The Science of Human Nature: A Psychology for Beginners


William Henry Pyle - 1917
    You can not study human nature from a book, you must study yourself and your neighbors. This book may help you to know what to look for and to understand what you find, but it can do little more than this. It is true, this text gives you many facts learned by psychologists, but you must verify the statements, or at least see their significance to you, or they will be of no worth to you. However, the facts considered here, properly understood and assimilated, ought to prove of great value to you. But perhaps of greater value will be the psychological frame of mind or attitude which you should acquire. The psychological attitude is that of seeking to find and understand the causes of human action, and the causes, consequences, and significance of the processes of the human mind. If your first course in psychology teaches you to look for these things, gives you some skill in finding them and in using the knowledge after you have it, your study should be quite worth while.

The Spark of Learning: Energizing the College Classroom with the Science of Emotion


Sarah Rose Cavanagh - 2016
    The field of education, however, is beginning to awaken to the potential power of emotions to fuel learning, informed by contributions from psychology and neuroscience. In friendly, readable prose, Sarah Rose Cavanagh argues that if you as an educator want to capture your students' attention, harness their working memory, bolster their long-term retention, and enhance their motivation, you should consider the emotional impact of your teaching style and course design. To make this argument, she brings to bear a wide range of evidence from the study of education, psychology, and neuroscience, and she provides practical examples of successful classroom activities from a variety of disciplines in secondary and higher education.

The Improbability Principle: Why Coincidences, Miracles, and Rare Events Happen Every Day


David J. Hand - 2014
    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.

The Essential John Nash


John F. Nash - 2001
    Since then, Sylvia Nasar's celebrated biography A Beautiful Mind, the basis of a new major motion picture, has revealed the man. The Essential John Nash reveals his work--in his own words. This book presents, for the first time, the full range of Nash's diverse contributions not only to game theory, for which he received the Nobel, but to pure mathematics--from Riemannian geometry and partial differential equations--in which he commands even greater acclaim among academics. Included are nine of Nash's most influential papers, most of them written over the decade beginning in 1949.From 1959 until his astonishing remission three decades later, the man behind the concepts "Nash equilibrium" and "Nash bargaining"--concepts that today pervade not only economics but nuclear strategy and contract talks in major league sports--had lived in the shadow of a condition diagnosed as paranoid schizophrenia. In the introduction to this book, Nasar recounts how Nash had, by the age of thirty, gone from being a wunderkind at Princeton and a rising mathematical star at MIT to the depths of mental illness.In his preface, Harold Kuhn offers personal insights on his longtime friend and colleague; and in introductions to several of Nash's papers, he provides scholarly context. In an afterword, Nash describes his current work, and he discusses an error in one of his papers. A photo essay chronicles Nash's career from his student days in Princeton to the present. Also included are Nash's Nobel citation and autobiography.The Essential John Nash makes it plain why one of Nash's colleagues termed his style of intellectual inquiry as "like lightning striking." All those inspired by Nash's dazzling ideas will welcome this unprecedented opportunity to trace these ideas back to the exceptional mind they came from.

Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game


Michael Lewis - 2003
    Conventional wisdom long held that big name, highly athletic hitters and young pitchers with rocket arms were the ticket to success. But Beane and his staff, buoyed by massive amounts of carefully interpreted statistical data, believed that wins could be had by more affordable methods such as hitters with high on-base percentage and pitchers who get lots of ground outs. Given this information and a tight budget, Beane defied tradition and his own scouting department to build winning teams of young affordable players and inexpensive castoff veterans. Lewis was in the room with the A's top management as they spent the summer of 2002 adding and subtracting players and he provides outstanding play-by-play. In the June player draft, Beane acquired nearly every prospect he coveted (few of whom were coveted by other teams) and at the July trading deadline he engaged in a tense battle of nerves to acquire a lefty reliever. Besides being one of the most insider accounts ever written about baseball, Moneyball is populated with fascinating characters. We meet Jeremy Brown, an overweight college catcher who most teams project to be a 15th round draft pick (Beane takes him in the first). Sidearm pitcher Chad Bradford is plucked from the White Sox triple-A club to be a key set-up man and catcher Scott Hatteberg is rebuilt as a first baseman. But the most interesting character is Beane himself. A speedy athletic can't-miss prospect who somehow missed, Beane reinvents himself as a front-office guru, relying on players completely unlike, say, Billy Beane. Lewis, one of the top nonfiction writers of his era (Liar's Poker, The New New Thing), offers highly accessible explanations of baseball stats and his roadmap of Beane's economic approach makes Moneyball an appealing reading experience for business people and sports fans alike. --John Moe

Irrationality


Stuart Sutherland - 1992
    In this iconoclastic book Stuart Sutherland analyses causes of irrationality and examines why we are irrational, the different kinds of irrationality, the damage it does us and the possible cures.

Signals and Systems


A. Anand Kumar - 2011
    Written with student centred, pedagogically driven approach, the text provides a self-contained introduction to the theory of signals and systems. This book looks at the concepts of systems, and also examines signals and the way that signals interact with physical systems. It covers topics ranging from basic signals and systems to signal analysis, properties of continuous-time Fourier transforms including Fourier transforms of standard signals, signal transmission through linear systems, relation between convolution and correlation of signals, sampling theorems and techniques, and transform analysis of LTI systems. All the solved and unsolved problems in this book are designed to illustrate the topics in a clear way.

Surgery, The Ultimate Placebo: A Surgeon Cuts through the Evidence


Ian Harris - 2016
    In this book you will see how commonly performed operations can be found to be useless or even harmful when properly evaluated. That these claims come from an experienced, practicing orthopedic surgeon who performs many of these operations himself, makes the unsettling argument particularly compelling. Of course no surgeon is recommending invasive surgery in bad faith, but Ian Harris argues that the evidence for the success for many common operations, including knee arthroscopies, back fusion or cardiac stenting, become current accepted practice without full examination of the evidence.

Essentials of Statistics


Mario F. Triola - 2001
    What do you want to learn? Discover the Power of Real Data Mario Triola remains the market-leading statistics author by engaging readers of each edition with an abundance of real data in the examples, applications, and exercises. Statistics is all around us, and Triola helps readers understand how this course will impact their lives beyond the classroom–as consumers, citizens, and professionals. Essentials of Statistics, Fourth Edition is a more economical and streamlined introductory statistics text. Drawn from Triola’s Elementary Statistics, Eleventh Edition, this text provides the same student-friendly approach with material presented in a real-world context. The Fourth Edition contains more than 1,700 exercises (18% more than the previous edition); 89% are new and 81% use real data. The book also contains hundreds of examples; 86% are new and 92% use real data. By analyzing real data, readers are able to connect abstract concepts to the world at large, teaching them to think statistically and apply their conceptual understanding using the same methods that professional statisticians employ. Datasets and other resources (where applicable) for this book are available here.

The Physics of Miracles: Tapping in to the Field of Consciousness Potential


Richard Bartlett - 2009
    Bartlett builds upon his popular seminars to teach us how to access the discovery he has made -- a process that merges the science of subtle energy with our innate imaginations to produce measurable results. By applying forces known to modern physics, you will learn to tap into states of healthy awarenes from different moments -- in essence, travel in time -- and bring them into the present for immediate, profound results. As Dr. Bartlett shows, this practice requires no special training and produces transformation in the blink of an eye, giving you the key to a whole new level of power, awareness, and potential in your life. Filled with stories of success and discussing seemingly implausible topics such as alternate universes, invisibility, and levitation, The Physics of Miracles is not only fascinating but also instantly applicable. For millions of people looking for empowerment in an increasingly disconnected, impersonal world, Dr. Bartlett shares his experience with these phenomena that will reshape the way people think about their own place in the universe.

The Half-life of Facts: Why Everything We Know Has an Expiration Date


Samuel Arbesman - 2012
    Smoking has gone from doctor recommended to deadly. We used to think the Earth was the center of the universe and that Pluto was a planet. For decades, we were convinced that the brontosaurus was a real dinosaur. In short, what we know about the world is constantly changing.   But it turns out there’s an order to the state of knowledge, an explanation for how we know what we know. Samuel Arbesman is an expert in the field of scientometrics—literally the science of science. Knowl­edge in most fields evolves systematically and predict­ably, and this evolution unfolds in a fascinating way that can have a powerful impact on our lives.   Doctors with a rough idea of when their knowl­edge is likely to expire can be better equipped to keep up with the latest research. Companies and govern­ments that understand how long new discoveries take to develop can improve decisions about allocating resources. And by tracing how and when language changes, each of us can better bridge gen­erational gaps in slang and dialect.   Just as we know that a chunk of uranium can break down in a measurable amount of time—a radioactive half-life—so too any given field’s change in knowledge can be measured concretely. We can know when facts in aggregate are obsolete, the rate at which new facts are created, and even how facts spread.   Arbesman takes us through a wide variety of fields, including those that change quickly, over the course of a few years, or over the span of centuries. He shows that much of what we know consists of “mesofacts”—facts that change at a middle timescale, often over a single human lifetime. Throughout, he of­fers intriguing examples about the face of knowledge: what English majors can learn from a statistical analysis of The Canterbury Tales, why it’s so hard to measure a mountain, and why so many parents still tell kids to eat their spinach because it’s rich in iron.   The Half-life of Facts is a riveting journey into the counterintuitive fabric of knowledge. It can help us find new ways to measure the world while accepting the limits of how much we can know with certainty.

Invitation to Psychology


Carole Wade - 1998
    In clear, lively, warm prose, this edition continues the title's integration of gender, culture, and ethnicity. By the end, readers will learn how to interpret research and to address and resolve controversies. MyPsychLab is an integral part of the Wade/Tavris/Garry program. Engaging activities and assessments provide a teaching and learning system that helps students think like a psychologist. With MyPsychLab, students can watch videos on psychological research and applications, participate in virtual classic experiments, and develop critical thinking skills through writing. "Invitation to Psychology, "5/e is available in a new DSM-5 Updated edition. To learn more, click here. This title is available in a variety of formats - digital and print. Pearson offers its titles on the devices students love through Pearson's MyLab products, CourseSmart, Amazon, and more.

The Great Book Of Puzzles And Teasers


George J. Summers - 1989
    Summers. He brings out fascinating challenges in situations as common as a game of tic-tac-toe or tennis or as strange as a land of habitual Truth tellers and Liars. These puzzles and teasers are constructed with clues, helpful solution and detailed answers that show you step-by-step how a teaser or a puzzle is unraveled.

Approaching the Natural: A Health Manifesto


Sid Garza-Hillman - 2012
    Sid’s philosophy is simple: the closer the human species moves by degrees to its natural design, the healthier and therefore happier it will be.In the years he has been a practicing nutritionist and health coach, Sid has honed an approach that makes achieving health and happiness a real possibility for virtually everyone. He has done this by addressing both the mental and physical aspects of achieving sustainable long-term health, and goes well beyond what any quick-fix diet/health plan can ever achieve. He passionately argues that health profoundly affects our happiness, and vice-versa, and applies his philosophy to nutrition, exercise, the mind, the family, and the world as a whole.Approaching the Natural: A Health Manifesto is accessible, clear, edgy and humorous. Sid distills his years of research into a book readers will want to carry with them as a quick reference when negotiating our most unnatural world – especially gen-x and gen-y’ers for whom there is a substantial lack of result-oriented health books that are this easy and actually fun to read.

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.