this is one of those rare books that will change your beliefs - and in doing so will change your life. tHE ANt AND tHE FERRARI offers readers a clear, navigable path through the big questions that confront us all today. What is the meaning of life? Can we be ethical beings in today's world? Can we know if there is life after death? Is there such a thing as Absolute truth? What caused the Big Bang and why should you care?

    He proposes his solution.

    The books also provides a companion web site that provides the toold and materials necessary to build the hardware and software.

    This concept is at the root of the computational worldview, which basically says that very complex systems — the world we live in — have their beginnings in simple mathematical equations. We've lately come to understand that such an algorithm is only the start of a never-ending story — the real action occurs in the unfolding consequences of the rules. The chip-in-a-box computers so popular in our time have acted as a kind of microscope, letting us see into the secret machinery of the world. In Lifebox, Rucker uses whimsical drawings, fables, and humor to demonstrate that everything is a computation — that thoughts, computations, and physical processes are all the same. Rucker discusses the linguistic and computational advances that make this kind of "digital philosophy" possible, and explains how, like every great new principle, the computational world view contains the seeds of a next step.

    With jokes, puns, and a rigorous problem solving based approach. You can download all the code samples used in the book from here: http://www.robmiles.com/s/Yellow-Book...

    In this unconventional introduction, physicist Leonard Susskind and hacker-scientist George Hrabovsky offer a first course in physics and associated math for the ardent amateur. Unlike most popular physics books—which give readers a taste of what physicists know but shy away from equations or math—Susskind and Hrabovsky actually teach the skills you need to do physics, beginning with classical mechanics, yourself. Based on Susskind's enormously popular Stanford University-based (and YouTube-featured) continuing-education course, the authors cover the minimum—the theoretical minimum of the title—that readers need to master to study more advanced topics.An alternative to the conventional go-to-college method, The Theoretical Minimum provides a tool kit for amateur scientists to learn physics at their own pace.

    The blades start moving in 60 seconds. What do you do? If you want to work at Google, or any of America's best companies, you need to have an answer to this and other puzzling questions. Are You Smart Enough to Work at Google? guides readers through the surprising solutions to dozens of the most challenging interview questions. The book covers the importance of creative thinking, ways to get a leg up on the competition, what your Facebook page says about you, and much more. Are You Smart Enough to Work at Google? is a must-read for anyone who wants to succeed in today's job market.

    Using playing cards, a newspaper, the back of an envelope, a Sudoku, some pennies and of course a pair of socks, Rob Eastaway shows how maths can demonstrate its secret beauties in even the most mundane of everyday objects. Among the many fascinating curiosities in these pages, you will discover the strange link between limericks and rabbits, an apparently 'fair' coin game where the odds are massively in your favour, why tourist boards can't agree on where the centre of Britain is, and how simple paper folding can lead to a Jurassic Park monster. With plenty of ideas you'll want to test out for yourself, this engaging and refreshing look at mathematics is for everyone.

    Readers are provided once again with an instructive mix of mathematics, physics, statistics, and information theory.All the essential topics in information theory are covered in detail, including entropy, data compression, channel capacity, rate distortion, network information theory, and hypothesis testing. The authors provide readers with a solid understanding of the underlying theory and applications. Problem sets and a telegraphic summary at the end of each chapter further assist readers. The historical notes that follow each chapter recap the main points.The Second Edition features: * Chapters reorganized to improve teaching * 200 new problems * New material on source coding, portfolio theory, and feedback capacity * Updated referencesNow current and enhanced, the Second Edition of Elements of Information Theory remains the ideal textbook for upper-level undergraduate and graduate courses in electrical engineering, statistics, and telecommunications.

    Over the past five years, authors Dustin Boswell and Trevor Foucher have analyzed hundreds of examples of "bad code" (much of it their own) to determine why they’re bad and how they could be improved. Their conclusion? You need to write code that minimizes the time it would take someone else to understand it—even if that someone else is you.This book focuses on basic principles and practical techniques you can apply every time you write code. Using easy-to-digest code examples from different languages, each chapter dives into a different aspect of coding, and demonstrates how you can make your code easy to understand.Simplify naming, commenting, and formatting with tips that apply to every line of codeRefine your program’s loops, logic, and variables to reduce complexity and confusionAttack problems at the function level, such as reorganizing blocks of code to do one task at a timeWrite effective test code that is thorough and concise—as well as readable"Being aware of how the code you create affects those who look at it later is an important part of developing software. The authors did a great job in taking you through the different aspects of this challenge, explaining the details with instructive examples." —Michael Hunger, passionate Software Developer

    Data Governance should not be about command-and-control, yet at times could become invasive or threatening to the work, people and culture of an organization. Non-Invasive Data Governance™ focuses on formalizing existing accountability for the management of data and improving formal communications, protection, and quality efforts through effective stewarding of data resources. Non-Invasive Data Governance will provide you with a complete set of tools to help you deliver a successful data governance program. Learn how: Steward responsibilities can be identified and recognized, formalized, and engaged according to their existing responsibility rather than being assigned or handed to people as more work. Governance of information can be applied to existing policies, standard operating procedures, practices, and methodologies, rather than being introduced or emphasized as new processes or methods. Governance of information can support all data integration, risk management, business intelligence and master data management activities rather than imposing inconsistent rigor to these initiatives. A practical and non-threatening approach can be applied to governing information and promoting stewardship of data as a cross-organization asset. Best practices and key concepts of this non-threatening approach can be communicated effectively to leverage strengths and address opportunities to improve.

    New co-authors--Irl Bivens and Stephen Davis--from Davidson College; both distinguished educators and writers.* More emphasis on graphing calculators in exercises and examples, including CAS capabilities of graphing calculators.* More problems using tabular data and more emphasis on mathematical modeling.

    This authoritative book scrapes away these bad features to reveal a subset of JavaScript that's more reliable, readable, and maintainable than the language as a whole--a subset you can use to create truly extensible and efficient code.Considered the JavaScript expert by many people in the development community, author Douglas Crockford identifies the abundance of good ideas that make JavaScript an outstanding object-oriented programming language-ideas such as functions, loose typing, dynamic objects, and an expressive object literal notation. Unfortunately, these good ideas are mixed in with bad and downright awful ideas, like a programming model based on global variables.When Java applets failed, JavaScript became the language of the Web by default, making its popularity almost completely independent of its qualities as a programming language. In JavaScript: The Good Parts, Crockford finally digs through the steaming pile of good intentions and blunders to give you a detailed look at all the genuinely elegant parts of JavaScript, including:SyntaxObjectsFunctionsInheritanceArraysRegular expressionsMethodsStyleBeautiful featuresThe real beauty? As you move ahead with the subset of JavaScript that this book presents, you'll also sidestep the need to unlearn all the bad parts. Of course, if you want to find out more about the bad parts and how to use them badly, simply consult any other JavaScript book.With JavaScript: The Good Parts, you'll discover a beautiful, elegant, lightweight and highly expressive language that lets you create effective code, whether you're managing object libraries or just trying to get Ajax to run fast. If you develop sites or applications for the Web, this book is an absolute must.

    The content assumes no previous programming experience, other than knowing how to create a basic web page in HTML & CSS. You'll learn how to achieve techniques seen on many popular websites (such as adding animation, tabbed panels, content sliders, form validation, interactive galleries, and sorting data)..Introduces core programming concepts in JavaScript and jQueryUses clear descriptions, inspiring examples, and easy-to-follow diagramsTeaches you how to create scripts from scratch, and understand the thousands of JavaScripts, JavaScript APIs, and jQuery plugins that are available on the webDemonstrates the latest practices in progressive enhancement, cross-browser compatibility, and when you may be better off using CSS3If you're looking to create more enriching web experiences and express your creativity through code, then this is the book for you.This book is also available as part of a set in hardcover - Web Design with HTML, CSS, JavaScript and jQuery, 9781119038634 - and in softcover - Web Design with HTML, CSS, JavaScript and jQuery, 9781118907443.

    We nevertheless muddle through even in the absence of theories of how to act. But how do we do it?In Probably Approximately Correct, computer scientist Leslie Valiant presents a masterful synthesis of learning and evolution to show how both individually and collectively we not only survive, but prosper in a world as complex as our own. The key is “probably approximately correct” algorithms, a concept Valiant developed to explain how effective behavior can be learned. The model shows that pragmatically coping with a problem can provide a satisfactory solution in the absence of any theory of the problem. After all, finding a mate does not require a theory of mating. Valiant’s theory reveals the shared computational nature of evolution and learning, and sheds light on perennial questions such as nature versus nurture and the limits of artificial intelligence.Offering a powerful and elegant model that encompasses life’s complexity, Probably Approximately Correct has profound implications for how we think about behavior, cognition, biological evolution, and the possibilities and limits of human and machine intelligence.