Book picks similar to
What Can Be Computed?: A Practical Guide to the Theory of Computation by John MacCormick
computer-science
computation
teaching
sciences-and-math
Philosophical Devices: Proofs, Probabilities, Possibilities, and Sets
David Papineau - 2012
Notions like denumerability, modal scope distinction, Bayesian conditionalization, and logical completeness are usually only elucidated deep within difficultspecialist texts. By offering simple explanations that by-pass much irrelevant and boring detail, Philosophical Devices is able to cover a wealth of material that is normally only available to specialists.The book contains four sections, each of three chapters. The first section is about sets and numbers, starting with the membership relation and ending with the generalized continuum hypothesis. The second is about analyticity, a prioricity, and necessity. The third is about probability, outliningthe difference between objective and subjective probability and exploring aspects of conditionalization and correlation. The fourth deals with metalogic, focusing on the contrast between syntax and semantics, and finishing with a sketch of Godel's theorem.Philosophical Devices will be useful for university students who have got past the foothills of philosophy and are starting to read more widely, but it does not assume any prior expertise. All the issues discussed are intrinsically interesting, and often downright fascinating. It can be read withpleasure and profit by anybody who is curious about the technical infrastructure of contemporary philosophy.
Decision Trees and Random Forests: A Visual Introduction For Beginners: A Simple Guide to Machine Learning with Decision Trees
Chris Smith - 2017
They are also used in countless industries such as medicine, manufacturing and finance to help companies make better decisions and reduce risk. Whether coded or scratched out by hand, both algorithms are powerful tools that can make a significant impact. This book is a visual introduction for beginners that unpacks the fundamentals of decision trees and random forests. If you want to dig into the basics with a visual twist plus create your own machine learning algorithms in Python, this book is for you.
Probability Theory: The Logic of Science
E.T. Jaynes - 1999
It discusses new results, along with applications of probability theory to a variety of problems. The book contains many exercises and is suitable for use as a textbook on graduate-level courses involving data analysis. Aimed at readers already familiar with applied mathematics at an advanced undergraduate level or higher, it is of interest to scientists concerned with inference from incomplete information.
The Essential Turing: Seminal Writings in Computing, Logic, Philosophy, Artificial Intelligence, and Artificial Life Plus the Secrets of Enigma
Alan Turing - 2004
In 1935, aged 22, he developed the mathematical theory upon which all subsequent stored-program digital computers are modeled.At the outbreak of hostilities with Germany in September 1939, he joined the Government Codebreaking team at Bletchley Park, Buckinghamshire and played a crucial role in deciphering Engima, the code used by the German armed forces to protect their radio communications. Turing's work on the versionof Enigma used by the German navy was vital to the battle for supremacy in the North Atlantic. He also contributed to the attack on the cyphers known as Fish, which were used by the German High Command for the encryption of signals during the latter part of the war. His contribution helped toshorten the war in Europe by an estimated two years.After the war, his theoretical work led to the development of Britain's first computers at the National Physical Laboratory and the Royal Society Computing Machine Laboratory at Manchester University.Turing was also a founding father of modern cognitive science, theorizing that the cortex at birth is an unorganized machine which through training becomes organized into a universal machine or something like it. He went on to develop the use of computers to model biological growth, launchingthe discipline now referred to as Artificial Life.The papers in this book are the key works for understanding Turing's phenomenal contribution across all these fields. The collection includes Turing's declassified wartime Treatise on the Enigma; letters from Turing to Churchill and to codebreakers; lectures, papers, and broadcasts which opened upthe concept of AI and its implications; and the paper which formed the genesis of the investigation of Artifical Life.
The Golden Ticket: P, Np, and the Search for the Impossible
Lance Fortnow - 2013
Simply stated, it asks whether every problem whose solution can be quickly checked by computer can also be quickly solved by computer. The Golden Ticket provides a nontechnical introduction to P-NP, its rich history, and its algorithmic implications for everything we do with computers and beyond. Lance Fortnow traces the history and development of P-NP, giving examples from a variety of disciplines, including economics, physics, and biology. He explores problems that capture the full difficulty of the P-NP dilemma, from discovering the shortest route through all the rides at Disney World to finding large groups of friends on Facebook. The Golden Ticket explores what we truly can and cannot achieve computationally, describing the benefits and unexpected challenges of this compelling problem.
Quantum Mechanics: Concepts and Applications
Nouredine Zettili - 2001
It combines the essential elements of the theory with the practical applications. Containing many examples and problems with step-by-step solutions, this cleverly structured text assists the reader in mastering the machinery of quantum mechanics. * A comprehensive introduction to the subject * Includes over 65 solved examples integrated throughout the text * Includes over 154 fully solved multipart problems * Offers an indepth treatment of the practical mathematical tools of quantum mechanics * Accessible to teachers as well as students
Gödel, Escher, Bach
Agnes F. Vandome - 2010
C. Escher and composer Johann Sebastian Bach, discussing common themes in their work and lives. At a deeper level, the book is a detailed and subtle exposition of concepts fundamental to mathematics, symmetry, and intelligence. Through illustration and analysis, the book discusses how self-reference and formal rules allow systems to acquire meaning despite being made of "meaningless" elements. It also discusses what it means to communicate, how knowledge can be represented and stored, the methods and limitations of symbolic representation, and even the fundamental notion of "meaning" itself. In response to confusion over the book's theme, Hofstadter has emphasized that GEB is not about mathematics, art, and music but rather about how cognition and thinking emerge from well-hidden neurological mechanisms.
Data Analysis Using Regression and Multilevel/Hierarchical Models
Andrew Gelman - 2006
The book introduces a wide variety of models, whilst at the same time instructing the reader in how to fit these models using available software packages. The book illustrates the concepts by working through scores of real data examples that have arisen from the authors' own applied research, with programming codes provided for each one. Topics covered include causal inference, including regression, poststratification, matching, regression discontinuity, and instrumental variables, as well as multilevel logistic regression and missing-data imputation. Practical tips regarding building, fitting, and understanding are provided throughout. Author resource page: http: //www.stat.columbia.edu/ gelman/arm/
Mathematics: The Loss of Certainty
Morris Kline - 1980
Mathematics: The Loss of Certainty refutes that myth.
Bridge to Terabithia: Music From and Inspired By
Aaron Zigman - 2007
This is the Songbook companion to the soundtrack of the Disney movie adaptation of that novel.Ten selections from the Disney/Walden Media soundtrack featuring songs by today's top pop stars and the score by Aaron Zigman. Includes: Another Layer * I Learned from You * Keep Your Mind Wide Open * Look Through My Eyes * A Place for Us * Right Here * Seeing Terabithia * Shine * Try * When You Love Someone.
Complex Adaptive Systems: An Introduction to Computational Models of Social Life
John H. Miller - 2007
Such systems--whether political parties, stock markets, or ant colonies--present some of the most intriguing theoretical and practical challenges confronting the social sciences. Engagingly written, and balancing technical detail with intuitive explanations, Complex Adaptive Systems focuses on the key tools and ideas that have emerged in the field since the mid-1990s, as well as the techniques needed to investigate such systems. It provides a detailed introduction to concepts such as emergence, self-organized criticality, automata, networks, diversity, adaptation, and feedback. It also demonstrates how complex adaptive systems can be explored using methods ranging from mathematics to computational models of adaptive agents. John Miller and Scott Page show how to combine ideas from economics, political science, biology, physics, and computer science to illuminate topics in organization, adaptation, decentralization, and robustness. They also demonstrate how the usual extremes used in modeling can be fruitfully transcended.
The Origins of Order: Self-Organization and Selection in Evolution
Stuart A. Kauffman - 1993
The book drives to the heart of the exciting debate on the origins of life and maintenance of order in complex biological systems. It focuses on the concept of self-organization: the spontaneous emergence of order that is widely observed throughout nature Kauffman argues that self-organization plays an important role in the Darwinian process of natural selection. Yet until now no systematic effort has been made to incorporate the concept of self-organization into evolutionary theory. The construction requirements which permit complex systems to adapt are poorly understood, as is the extent to which selection itself can yield systems able to adapt more successfully. This book explores these themes. It shows how complex systems, contrary to expectations, can spontaneously exhibit stunning degrees of order, and how this order, in turn, is essential for understanding the emergence and development of life on Earth. Topics include the new biotechnology of applied molecular evolution, with its important implications for developing new drugs and vaccines; the balance between order and chaos observed in many naturally occurring systems; new insights concerning the predictive power of statistical mechanics in biology; and other major issues. Indeed, the approaches investigated here may prove to be the new center around which biological science itself will evolve. The work is written for all those interested in the cutting edge of research in the life sciences.
An Introduction to Non-Classical Logic
Graham Priest - 2001
Part 1, on propositional logic, is the old Introduction, but contains much new material. Part 2 is entirely new, and covers quantification and identity for all the logics in Part 1. The material is unified by the underlying theme of world semantics. All of the topics are explained clearly using devices such as tableau proofs, and their relation to current philosophical issues and debates are discussed. Students with a basic understanding of classical logic will find this book an invaluable introduction to an area that has become of central importance in both logic and philosophy. It will also interest people working in mathematics and computer science who wish to know about the area.
Alan Turing: Unlocking the Enigma
David Boyle - 2014
Turing’s openness about his homosexuality at a time when it was an imprisonable offense ultimately led to his untimely lo death at the age of only forty-one. In Alan Turing: Unlocking the Enigma, David Boyle reveals the mysteries behind the man and his remarkable career. Aged just 22, Turing was elected a fellow at King's College, Cambridge on the strength of a dissertation in which he proved the central limit theorem. By the age of 33, he had been awarded the OBE by King George VI for his wartime services: Turing was instrumental in cracking the Nazi Enigma machines at the top secret code breaking establishment at Bletchley Park during the Second World War.But his achievements were to be tragically overshadowed by the paranoia of the post-War years. Hounded for his supposedly subversive views and for his sexuality, Turing was prosecuted in 1952, and forced to accept the humiliation of hormone treatment to avoid a prison sentence. Just two years later, at the age of 41 he was dead. The verdict: cyanide poisoning.Was Turing’s death accidental as his mother always claimed? Or did persistent persecution drive him to take him own life?Alan Turing: Unlocking the Enigma seeks to find the man behind the science, illuminating the life of a person who is still a shadowy presence behind his brilliant achievements.
Introduction to Computation and Programming Using Python
John V. Guttag - 2013
It provides students with skills that will enable them to make productive use of computational techniques, including some of the tools and techniques of "data science" for using computation to model and interpret data. The book is based on an MIT course (which became the most popular course offered through MIT's OpenCourseWare) and was developed for use not only in a conventional classroom but in in a massive open online course (or MOOC) offered by the pioneering MIT--Harvard collaboration edX.Students are introduced to Python and the basics of programming in the context of such computational concepts and techniques as exhaustive enumeration, bisection search, and efficient approximation algorithms. The book does not require knowledge of mathematics beyond high school algebra, but does assume that readers are comfortable with rigorous thinking and not intimidated by mathematical concepts. Although it covers such traditional topics as computational complexity and simple algorithms, the book focuses on a wide range of topics not found in most introductory texts, including information visualization, simulations to model randomness, computational techniques to understand data, and statistical techniques that inform (and misinform) as well as two related but relatively advanced topics: optimization problems and dynamic programming.Introduction to Computation and Programming Using Python can serve as a stepping-stone to more advanced computer science courses, or as a basic grounding in computational problem solving for students in other disciplines.