analysis and finally, learn how to embed your model into a web app to share with the world

Data, A Love Story: How I Gamed Online Dating to Meet My Match


Amy Webb - 2013
    Most don’t find true love. Thanks to Data, a Love Story, their odds just got a whole lot better. Data, A Love Story: How I Gamed Online Dating to Meet My Match is a lively, thought-provoking memoir about how one woman “gamed” the world of online dating—and met her eventual husband.

Data Science at the Command Line: Facing the Future with Time-Tested Tools


Jeroen Janssens - 2014
    You'll learn how to combine small, yet powerful, command-line tools to quickly obtain, scrub, explore, and model your data.To get you started--whether you're on Windows, OS X, or Linux--author Jeroen Janssens introduces the Data Science Toolbox, an easy-to-install virtual environment packed with over 80 command-line tools.Discover why the command line is an agile, scalable, and extensible technology. Even if you're already comfortable processing data with, say, Python or R, you'll greatly improve your data science workflow by also leveraging the power of the command line.Obtain data from websites, APIs, databases, and spreadsheetsPerform scrub operations on plain text, CSV, HTML/XML, and JSONExplore data, compute descriptive statistics, and create visualizationsManage your data science workflow using DrakeCreate reusable tools from one-liners and existing Python or R codeParallelize and distribute data-intensive pipelines using GNU ParallelModel data with dimensionality reduction, clustering, regression, and classification algorithms

Thinking Statistically


Uri Bram - 2011
    Along the way we’ll learn how selection bias can explain why your boss doesn’t know he sucks (even when everyone else does); how to use Bayes’ Theorem to decide if your partner is cheating on you; and why Mark Zuckerberg should never be used as an example for anything. See the world in a whole new light, and make better decisions and judgements without ever going near a t-test. Think. Think Statistically.

The Human Face of Big Data


Rick Smolan - 2012
    Its enable us to sense, measure, and understand aspects of our existence in ways never before possible. The Human Face of Big Data captures, in glorious photographs and moving essays, an extraordinary revolution sweeping, almost invisibly, through business, academia, government, healthcare, and everyday life. It's already enabling us to provide a healthier life for our children. To provide our seniors with independence while keeping them safe. To help us conserve precious resources like water and energy. To alert us to tiny changes in our health, weeks or years before we develop a life-threatening illness. To peer into our own individual genetic makeup. To create new forms of life.  And soon, as many predict, to re-engineer our own species. And we've barely scratched the surface . . . Over the past decade, Rick Smolan and Jennifer Erwitt, co-founders of Against All Odds Productions, have produced a series of ambitious global projects in collaboration with hundreds of the world's leading photographers, writers, and graphic designers. Their Day in the Life projects were credited for creating a mass market for large-format illustrated books (rare was the coffee table book without one).  Today their projects aim at sparking global conversations about emerging topics ranging from the Internet (24 Hours in Cyberspace), to Microprocessors (One Digital Day), to how the human race is learning to heal itself, (The Power to Heal) to the global water crisis (Blue Planet Run). This year Smolan and Erwitt dispatched photographers and writers in every corner of the globe to explore the world of “Big Data” and to determine if it truly does, as many in the field claim, represent a brand new toolset for humanity, helping address the biggest challenges facing our species. The book features 10 essays by noted writers:Introduction: OCEANS OF DATA by Dan GardnerChapter 1: REFLECTIONS IN A DIGITAL MIRROR by Juan Enriquez, CEO, BiotechnomomyChapter 2: OUR DATA OURSELVES by Kate Green, the EconomistChapter 3: QUANTIFYING MYSELF by AJ Jacobs, EsquireChapter 4: DARK DATA by Marc Goodman, Future Crime InstituteChapter 5:  THE SENTIENT SENSOR MESH by Susan Karlin, Fast CompanyChapter 6: TAKING THE PULSE OF THE PLANET by Esther Dyson, EDventureChapter 7: CITIZEN SCIENCE by Gareth Cook, the Boston GlobeChapter 8: A DEMOGRAPH OF ONE by Michael Malone, Forbes magazineChapter 9: THE ART OF DATA by Aaron Koblin, Google Artist in ResidenceChapter 10: DATA DRIVEN by Jonathan Harris, Cowbird The book will also feature stunning info graphics from NIGEL HOLMES.1) GOOGLING GOOGLE: all the ways Google uses Data to help humanity2) DATA IS THE NEW OIL3) THE WORLD ACCORDING TO TWITTER4) AUCTIONING EYEBALLS: The world of Internet advertising5) FACEBOOK: A Billion Friends

Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid


Douglas R. Hofstadter - 1979
    However, according to Hofstadter, the formal system that underlies all mental activity transcends the system that supports it. If life can grow out of the formal chemical substrate of the cell, if consciousness can emerge out of a formal system of firing neurons, then so too will computers attain human intelligence. Gödel, Escher, Bach is a wonderful exploration of fascinating ideas at the heart of cognitive science: meaning, reduction, recursion, and much more.

R in a Nutshell: A Desktop Quick Reference


Joseph Adler - 2009
    R in a Nutshell provides a quick and practical way to learn this increasingly popular open source language and environment. You'll not only learn how to program in R, but also how to find the right user-contributed R packages for statistical modeling, visualization, and bioinformatics.The author introduces you to the R environment, including the R graphical user interface and console, and takes you through the fundamentals of the object-oriented R language. Then, through a variety of practical examples from medicine, business, and sports, you'll learn how you can use this remarkable tool to solve your own data analysis problems.Understand the basics of the language, including the nature of R objectsLearn how to write R functions and build your own packagesWork with data through visualization, statistical analysis, and other methodsExplore the wealth of packages contributed by the R communityBecome familiar with the lattice graphics package for high-level data visualizationLearn about bioinformatics packages provided by Bioconductor"I am excited about this book. R in a Nutshell is a great introduction to R, as well as a comprehensive reference for using R in data analytics and visualization. Adler provides 'real world' examples, practical advice, and scripts, making it accessible to anyone working with data, not just professional statisticians."

R Cookbook: Proven Recipes for Data Analysis, Statistics, and Graphics


Paul Teetor - 2011
    The R language provides everything you need to do statistical work, but its structure can be difficult to master. This collection of concise, task-oriented recipes makes you productive with R immediately, with solutions ranging from basic tasks to input and output, general statistics, graphics, and linear regression.Each recipe addresses a specific problem, with a discussion that explains the solution and offers insight into how it works. If you're a beginner, R Cookbook will help get you started. If you're an experienced data programmer, it will jog your memory and expand your horizons. You'll get the job done faster and learn more about R in the process.Create vectors, handle variables, and perform other basic functionsInput and output dataTackle data structures such as matrices, lists, factors, and data framesWork with probability, probability distributions, and random variablesCalculate statistics and confidence intervals, and perform statistical testsCreate a variety of graphic displaysBuild statistical models with linear regressions and analysis of variance (ANOVA)Explore advanced statistical techniques, such as finding clusters in your dataWonderfully readable, R Cookbook serves not only as a solutions manual of sorts, but as a truly enjoyable way to explore the R language--one practical example at a time.--Jeffrey Ryan, software consultant and R package author

Infinite Powers: How Calculus Reveals the Secrets of the Universe


Steven H. Strogatz - 2019
    We wouldn’t have unraveled DNA or discovered Neptune or figured out how to put 5,000 songs in your pocket. Though many of us were scared away from this essential, engrossing subject in high school and college, Steven Strogatz’s brilliantly creative, down‑to‑earth history shows that calculus is not about complexity; it’s about simplicity. It harnesses an unreal number—infinity—to tackle real‑world problems, breaking them down into easier ones and then reassembling the answers into solutions that feel miraculous. Infinite Powers recounts how calculus tantalized and thrilled its inventors, starting with its first glimmers in ancient Greece and bringing us right up to the discovery of gravitational waves (a phenomenon predicted by calculus). Strogatz reveals how this form of math rose to the challenges of each age: how to determine the area of a circle with only sand and a stick; how to explain why Mars goes “backwards” sometimes; how to make electricity with magnets; how to ensure your rocket doesn’t miss the moon; how to turn the tide in the fight against AIDS. As Strogatz proves, calculus is truly the language of the universe. By unveiling the principles of that language, Infinite Powers makes us marvel at the world anew.

Machine Learning


Tom M. Mitchell - 1986
    Mitchell covers the field of machine learning, the study of algorithms that allow computer programs to automatically improve through experience and that automatically infer general laws from specific data.

Emergence: The Connected Lives of Ants, Brains, Cities, and Software


Steven Johnson - 2001
    Explaining why the whole is sometimes smarter than the sum of its parts, Johnson presents surprising examples of feedback, self-organization, and adaptive learning. How does a lively neighborhood evolve out of a disconnected group of shopkeepers, bartenders, and real estate developers? How does a media event take on a life of its own? How will new software programs create an intelligent World Wide Web? In the coming years, the power of self-organization -- coupled with the connective technology of the Internet -- will usher in a revolution every bit as significant as the introduction of electricity. Provocative and engaging, Emergence puts you on the front lines of this exciting upheaval in science and thought.