Book picks similar to
Artificial Cognitive Systems: A Primer by David Vernon


iq
technology
topic-cognitive-science
artificial-intelligence

Prescott, Harley, Klein's Microbiology


Joanne Willey - 2007
    Because of this balance, the Seventh Edition of Microbiology is appropriate for microbiology majors and mixed majors courses. The new authors have focused on readability, artwork, and the integration of several key themes (including evolution, ecology and diversity) throughout the text, making an already superior text even better.

Bayesian Methods for Hackers: Probabilistic Programming and Bayesian Inference


Cameron Davidson-Pilon - 2014
    However, most discussions of Bayesian inference rely on intensely complex mathematical analyses and artificial examples, making it inaccessible to anyone without a strong mathematical background. Now, though, Cameron Davidson-Pilon introduces Bayesian inference from a computational perspective, bridging theory to practice-freeing you to get results using computing power. Bayesian Methods for Hackers illuminates Bayesian inference through probabilistic programming with the powerful PyMC language and the closely related Python tools NumPy, SciPy, and Matplotlib. Using this approach, you can reach effective solutions in small increments, without extensive mathematical intervention. Davidson-Pilon begins by introducing the concepts underlying Bayesian inference, comparing it with other techniques and guiding you through building and training your first Bayesian model. Next, he introduces PyMC through a series of detailed examples and intuitive explanations that have been refined after extensive user feedback. You'll learn how to use the Markov Chain Monte Carlo algorithm, choose appropriate sample sizes and priors, work with loss functions, and apply Bayesian inference in domains ranging from finance to marketing. Once you've mastered these techniques, you'll constantly turn to this guide for the working PyMC code you need to jumpstart future projects. Coverage includes - Learning the Bayesian "state of mind" and its practical implications - Understanding how computers perform Bayesian inference - Using the PyMC Python library to program Bayesian analyses - Building and debugging models with PyMC - Testing your model's "goodness of fit" - Opening the "black box" of the Markov Chain Monte Carlo algorithm to see how and why it works - Leveraging the power of the "Law of Large Numbers" - Mastering key concepts, such as clustering, convergence, autocorrelation, and thinning - Using loss functions to measure an estimate's weaknesses based on your goals and desired outcomes - Selecting appropriate priors and understanding how their influence changes with dataset size - Overcoming the "exploration versus exploitation" dilemma: deciding when "pretty good" is good enough - Using Bayesian inference to improve A/B testing - Solving data science problems when only small amounts of data are available Cameron Davidson-Pilon has worked in many areas of applied mathematics, from the evolutionary dynamics of genes and diseases to stochastic modeling of financial prices. His contributions to the open source community include lifelines, an implementation of survival analysis in Python. Educated at the University of Waterloo and at the Independent University of Moscow, he currently works with the online commerce leader Shopify.

What Algorithms Want: Imagination in the Age of Computing


Ed Finn - 2017
    It's as if we think of code as a magic spell, an incantation to reveal what we need to know and even what we want. Humans have always believed that certain invocations—the marriage vow, the shaman's curse—do not merely describe the world but make it. Computation casts a cultural shadow that is shaped by this long tradition of magical thinking. In this book, Ed Finn considers how the algorithm—in practical terms, “a method for solving a problem”—has its roots not only in mathematical logic but also in cybernetics, philosophy, and magical thinking.Finn argues that the algorithm deploys concepts from the idealized space of computation in a messy reality, with unpredictable and sometimes fascinating results. Drawing on sources that range from Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash to Diderot's Encyclopédie, from Adam Smith to the Star Trek computer, Finn explores the gap between theoretical ideas and pragmatic instructions. He examines the development of intelligent assistants like Siri, the rise of algorithmic aesthetics at Netflix, Ian Bogost's satiric Facebook game Cow Clicker, and the revolutionary economics of Bitcoin. He describes Google's goal of anticipating our questions, Uber's cartoon maps and black box accounting, and what Facebook tells us about programmable value, among other things.If we want to understand the gap between abstraction and messy reality, Finn argues, we need to build a model of “algorithmic reading” and scholarship that attends to process, spearheading a new experimental humanities.

Head First C#


Andrew Stellman - 2007
    Built for your brain, this book covers C# 3.0 and Visual Studio 2008, and teaches everything from language fundamentals to advanced topics including garbage collection, extension methods, and double-buffered animation. You'll also master C#'s hottest and newest syntax, LINQ, for querying SQL databases, .NET collections, and XML documents. By the time you're through, you'll be a proficient C# programmer, designing and coding large-scale applications. Every few chapters you will come across a lab that lets you apply what you've learned up to that point. Each lab is designed to simulate a professional programming task, increasing in complexity until-at last-you build a working Invaders game, complete with shooting ships, aliens descending while firing, and an animated death sequence for unlucky starfighters. This remarkably engaging book will have you going from zero to 60 with C# in no time flat.

The Age of Em: Work, Love and Life When Robots Rule the Earth


Robin Hanson - 2016
    Train an em to do some job and copy it a million times: an army of workers is at your disposal. When they can be made cheaply, within perhaps a century, ems will displace humans in most jobs. In this new economic era, the world economy may double in size every few weeks. Some say we can't know the future, especially following such a disruptive new technology, but Professor Robin Hanson sets out to prove them wrong. Applying decades of expertise in physics, computer science, and economics, he uses standard theories to paint a detailed picture of a world dominated by ems. While human lives don't change greatly in the em era, em lives are as different from ours as our lives are from those of our farmer and forager ancestors. Ems make us question common assumptions of moral progress, because they reject many of the values we hold dear. Read about em mind speeds, body sizes, job training and career paths, energy use and cooling infrastructure, virtual reality, aging and retirement, death and immortality, security, wealth inequality, religion, teleportation, identity, cities, politics, law, war, status, friendship and love. This book shows you just how strange your descendants may be, though ems are no stranger than we would appear to our ancestors. To most ems, it seems good to be an em.

Text Mining with R: A Tidy Approach


Julia Silge - 2017
    With this practical book, you'll explore text-mining techniques with tidytext, a package that authors Julia Silge and David Robinson developed using the tidy principles behind R packages like ggraph and dplyr. You'll learn how tidytext and other tidy tools in R can make text analysis easier and more effective.The authors demonstrate how treating text as data frames enables you to manipulate, summarize, and visualize characteristics of text. You'll also learn how to integrate natural language processing (NLP) into effective workflows. Practical code examples and data explorations will help you generate real insights from literature, news, and social media.Learn how to apply the tidy text format to NLPUse sentiment analysis to mine the emotional content of textIdentify a document's most important terms with frequency measurementsExplore relationships and connections between words with the ggraph and widyr packagesConvert back and forth between R's tidy and non-tidy text formatsUse topic modeling to classify document collections into natural groupsExamine case studies that compare Twitter archives, dig into NASA metadata, and analyze thousands of Usenet messages

Learn C# in One Day and Learn It Well: C# for Beginners with Hands-on Project


Jamie Chan - 2015
    Learn C# Programming Fast with a unique Hands-On Project. Book 3 of the Learn Coding Fast Series.Have you always wanted to learn computer programming but are afraid it'll be too difficult for you? Or perhaps you know other programming languages but are interested in learning the C# language fast?This book is for you. You no longer have to waste your time and money learning C# from boring books that are 600 pages long, expensive online courses or complicated C# tutorials that just leave you more confused. What this book offers... C# for BeginnersComplex concepts are broken down into simple steps to ensure that you can easily master the C# language even if you have never coded before.Carefully Chosen C# ExamplesExamples are carefully chosen to illustrate all concepts. In addition, the output for all examples are provided immediately so you do not have to wait till you have access to your computer to test the examples.Careful selection of topicsTopics are carefully selected to give you a broad exposure to C#, while not overwhelming you with information overload. These topics include object-oriented programming concepts, error handling techniques, file handling techniques and more.Learn The C# Programming Language FastConcepts are presented in a "to-the-point" style to cater to the busy individual. With this book, you can learn C# in just one day and start coding immediately. How is this book different... The best way to learn C# is by doing. This book includes a unique project at the end of the book that requires the application of all the concepts taught previously. Working through the project will not only give you an immense sense of achievement, it"ll also help you retain the knowledge and master the language.Are you ready to dip your toes into the exciting world of C# coding? This book is for you. Click the BUY button and download it now. What you'll learn: Introduction to C#- What is C#?- How to install and run Visual Studio Community 2015?Data types and Operators- What are the common data types in C#?- What are arrays and lists?- How to format C# strings- What is a value type vs reference type?- What are the common C# operators?Object Oriented Programming- What is object oriented programming?- How to write your own classes- What are fields, properties, methods and constructors?- What is encapsulation, inheritance and polymorphism?- What is an abstract class and interface?- What is an enum and struct?Controlling the Flow of a Program- What are condition statements?- How to use control flow statements in C#- What are jump statements?- How to handle errors and exceptionsand Others...- How to accept user inputs and display outputs- How to use LINQ to save yourself from hours of work - How to work with external files...and so much more....Finally, you'll be guided through a hands-on project that requires the application of all the topics covered.Click the BUY button now and download the book now to start learning C#. Learn it fast and learn it well.

Data Science at the Command Line: Facing the Future with Time-Tested Tools


Jeroen Janssens - 2014
    You'll learn how to combine small, yet powerful, command-line tools to quickly obtain, scrub, explore, and model your data.To get you started--whether you're on Windows, OS X, or Linux--author Jeroen Janssens introduces the Data Science Toolbox, an easy-to-install virtual environment packed with over 80 command-line tools.Discover why the command line is an agile, scalable, and extensible technology. Even if you're already comfortable processing data with, say, Python or R, you'll greatly improve your data science workflow by also leveraging the power of the command line.Obtain data from websites, APIs, databases, and spreadsheetsPerform scrub operations on plain text, CSV, HTML/XML, and JSONExplore data, compute descriptive statistics, and create visualizationsManage your data science workflow using DrakeCreate reusable tools from one-liners and existing Python or R codeParallelize and distribute data-intensive pipelines using GNU ParallelModel data with dimensionality reduction, clustering, regression, and classification algorithms

Python Pocket Reference


Mark Lutz - 1998
    Hundreds of thousands of Python developers around the world rely on Python for general-purpose tasks, Internet scripting, systems programming, user interfaces, and product customization. Available on all major computing platforms, including commercial versions of Unix, Linux, Windows, and Mac OS X, Python is portable, powerful and remarkable easy to use.With its convenient, quick-reference format, "Python Pocket Reference," 3rd Edition is the perfect on-the-job reference. More importantly, it's now been refreshed to cover the language's latest release, Python 2.4. For experienced Python developers, this book is a compact toolbox that delivers need-to-know information at the flip of a page. This third edition also includes an easy-lookup index to help developers find answers fast!Python 2.4 is more than just optimization and library enhancements; it's also chock full of bug fixes and upgrades. And these changes are addressed in the "Python Pocket Reference," 3rd Edition. New language features, new and upgraded built-ins, and new and upgraded modules and packages--they're all clarified in detail.The "Python Pocket Reference," 3rd Edition serves as the perfect companion to "Learning Python" and "Programming Python."

Diffusion of Innovations


Everett M. Rogers - 1982
    It has sold 30,000 copies in each edition and will continue to reach a huge academic audience.In this renowned book, Everett M. Rogers, professor and chair of the Department of Communication & Journalism at the University of New Mexico, explains how new ideas spread via communication channels over time. Such innovations are initially perceived as uncertain and even risky. To overcome this uncertainty, most people seek out others like themselves who have already adopted the new idea. Thus the diffusion process consists of a few individuals who first adopt an innovation, then spread the word among their circle of acquaintances--a process which typically takes months or years. But there are exceptions: use of the Internet in the 1990s, for example, may have spread more rapidly than any other innovation in the history of humankind. Furthermore, the Internet is changing the very nature of diffusion by decreasing the importance of physical distance between people. The fifth edition addresses the spread of the Internet, and how it has transformed the way human beings communicate and adopt new ideas.

An Introduction to Group Work Practice


Ronald W. Toseland - 1984
    Students will receive a grounding in areas that vary from treatment to organizational and community settings. This edition also includes of new case studies, practice examples and guiding principles.

Everybody Lies: Big Data, New Data, and What the Internet Can Tell Us About Who We Really Are


Seth Stephens-Davidowitz - 2017
    This staggering amount of information—unprecedented in history—can tell us a great deal about who we are—the fears, desires, and behaviors that drive us, and the conscious and unconscious decisions we make. From the profound to the mundane, we can gain astonishing knowledge about the human psyche that less than twenty years ago, seemed unfathomable.Everybody Lies offers fascinating, surprising, and sometimes laugh-out-loud insights into everything from economics to ethics to sports to race to sex, gender and more, all drawn from the world of big data. What percentage of white voters didn’t vote for Barack Obama because he’s black? Does where you go to school effect how successful you are in life? Do parents secretly favor boy children over girls? Do violent films affect the crime rate? Can you beat the stock market? How regularly do we lie about our sex lives and who’s more self-conscious about sex, men or women?Investigating these questions and a host of others, Seth Stephens-Davidowitz offers revelations that can help us understand ourselves and our lives better. Drawing on studies and experiments on how we really live and think, he demonstrates in fascinating and often funny ways the extent to which all the world is indeed a lab. With conclusions ranging from strange-but-true to thought-provoking to disturbing, he explores the power of this digital truth serum and its deeper potential—revealing biases deeply embedded within us, information we can use to change our culture, and the questions we’re afraid to ask that might be essential to our health—both emotional and physical. All of us are touched by big data everyday, and its influence is multiplying. Everybody Lies challenges us to think differently about how we see it and the world.

Neuroanatomy


Alan R. Crossman - 1995
    It avoids overburdening the reader with topographical detail that is unnecessary for the medical student. Minimum assumptions are made of existing knowledge of the subject.'Key point' boxes for reinforcement and quick revision Glossary of important terms 'Clinical detail' boxes closely integrated with relevant neuroanatomyComplete revision and updating of text. Revision nad expansion of summary chapter, providing overview of entire subject. Clinical material updated to reflect current prevalence of neurological disease. Artwork entirely redrawn for improved clarity and closer integration with text.

Heart of the Machine: Our Future in a World of Artificial Emotional Intelligence


Richard Yonck - 2017
    Heart of the Machine explores the next giant step in the relationship between humans and technology: the ability of computers to recognize, respond to, and even replicate emotions. Computers have long been integral to our lives, and their advances continue at an exponential rate. Many believe that artificial intelligence equal or superior to human intelligence will happen in the not-too-distance future; some even think machine consciousness will follow. Futurist Richard Yonck argues that emotion, the first, most basic, and most natural form of communication, is at the heart of how we will soon work with and use computers.Instilling emotions into computers is the next leap in our centuries-old obsession with creating machines that replicate humans. But for every benefit this progress may bring to our lives, there is a possible pitfall. Emotion recognition could lead to advanced surveillance, and the same technology that can manipulate our feelings could become a method of mass control. And, as shown in movies like Her and Ex Machina, our society already holds a deep-seated anxiety about what might happen if machines could actually feel and break free from our control. Heart of the Machine is an exploration of the new and inevitable ways in which mankind and technology will interact.

Go in Practice


Matt Butcher - 2015
    Following a cookbook-style Problem/Solution/Discussion format, this practical handbook builds on the foundational concepts of the Go language and introduces specific strategies you can use in your day-to-day applications. You'll learn techniques for building web services, using Go in the cloud, testing and debugging, routing, network applications, and much more.