Denialism: How Irrational Thinking Hinders Scientific Progress, Harms the Planet, and Threatens Our Lives


Michael Specter - 2009
    In Denialism, New Yorker staff writer Michael Specter reveals that Americans have come to mistrust institutions and especially the institution of science more today than ever before. For centuries, the general view had been that science is neither good nor bad—that it merely supplies information and that new information is always beneficial. Now, science is viewed as a political constituency that isn’t always in our best interest. We live in a world where the leaders of African nations prefer to let their citizens starve to death rather than import genetically modified grains. Childhood vaccines have proven to be the most effective public health measure in history, yet people march on Washington to protest their use. In the United States a growing series of studies show that dietary supplements and “natural” cures have almost no value, and often cause harm. We still spend billions of dollars on them. In hundreds of the best universities in the world, laboratories are anonymous, unmarked, and surrounded by platoons of security guards—such is the opposition to any research that includes experiments with animals. And pharmaceutical companies that just forty years ago were perhaps the most visible symbol of our remarkable advance against disease have increasingly been seen as callous corporations propelled solely by avarice and greed. As Michael Specter sees it, this amounts to a war against progress. The issues may be complex but the choices are not: Are we going to continue to embrace new technologies, along with acknowledging their limitations and threats, or are we ready to slink back into an era of magical thinking? In Denialism, Specter makes an argument for a new Enlightenment, the revival of an approach to the physical world that was stunningly effective for hundreds of years: What can be understood and reliably repeated by experiment is what nature regarded as true. Now, at the time of mankind’s greatest scientific advances—and our greatest need for them—that deal must be renewed.

The Research Methods Knowledge Base


William Trochim - 1999
    It can be used in a variety of disciplines and is ideal for an introductory comprehensive undergraduate or graduate level course. Through its conversational, informal style it makes material that is often challenging for students both accessible and understandable. The Research Methods Knowledge Base, 3e covers everything from the development of a research question to the writing of a final report, describing both practical and technical issues of sampling, measurement, design and analysis.

HTML and CSS: Design and Build Websites


Jon Duckett - 2011
    Joining the professional web designers and programmers are new audiences who need to know a little bit of code at work (update a content management system or e-commerce store) and those who want to make their personal blogs more attractive. Many books teaching HTML and CSS are dry and only written for those who want to become programmers, which is why this book takes an entirely new approach. • Introduces HTML and CSS in a way that makes them accessible to everyone—hobbyists, students, and professionals—and it’s full-color throughout • Utilizes information graphics and lifestyle photography to explain the topics in a simple way that is engaging • Boasts a unique structure that allows you to progress through the chapters from beginning to end or just dip into topics of particular interest at your leisureThis educational book is one that you will enjoy picking up, reading, then referring back to. It will make you wish other technical topics were presented in such a simple, attractive and engaging way!

Educational Research: Competencies for Analysis and Applications


Lorraine R. Gay - 1976
    The reorganized text reflects a more balanced coverage of both quantitative and qualitative methodologies. Unique features of this revised edition include an approachable text your students won't mind reading and will want to keep; the accessible writing style, clear and concise explanations, and humorous tone demystify the research process; eleven cumulative Tasks throughout the text provide practice and skill development in doing research, step by step; expanded coverage of qualitative research and mixed methods Chapter 16 covering Narrative Research, and Chapter 17 covering Ethnographic Research, are new to this edition. Chapter 19, Mixed Methods, is also new to this edition. There is an expanded coverage of technology and an increased coverage of how to use technology in the research process. The 39 articles provided in the package (Text, Student Study Guide, and Website) are accompanied by a variety of pedagogical aids to help students learn to read research. research.

Integrating Educational Technology Into Teaching


Margaret D. Roblyer - 1996
    It shows teachers how to create an environment in which technology can effectively enhance learning. It contains a technology integration framework that builds on research and the TIP model.

Suicide: A Study in Sociology


Émile Durkheim - 1897
    Written by one of the world’s most influential sociologists, this classic argues that suicide primarily results from a lack of integration of the individual into society. Suicide provides readers with an understanding of the impetus for suicide and its psychological impact on the victim, family, and society.

Fooling Houdini: Magicians, Mentalists, Math Geeks, and the Hidden Powers of the Mind


Alex Stone - 2011
    By investing some of the lesser-known corners of psychology, neuroscience, physics, history, and even crime, all through the lens of trickery and illusion, Fooling Houdini arrives at a host of startling revelations about how the mind works--and why, sometimes, it doesn’t.

Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and in the Markets


Nassim Nicholas Taleb - 2001
    The other books in the series are The Black Swan, Antifragile,and The Bed of Procrustes.

Data Mining: Practical Machine Learning Tools and Techniques


Ian H. Witten - 1999
    This highly anticipated fourth edition of the most ...Download Link : readmeaway.com/download?i=0128042915            0128042915 Data Mining: Practical Machine Learning Tools and Techniques (Morgan Kaufmann Series in Data Management Systems) PDF by Ian H. WittenRead Data Mining: Practical Machine Learning Tools and Techniques (Morgan Kaufmann Series in Data Management Systems) PDF from Morgan Kaufmann,Ian H. WittenDownload Ian H. Witten's PDF E-book Data Mining: Practical Machine Learning Tools and Techniques (Morgan Kaufmann Series in Data Management Systems)

All the Math You'll Ever Need: A Self-Teaching Guide


Stephen L. Slavin - 1989
    In adollars-and-cents, bottom-line world, where numbers influenceeverything, none of us can afford to let our math skills atrophy.This step-by-step personal math trainer:Refreshes practical math skills for your personal andprofessional needs, with examples based on everyday situations. Offers straightforward techniques for working with decimals and fractions. Demonstrates simple ways to figure discounts, calculatemortgage interest rates, and work out time, rate, and distance problems. Contains no complex formulas and no unnecessary technical terms.

Statistical Inference


George Casella - 2001
    Starting from the basics of probability, the authors develop the theory of statistical inference using techniques, definitions, and concepts that are statistical and are natural extensions and consequences of previous concepts. This book can be used for readers who have a solid mathematics background. It can also be used in a way that stresses the more practical uses of statistical theory, being more concerned with understanding basic statistical concepts and deriving reasonable statistical procedures for a variety of situations, and less concerned with formal optimality investigations.

Crazy Like Us: The Globalization of the American Psyche


Ethan Watters - 2009
    But is it possible America's most troubling impact on the globalizing world has yet to be accounted for? In "Crazy Like Us," Ethan Watters reveals that the most devastating consequence of the spread of American culture has not been our golden arches or our bomb craters but our bulldozing of the human psyche itself: We are in the process of homogenizing the way the world goes mad. America has been the world leader in generating new mental health treatments and modern theories of the human psyche. We export our psychopharmaceuticals packaged with the certainty that our biomedical knowledge will relieve the suffering and stigma of mental illness. We categorize disorders, thereby defining mental illness and health, and then parade these seemingly scientific certainties in front of the world. The blowback from these efforts is just now coming to light: It turns out that we have not only been changing the way the world talks about and treats mental illness -- we have been changing the mental illnesses themselves.For millennia, local beliefs in different cultures have shaped the experience of mental illness into endless varieties." Crazy Like Us" documents how American interventions have discounted and worked to change those indigenous beliefs, often at a dizzying rate. Over the last decades, mental illnesses popularized in America have been spreading across the globe with the speed of contagious diseases. Watters travels from China to Tanzania to bring home the unsettling conclusion that the virus is us: As we introduce Americanized ways of treating mental illnesses, we are in fact spreading the diseases.In post-tsunami Sri Lanka, Watters reports on the Western trauma counselors who, in their rush to help, inadvertently trampled local expressions of grief, suffering, and healing. In Hong Kong, he retraces the last steps of the teenager whose death sparked an epidemic of the American version of anorexia nervosa. Watters reveals the truth about a multi-million-dollar campaign by one of the world's biggest drug companies to change the Japanese experience of depression -- literally marketing the disease along with the drug.But this book is not just about the damage we've caused in faraway places. Looking at our impact on the psyches of people in other cultures is a gut check, a way of forcing ourselves to take a fresh look at our own beliefs about mental health and healing. When we examine our assumptions from a farther shore, we begin to understand how our own culture constantly shapes and sometimes creates the mental illnesses of our time. By setting aside our role as the world's therapist, we may come to accept that we have as much to learn from other cultures' beliefs about the mind as we have to teach.

Why Don't Students Like School?: A Cognitive Scientist Answers Questions About How the Mind Works and What It Means for the Classroom


Daniel T. Willingham - 2009
    Why is it that they can remember the smallest details from their favorite television program, yet miss the most obvious questions on their history test?Cognitive scientist Dan Willingham has focused his acclaimed research on the biological and cognitive basis of learning and has a deep understanding of the daily challenges faced by classroom teachers. this book will help teachers improve their practice by explaining how they and their students think and learn—revealing the importance of story, emotion, memory, context, and routine in building knowledge and creating lasting learning experiences.In this breakthrough book, Willingham has distilled his knowledge of cognitive science into a set of nine principles that are easy to understand and have clear applications for the classroom. Some of examples of his surprising findings are:“Learning styles” don't exist The processes by which different children think and learn are more similar than different.Intelligence is malleable Intelligence contributes to school performance and children do differ, but intelligence can be increased through sustained hard work.You cannot develop “thinking skills” in the absence of facts We encourage students to think critically, not just memorize facts. However thinking skills depend on factual knowledge for their operation.Why Don't Students Like School is a basic primer for every teacher who wants to know how their brains and their students’ brains work and how that knowledge can help them hone their teaching skills.

First, Break All the Rules: What the World's Greatest Managers Do Differently


Marcus Buckingham - 1998
    With vital performance and career lessons and ideas for how to apply them, it is a must-read for managers at every level.

Algorithm Design


Jon Kleinberg - 2005
    The book teaches a range of design and analysis techniques for problems that arise in computing applications. The text encourages an understanding of the algorithm design process and an appreciation of the role of algorithms in the broader field of computer science.