With his trademark clarity and humor, Holt probes the mysteries of quantum mechanics, the quest for the foundations of mathematics, and the nature of logic and truth. Along the way, he offers intimate biographical sketches of celebrated and neglected thinkers, from the physicist Emmy Noether to the computing pioneer Alan Turing and the discoverer of fractals, Benoit Mandelbrot. Holt offers a painless and playful introduction to many of our most beautiful but least understood ideas, from Einsteinian relativity to string theory, and also invites us to consider why the greatest logician of the twentieth century believed the U.S. Constitution contained a terrible contradiction--and whether the universe truly has a future.

    Get ready to amaze your friends—and yourself—with incredible calculations you never thought you could master, as renowned “mathemagician” Arthur Benjamin shares his techniques for lightning-quick calculations and amazing number tricks. This book will teach you to do math in your head faster than you ever thought possible, dramatically improve your memory for numbers, and—maybe for the first time—make mathematics fun.Yes, even you can learn to do seemingly complex equations in your head; all you need to learn are a few tricks. You’ll be able to quickly multiply and divide triple digits, compute with fractions, and determine squares, cubes, and roots without blinking an eye. No matter what your age or current math ability, Secrets of Mental Math will allow you to perform fantastic feats of the mind effortlessly. This is the math they never taught you in school.Also available as an eBook

    However, it is one of the basic principles of quantum theory, the most widely accepted explanation of the subatomic world - and one of the fascinating subjects dealt with in Equations of Eternity.

    This book gives you a solid understanding of statistics without being too simple, yet without the numbing complexity of most college texts. You get a firm grasp of the fundamentals and a hands-on understanding of how to apply them before moving on to the more advanced material that follows. Each chapter presents you with easy-to-follow descriptions illustrated by graphics, formulas, and plenty of solved examples. Before you know it, you'll learn to apply statistical reasoning and statistical techniques, from basic concepts of probability and hypothesis testing to multivariate analysis. Organized into four distinct sections, Statistics in a Nutshell offers you:Introductory material: Different ways to think about statistics Basic concepts of measurement and probability theoryData management for statistical analysis Research design and experimental design How to critique statistics presented by others Basic inferential statistics: Basic concepts of inferential statistics The concept of correlation, when it is and is not an appropriate measure of association Dichotomous and categorical data The distinction between parametric and nonparametric statistics Advanced inferential techniques: The General Linear Model Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) and MANOVA Multiple linear regression Specialized techniques: Business and quality improvement statistics Medical and public health statistics Educational and psychological statistics Unlike many introductory books on the subject, Statistics in a Nutshell doesn't omit important material in an effort to dumb it down. And this book is far more practical than most college texts, which tend to over-emphasize calculation without teaching you when and how to apply different statistical tests. With Statistics in a Nutshell, you learn how to perform most common statistical analyses, and understand statistical techniques presented in research articles. If you need to know how to use a wide range of statistical techniques without getting in over your head, this is the book you want.

    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.

    Make this and all of the Blackboard Books(tm) a permanent fixture on your shelf, and you'll have instant access to a breadth of knowledge. Whether you need homework help or want to win that trivia game, this series is the trusted source for fun facts.

    The goal of this book, is to cover music production from many different angles in a way that will change your thinking on the subject and build your confidence. Music making is a very mental and psychological game, and more often than not, all the technical stuff can hold you back from achieving your goals if you don't have the right creative habits in place first. With all the information available with a simple Google search, I wanted to really get to the heart of things that aren't being discussed nearly enough. I want to clear out all the garbage you may have been told and replace it with the essentials you can put to immediate use. Many people new to music may dive into forums and mindlessly watch video tutorials attempting to gather more and more information until they think they have enough to get going (hint: you never feel like you know enough). That would be like reading a whole encyclopedia and then being asked to recall only the important things that will get you from point A to point B. Even worse, much of the information you get will contradict the last thing you read. It's like finding a needle in a haystack only to be told it's the wrong needle. There is a much better approach. It's an approach that doesn't require you to know a lot to get started. You only need to know enough to get to the next step in your process. There is truly nothing stopping you from becoming a music producer. The ones who are successful now are the ones who started from nothing and chipped away at it until they found a way to express their unique voice. There are no gatekeepers making decisions on who is worthy and who isn't. The determining factor is you, your habits and your confidence in yourself. This book can be read from start to finish, or as a “choose your own adventure”, going directly to what you think can help you most right now. Don't get caught up thinking you have to devour everything before getting started. That isn't necessary, and isn't the point of the book. The core concepts in the book will come up time & time again which should help you retain them & be able to recall them when the need arrives. By exploring these concepts from several angles you should gain a broad view of their many uses. My hope is that this book is used as a toolbox. You simply find the right tool that moves you forward and get back to work. So few people, who have more than enough information in their heads, ever start. Of those who do start, even fewer finish what they started and are satisfied with the results. I want you to be in that small group of finishers. Let's get started.

    The Art of Problem Solving, Volume 2, is the classic problem solving textbook used by many successful high school math teams and enrichment programs and have been an important building block for students who, like the authors, performed well enough on the American Mathematics Contest series to qualify for the Math Olympiad Summer Program which trains students for the United States International Math Olympiad team.Volume 2 is appropriate for students who have mastered the problem solving fundamentals presented in Volume 1 and are ready for a greater challenge. Although the Art of Problem Solving is widely used by students preparing for mathematics competitions, the book is not just a collection of tricks. The emphasis on learning and understanding methods rather than memorizing formulas enables students to solve large classes of problems beyond those presented in the book.Speaking of problems, the Art of Problem Solving, Volume 2, contains over 500 examples and exercises culled from such contests as the Mandelbrot Competition, the AMC tests, and ARML. Full solutions (not just answers!) are available for all the problems in the solution manual.

    Take your playing to the stratosphere with the most advanced lead book by this proven heavy metal author. Speed Mechanics is the ultimate technique book for developing the kind of speed and precision in today's explosive playing styles. Learn the fastest ways to achieve speed and control, secrets to make your practice time really count, and how to open your ears and make your musical ideas more solid and tangible. Packed with over 200 vicious exercises including Troy's scorching version of "Flight of the Bumblebee." Music and examples demonstrated on CD. 89-minute audio.

    In this collection of landmark mathematical works, editor Stephen Hawking has assembled the greatest feats humans have ever accomplished using just numbers and their brains.

    Chronicling leading musicians from their first encounters with jazz to the development of a unique improvisatory voice, Paul Berliner documents the lifetime of preparation that lies behind the skilled improviser's every idea.The product of more than fifteen years of immersion in the jazz world, Thinking in Jazz combines participant observation with detailed musicological analysis, the author's experience as a jazz trumpeter, interpretations of published material by scholars and performers, and, above all, original data from interviews with more than fifty professional musicians: bassists George Duvivier and Rufus Reid; drummers Max Roach, Ronald Shannon Jackson, and Akira Tana; guitarist Emily Remler; pianists Tommy Flanagan and Barry Harris; saxophonists Lou Donaldson, Lee Konitz, and James Moody; trombonist Curtis Fuller; trumpeters Doc Cheatham, Art Farmer, Wynton Marsalis, and Red Rodney; vocalists Carmen Lundy and Vea Williams; and others. Together, the interviews provide insight into the production of jazz by great artists like Betty Carter, Miles Davis, Dizzy Gillespie, Coleman Hawkins, and Charlie Parker.Thinking in Jazz overflows with musical examples from the 1920s to the present, including original transcriptions (keyed to commercial recordings) of collective improvisations by Miles Davis's and John Coltrane's groups. These transcriptions provide additional insight into the structure and creativity of jazz improvisation and represent a remarkable resource for jazz musicians as well as students and educators.Berliner explores the alternative ways—aural, visual, kinetic, verbal, emotional, theoretical, associative—in which these performers conceptualize their music and describes the delicate interplay of soloist and ensemble in collective improvisation. Berliner's skillful integration of data concerning musical development, the rigorous practice and thought artists devote to jazz outside of performance, and the complexities of composing in the moment leads to a new understanding of jazz improvisation as a language, an aesthetic, and a tradition. This unprecedented journey to the heart of the jazz tradition will fascinate and enlighten musicians, musicologists, and jazz fans alike.

    Rather than offering a history of contemporary music, Audio Culture traces the genealogy of current musical practices and theoretical concerns, drawing lines of connection between recent musical production and earlier moments of sonic experimentation. It aims to foreground the various rewirings of musical composition and performance that have taken place in the past few decades and to provide a critical and theoretical language for this new audio culture. Via writings by philosophers, cultural theorists, and composers, Audio Culture explores the interconnections among such forms as minimalism, indeterminacy, musique concrète, free improvisation, experimental music, avant-rock, dub reggae, Ambient music, HipHop, and Techno. Instead of focusing on the putative "crossover" between "high art" and "popular culture," Audio Culture takes all of these musics as experimental practices on par with, and linked to, one another. While cultural studies has tended to look at music (primarily popular music) from a sociological perspective, the concern here is philosophical, musical, and historical. Audio Culture includes writing by some of the most important musical thinkers of the past half-century, among them John Cage, Brian Eno, Glenn Gould, Umberto Eco, Ornette Coleman, Jacques Attali, Simon Reynolds, Pauline Oliveros, Paul D. Miller, David Toop, John Zorn, Karlheinz Stockhausen, and many others. The book is divided into nine thematically-organized sections, each with its own introduction. Section headings include topics such as "Modes of Listening," "Minimalisms," and "DJ Culture." In addition, each essay has its own short introduction, helping the reader to place the essay within musical, historical, and conceptual contexts. The book concludes with a glossary, a timeline, and an extensive discography.

    Now, in his first book, written more than two decades after the web was created, Lanier offers this provocative and cautionary look at the way it is transforming our lives for better and for worse.The current design and function of the web have become so familiar that it is easy to forget that they grew out of programming decisions made decades ago. The web’s first designers made crucial choices (such as making one’s presence anonymous) that have had enormous—and often unintended—consequences. What’s more, these designs quickly became “locked in,” a permanent part of the web’s very structure. Lanier discusses the technical and cultural problems that can grow out of poorly considered digital design and warns that our financial markets and sites like Wikipedia, Facebook, and Twitter are elevating the “wisdom” of mobs and computer algorithms over the intelligence and judgment of individuals. Lanier also shows:How 1960s antigovernment paranoia influenced the design of the online world and enabled trolling and trivialization in online discourseHow file sharing is killing the artistic middle class;How a belief in a technological “rapture” motivates some of the most influential technologistsWhy a new humanistic technology is necessary. Controversial and fascinating, You Are Not a Gadget is a deeply felt defense of the individual from an author uniquely qualified to comment on the way technology interacts with our culture.

    This notion follows us into adulthood, where we tend to simply accept these established beliefs about our skillsets (i.e. that we don’t have “a math brain” or that we aren’t “the creative type”). These damaging—and as new science has revealed, false—assumptions have influenced all of us at some time, affecting our confidence and willingness to try new things and limiting our choices, and, ultimately, our futures.Stanford University professor, bestselling author, and acclaimed educator Jo Boaler has spent decades studying the impact of beliefs and bias on education. In Limitless Mind , she explodes these myths and reveals the six keys to unlocking our boundless learning potential. Her research proves that those who achieve at the highest levels do not do so because of a genetic inclination toward any one skill but because of the keys that she reveals in the book. Our brains are not “fixed,” but entirely capable of change, growth, adaptability, and rewiring. Want to be fluent in mathematics? Learn a foreign language? Play the guitar? Write a book? The truth is not only that anyone at any age can learn anything, but the act of learning itself fundamentally changes who we are, and as Boaler argues so elegantly in the pages of this book, what we go on to achieve.

    Using playing cards, a newspaper, the back of an envelope, a Sudoku, some pennies and of course a pair of socks, Rob Eastaway shows how maths can demonstrate its secret beauties in even the most mundane of everyday objects. Among the many fascinating curiosities in these pages, you will discover the strange link between limericks and rabbits, an apparently 'fair' coin game where the odds are massively in your favour, why tourist boards can't agree on where the centre of Britain is, and how simple paper folding can lead to a Jurassic Park monster. With plenty of ideas you'll want to test out for yourself, this engaging and refreshing look at mathematics is for everyone.