Number Theory


George E. Andrews - 1994
    In studying number theory from such a perspective, mathematics majors are spared repetition and provided with new insights, while other students benefit from the consequent simplicity of the proofs for many theorems.Among the topics covered in this accessible, carefully designed introduction are multiplicativity-divisibility, including the fundamental theorem of arithmetic, combinatorial and computational number theory, congruences, arithmetic functions, primitive roots and prime numbers. Later chapters offer lucid treatments of quadratic congruences, additivity (including partition theory) and geometric number theory.Of particular importance in this text is the author's emphasis on the value of numerical examples in number theory and the role of computers in obtaining such examples. Exercises provide opportunities for constructing numerical tables with or without a computer. Students can then derive conjectures from such numerical tables, after which relevant theorems will seem natural and well-motivated..

Pragmatic Thinking and Learning: Refactor Your Wetware


Andy Hunt - 2008
    Not in an editor, IDE, or design tool. You're well educated on how to work with software and hardware, but what about wetware--our own brains? Learning new skills and new technology is critical to your career, and it's all in your head. In this book by Andy Hunt, you'll learn how our brains are wired, and how to take advantage of your brain's architecture. You'll learn new tricks and tips to learn more, faster, and retain more of what you learn. You need a pragmatic approach to thinking and learning. You need to Refactor Your Wetware. Programmers have to learn constantly; not just the stereotypical new technologies, but also the problem domain of the application, the whims of the user community, the quirks of your teammates, the shifting sands of the industry, and the evolving characteristics of the project itself as it is built. We'll journey together through bits of cognitive and neuroscience, learning and behavioral theory. You'll see some surprising aspects of how our brains work, and how you can take advantage of the system to improve your own learning and thinking skills.In this book you'll learn how to:Use the Dreyfus Model of Skill Acquisition to become more expertLeverage the architecture of the brain to strengthen different thinking modesAvoid common "known bugs" in your mindLearn more deliberately and more effectivelyManage knowledge more efficientlyPrinted in full color.

The Art and Craft of Problem Solving


Paul Zeitz - 1999
    Readers are encouraged to do math rather than just study it. The author draws upon his experience as a coach for the International Mathematics Olympiad to give students an enhanced sense of mathematics and the ability to investigate and solve problems.

Data Smart: Using Data Science to Transform Information into Insight


John W. Foreman - 2013
    Major retailers are predicting everything from when their customers are pregnant to when they want a new pair of Chuck Taylors. It's a brave new world where seemingly meaningless data can be transformed into valuable insight to drive smart business decisions.But how does one exactly do data science? Do you have to hire one of these priests of the dark arts, the "data scientist," to extract this gold from your data? Nope.Data science is little more than using straight-forward steps to process raw data into actionable insight. And in Data Smart, author and data scientist John Foreman will show you how that's done within the familiar environment of a spreadsheet. Why a spreadsheet? It's comfortable! You get to look at the data every step of the way, building confidence as you learn the tricks of the trade. Plus, spreadsheets are a vendor-neutral place to learn data science without the hype. But don't let the Excel sheets fool you. This is a book for those serious about learning the analytic techniques, the math and the magic, behind big data.Each chapter will cover a different technique in a spreadsheet so you can follow along: - Mathematical optimization, including non-linear programming and genetic algorithms- Clustering via k-means, spherical k-means, and graph modularity- Data mining in graphs, such as outlier detection- Supervised AI through logistic regression, ensemble models, and bag-of-words models- Forecasting, seasonal adjustments, and prediction intervals through monte carlo simulation- Moving from spreadsheets into the R programming languageYou get your hands dirty as you work alongside John through each technique. But never fear, the topics are readily applicable and the author laces humor throughout. You'll even learn what a dead squirrel has to do with optimization modeling, which you no doubt are dying to know.

Journey through Genius: The Great Theorems of Mathematics


William Dunham - 1990
    Now William Dunham gives them the attention they deserve.Dunham places each theorem within its historical context and explores the very human and often turbulent life of the creator — from Archimedes, the absentminded theoretician whose absorption in his work often precluded eating or bathing, to Gerolamo Cardano, the sixteenth-century mathematician whose accomplishments flourished despite a bizarre array of misadventures, to the paranoid genius of modern times, Georg Cantor. He also provides step-by-step proofs for the theorems, each easily accessible to readers with no more than a knowledge of high school mathematics.A rare combination of the historical, biographical, and mathematical, Journey Through Genius is a fascinating introduction to a neglected field of human creativity.

The Fractal Geometry of Nature


Benoît B. Mandelbrot - 1977
    The complexity of nature's shapes differs in kind, not merely degree, from that of the shapes of ordinary geometry, the geometry of fractal shapes.Now that the field has expanded greatly with many active researchers, Mandelbrot presents the definitive overview of the origins of his ideas and their new applications. The Fractal Geometry of Nature is based on his highly acclaimed earlier work, but has much broader and deeper coverage and more extensive illustrations.

The Signal and the Noise: Why So Many Predictions Fail—But Some Don't


Nate Silver - 2012
    He solidified his standing as the nation's foremost political forecaster with his near perfect prediction of the 2012 election. Silver is the founder and editor in chief of FiveThirtyEight.com. Drawing on his own groundbreaking work, Silver examines the world of prediction, investigating how we can distinguish a true signal from a universe of noisy data. Most predictions fail, often at great cost to society, because most of us have a poor understanding of probability and uncertainty. Both experts and laypeople mistake more confident predictions for more accurate ones. But overconfidence is often the reason for failure. If our appreciation of uncertainty improves, our predictions can get better too. This is the "prediction paradox": The more humility we have about our ability to make predictions, the more successful we can be in planning for the future.In keeping with his own aim to seek truth from data, Silver visits the most successful forecasters in a range of areas, from hurricanes to baseball, from the poker table to the stock market, from Capitol Hill to the NBA. He explains and evaluates how these forecasters think and what bonds they share. What lies behind their success? Are they good-or just lucky? What patterns have they unraveled? And are their forecasts really right? He explores unanticipated commonalities and exposes unexpected juxtapositions. And sometimes, it is not so much how good a prediction is in an absolute sense that matters but how good it is relative to the competition. In other cases, prediction is still a very rudimentary-and dangerous-science.Silver observes that the most accurate forecasters tend to have a superior command of probability, and they tend to be both humble and hardworking. They distinguish the predictable from the unpredictable, and they notice a thousand little details that lead them closer to the truth. Because of their appreciation of probability, they can distinguish the signal from the noise.

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.

Automate the Boring Stuff with Python: Practical Programming for Total Beginners


Al Sweigart - 2014
    But what if you could have your computer do them for you?In "Automate the Boring Stuff with Python," you'll learn how to use Python to write programs that do in minutes what would take you hours to do by hand no prior programming experience required. Once you've mastered the basics of programming, you'll create Python programs that effortlessly perform useful and impressive feats of automation to: Search for text in a file or across multiple filesCreate, update, move, and rename files and foldersSearch the Web and download online contentUpdate and format data in Excel spreadsheets of any sizeSplit, merge, watermark, and encrypt PDFsSend reminder emails and text notificationsFill out online formsStep-by-step instructions walk you through each program, and practice projects at the end of each chapter challenge you to improve those programs and use your newfound skills to automate similar tasks.Don't spend your time doing work a well-trained monkey could do. Even if you've never written a line of code, you can make your computer do the grunt work. Learn how in "Automate the Boring Stuff with Python.""

A Course of Pure Mathematics


G.H. Hardy - 1908
    Since its publication in 1908, it has been a classic work to which successive generations of budding mathematicians have turned at the beginning of their undergraduate courses. In its pages, Hardy combines the enthusiasm of a missionary with the rigor of a purist in his exposition of the fundamental ideas of the differential and integral calculus, of the properties of infinite series and of other topics involving the notion of limit.

Information Theory, Inference and Learning Algorithms


David J.C. MacKay - 2002
    These topics lie at the heart of many exciting areas of contemporary science and engineering - communication, signal processing, data mining, machine learning, pattern recognition, computational neuroscience, bioinformatics, and cryptography. This textbook introduces theory in tandem with applications. Information theory is taught alongside practical communication systems, such as arithmetic coding for data compression and sparse-graph codes for error-correction. A toolbox of inference techniques, including message-passing algorithms, Monte Carlo methods, and variational approximations, are developed alongside applications of these tools to clustering, convolutional codes, independent component analysis, and neural networks. The final part of the book describes the state of the art in error-correcting codes, including low-density parity-check codes, turbo codes, and digital fountain codes -- the twenty-first century standards for satellite communications, disk drives, and data broadcast. Richly illustrated, filled with worked examples and over 400 exercises, some with detailed solutions, David MacKay's groundbreaking book is ideal for self-learning and for undergraduate or graduate courses. Interludes on crosswords, evolution, and sex provide entertainment along the way. In sum, this is a textbook on information, communication, and coding for a new generation of students, and an unparalleled entry point into these subjects for professionals in areas as diverse as computational biology, financial engineering, and machine learning.

The Calculus Diaries: How Math Can Help You Lose Weight, Win in Vegas, and Survive a Zombie Apocalypse


Jennifer Ouellette - 2010
    But then the English-major-turned-award-winning-science-writer had a change of heart and decided to revisit the equations and formulas that had haunted her for years. The Calculus Diaries is the fun and fascinating account of her year spent confronting her math phobia head on. With wit and verve, Ouellette shows how she learned to apply calculus to everything from gas mileage to dieting, from the rides at Disneyland to shooting craps in Vegas-proving that even the mathematically challenged can learn the fundamentals of the universal language.

The Annotated Turing: A Guided Tour Through Alan Turing's Historic Paper on Computability and the Turing Machine


Charles Petzold - 2008
    Turing Mathematician Alan Turing invented an imaginary computer known as the Turing Machine; in an age before computers, he explored the concept of what it meant to be "computable," creating the field of computability theory in the process, a foundation of present-day computer programming.The book expands Turing's original 36-page paper with additional background chapters and extensive annotations; the author elaborates on and clarifies many of Turing's statements, making the original difficult-to-read document accessible to present day programmers, computer science majors, math geeks, and others.Interwoven into the narrative are the highlights of Turing's own life: his years at Cambridge and Princeton, his secret work in cryptanalysis during World War II, his involvement in seminal computer projects, his speculations about artificial intelligence, his arrest and prosecution for the crime of "gross indecency," and his early death by apparent suicide at the age of 41.

Data Science for Business: What you need to know about data mining and data-analytic thinking


Foster Provost - 2013
    This guide also helps you understand the many data-mining techniques in use today.Based on an MBA course Provost has taught at New York University over the past ten years, Data Science for Business provides examples of real-world business problems to illustrate these principles. You’ll not only learn how to improve communication between business stakeholders and data scientists, but also how participate intelligently in your company’s data science projects. You’ll also discover how to think data-analytically, and fully appreciate how data science methods can support business decision-making.Understand how data science fits in your organization—and how you can use it for competitive advantageTreat data as a business asset that requires careful investment if you’re to gain real valueApproach business problems data-analytically, using the data-mining process to gather good data in the most appropriate wayLearn general concepts for actually extracting knowledge from dataApply data science principles when interviewing data science job candidates

CK-12 Calculus


CK-12 Foundation - 2010
    Topics include: Limits, Derivatives, and Integrations.