From the classroom to the courtroom and from financial markets to supermarkets, Mlodinow's intriguing and illuminating look at how randomness, chance, and probability affect our daily lives will intrigue, awe, and inspire.

    Virtually everything in our lives is digital, numerical, or quantified. The story of how and where we got these numerals, which we so depend on, has for thousands of years been shrouded in mystery. Finding Zero is an adventure filled saga of Amir Aczel's lifelong obsession: to find the original sources of our numerals. Aczel has doggedly crisscrossed the ancient world, scouring dusty, moldy texts, cross examining so-called scholars who offered wildly differing sets of facts, and ultimately penetrating deep into a Cambodian jungle to find a definitive proof. Here, he takes the reader along for the ride.The history begins with the early Babylonian cuneiform numbers, followed by the later Greek and Roman letter numerals. Then Aczel asks the key question: where do the numbers we use today, the so-called Hindu-Arabic numerals, come from? It is this search that leads him to explore uncharted territory, to go on a grand quest into India, Thailand, Laos, Vietnam, and ultimately into the wilds of Cambodia. There he is blown away to find the earliest zero—the keystone of our entire system of numbers—on a crumbling, vine-covered wall of a seventh-century temple adorned with eaten-away erotic sculptures. While on this odyssey, Aczel meets a host of fascinating characters: academics in search of truth, jungle trekkers looking for adventure, surprisingly honest politicians, shameless smugglers, and treacherous archaeological thieves—who finally reveal where our numbers come from.

    In this heartfelt and passionate book, Frenkel shows that mathematics, far from occupying a specialist niche, goes to the heart of all matter, uniting us across cultures, time, and space.Love and Math tells two intertwined stories: of the wonders of mathematics and of one young man’s journey learning and living it. Having braved a discriminatory educational system to become one of the twenty-first century’s leading mathematicians, Frenkel now works on one of the biggest ideas to come out of math in the last 50 years: the Langlands Program. Considered by many to be a Grand Unified Theory of mathematics, the Langlands Program enables researchers to translate findings from one field to another so that they can solve problems, such as Fermat’s last theorem, that had seemed intractable before.At its core, Love and Math is a story about accessing a new way of thinking, which can enrich our lives and empower us to better understand the world and our place in it. It is an invitation to discover the magic hidden universe of mathematics.

    Readerswill find information on frequency distributions; mean, median, and mode; range, variance, and standard deviation;probability; and more.-Emphasizes Microsoft Excel for number-crunching and computationsDownload a sample chapter.

    The work of English clergyman, educator and Shakespearean scholar Edwin A. Abbott (1838-1926), it describes the journeys of A. Square [sic – ed.], a mathematician and resident of the two-dimensional Flatland, where women-thin, straight lines-are the lowliest of shapes, and where men may have any number of sides, depending on their social status.Through strange occurrences that bring him into contact with a host of geometric forms, Square has adventures in Spaceland (three dimensions), Lineland (one dimension) and Pointland (no dimensions) and ultimately entertains thoughts of visiting a land of four dimensions—a revolutionary idea for which he is returned to his two-dimensional world. Charmingly illustrated by the author, Flatland is not only fascinating reading, it is still a first-rate fictional introduction to the concept of the multiple dimensions of space. "Instructive, entertaining, and stimulating to the imagination." — Mathematics Teacher.

    It presents the important traditional content of mineralogy including crystallography, chemical bonding, controls on mineral structure, mineral stability, and crystal growth to provide a foundation that enables students to understand the nature and occurrence of minerals. Physical, optical, and X-ray powder diffraction techniques of mineral study are described in detail, and common chemical analytical methods are outlined as well. Detailed descriptions of over 100 common minerals are provided, and the geologic context within which these minerals occur is emphasized. Appendices provide tables and diagrams to help students with mineral identification, using both physical and optical properties. Numerous line drawings, photographs, and photomicrographs help make complex concepts understandable. Introduction to Mineralogy not only provides specific knowledge about minerals but also helps students develop the intellectual tools essential for a solid, scientific education. This comprehensive text is useful for undergraduate students in a wide range of mineralogy courses.

    For some of us, the word conjures up memories of ten-pound textbooks and visions of tedious abstract equations. And yet, in reality, calculus is fun, accessible, and surrounds us everywhere we go. In Everyday Calculus, Oscar Fernandez shows us how to see the math in our coffee, on the highway, and even in the night sky.Fernandez uses our everyday experiences to skillfully reveal the hidden calculus behind a typical day's events. He guides us through how math naturally emerges from simple observations-how hot coffee cools down, for example-and in discussions of over fifty familiar events and activities. Fernandez demonstrates that calculus can be used to explore practically any aspect of our lives, including the most effective number of hours to sleep and the fastest route to get to work. He also shows that calculus can be both useful-determining which seat at the theater leads to the best viewing experience, for instance-and fascinating-exploring topics such as time travel and the age of the universe. Throughout, Fernandez presents straightforward concepts, and no prior mathematical knowledge is required. For advanced math fans, the mathematical derivations are included in the appendixes.Whether you're new to mathematics or already a curious math enthusiast, Everyday Calculus invites you to spend a day discovering the calculus all around you. The book will convince even die-hard skeptics to view this area of math in a whole new way.

    This hugely informative and wonderfully entertaining little book answers one hundred essential questions about existence. It unravels the knotty, clarifies the conundrums and sheds light into dark corners. From winning the lottery, placing bets at the races and escaping from bears to sports, Shakespeare, Google, game theory, drunks, divorce settlements and dodgy accounting; from chaos to infinity and everything in between, 100 Essential Things You Didn't Know You Didn't Know has all the answers!

    Experience the incredible exploits of this young elk as he grows to become a great leader of his kind. His life is one of challenge and near tragedy as he struggles to survive the often violent life that is nature. Under the guidance of great bulls and mysterious spirit guides, this brave young bull grows to understand the never-ending circle of life and the oneness that he and all living things share. Enter the brutally honest world that is nature, and walk the journey of this courageous young bull as by his grandeur he brings all four-legged ones to a great oneness with their most feared enemy, man. You will laugh and cry as this young elk grows to become that which you an I hope someday to be.

    Pure Substances, The First And Second Laws, Gases, Psychrometrics, The Vapor, Gas And Refrigeration Cycles, Heat Transfer, Compressible Flow, Chemical Reactions, Fuels, And More Are Presented In Detail And Enhanced With Practical Applications. This Version Presents The Material Using SI Units And Has Ample Material On SI Conversion, Steam Tables, And A Mollier Diagram. A CD-ROM, Included With The Print Version Of The Text, Includes A Fully Functional Version Of Quickfield (Widely Used In Industry), As Well As Numerous Demonstrations And Simulations With MATLAB, And Other Third Party Software.

    Contains complete worked solutions to all regular exercises and computer exercises in the text; additional test questions and their solutions; an online laboratory manual for the computer algebra system GAP, with exercises tied to the book and an instructor answer key; and links on the author's website to true/false questions, flash cards, essays, software downloads, and other abstract algebra-related materials.

    From the first lesson to the last, each chapter introduces games of increasing complexity and then teaches the game theoretical tools necessary to solve them. Inside, you will find: All the basics fully explained, including pure strategy Nash equilibrium, mixed strategy Nash equilibrium, the mixed strategy algorithm, how to calculate payoffs, strict dominance, weak dominance, iterated elimination of strictly dominated strategies, iterated elimination of weakly dominated strategies, and more! Dozens of games solved, including the prisoner's dilemma, stag hunt, matching pennies, zero sum games, battle of the sexes/Bach or Stravinsky, chicken/snowdrift, pure coordination, deadlock, and safety in numbers! Crystal clear, line-by-line calculations of every step, with more than 200 images so you don't miss a thing! Tons of applications: war, trade, game shows, and duopolistic competition. Quick, efficient, and to the point, Game Theory 101: The Basics is perfect for introductory game theory, intermediate microeconomics, and political science.

    Devised in India in the 7th and 8th centuries and brought to North Africa by Muslim traders, the Hindu-Arabic system helped transform the West into the dominant force in science, technology, and commerce, leaving behind Muslim cultures which had long known it but had failed to see its potential.The young Italian, Leonardo of Pisa (better known today as Fibonacci), had learned the Hindu number system when he traveled to North Africa with his father, a customs agent. The book he created was Liber abbaci, the "Book of Calculation," and the revolution that followed its publication was enormous. Arithmetic made it possible for ordinary people to buy and sell goods, convert currencies, and keep accurate records of possessions more readily than ever before. Liber abbaci's publication led directly to large-scale international commerce and the scientific revolution of the Renaissance.Yet despite the ubiquity of his discoveries, Leonardo of Pisa remains an enigma. His name is best known today in association with an exercise in Liber abbaci whose solution gives rise to a sequence of numbers--the Fibonacci sequence--used by some to predict the rise and fall of financial markets, and evident in myriad biological structures.One of the great math popularizers of our time, Keith Devlin recreates the life and enduring legacy of an overlooked genius, and in the process makes clear how central numbers and mathematics are to our daily lives.

     In MATH WITH BAD DRAWINGS, Ben Orlin answers math's three big questions: Why do I need to learn this? When am I ever going to use it? Why is it so hard? The answers come in various forms-cartoons, drawings, jokes, and the stories and insights of an empathetic teacher who believes that math should belong to everyone.Eschewing the tired old curriculum that begins in the wading pool of addition and subtraction and progresses to the shark infested waters of calculus (AKA the Great Weed Out Course), Orlin instead shows us how to think like a mathematician by teaching us a new game of Tic-Tac-Toe, how to understand an economic crisis by rolling a pair of dice, and the mathematical reason why you should never buy a second lottery ticket. Every example in the book is illustrated with his trademark "bad drawings," which convey both his humor and his message with perfect pitch and clarity. Organized by unconventional but compelling topics such as "Statistics: The Fine Art of Honest Lying," "Design: The Geometry of Stuff That Works," and "Probability: The Mathematics of Maybe," MATH WITH BAD DRAWINGS is a perfect read for fans of illustrated popular science.

    In Pricing the Future, financial economist George G. Szpiro tells the fascinating stories of the pioneers of mathematical finance who conducted the search for the elusive options pricing formula. From the broker’s assistant who published the first mathematical explanation of financial markets to Albert Einstein and other scientists who looked for a way to explain the movement of atoms and molecules, Pricing the Future retraces the historical and intellectual developments that ultimately led to the widespread use of mathematical models to drive investment strategies on Wall Street.