Bayesian Data Analysis


Andrew Gelman - 1995
    Its world-class authors provide guidance on all aspects of Bayesian data analysis and include examples of real statistical analyses, based on their own research, that demonstrate how to solve complicated problems. Changes in the new edition include:Stronger focus on MCMC Revision of the computational advice in Part III New chapters on nonlinear models and decision analysis Several additional applied examples from the authors' recent research Additional chapters on current models for Bayesian data analysis such as nonlinear models, generalized linear mixed models, and more Reorganization of chapters 6 and 7 on model checking and data collectionBayesian computation is currently at a stage where there are many reasonable ways to compute any given posterior distribution. However, the best approach is not always clear ahead of time. Reflecting this, the new edition offers a more pluralistic presentation, giving advice on performing computations from many perspectives while making clear the importance of being aware that there are different ways to implement any given iterative simulation computation. The new approach, additional examples, and updated information make Bayesian Data Analysis an excellent introductory text and a reference that working scientists will use throughout their professional life.

Elements of Programming


Alexander Stepanov - 2009
    And then we wonder why software is notorious for being delivered late and full of bugs, while other engineers routinely deliver finished bridges, automobiles, electrical appliances, etc., on time and with only minor defects. This book sets out to redress this imbalance. Members of my advanced development team at Adobe who took the course based on the same material all benefited greatly from the time invested. It may appear as a highly technical text intended only for computer scientists, but it should be required reading for all practicing software engineers." --Martin Newell, Adobe Fellow"The book contains some of the most beautiful code I have ever seen." --Bjarne Stroustrup, Designer of C++"I am happy to see the content of Alex's course, the development and teaching of which I strongly supported as the CTO of Silicon Graphics, now available to all programmers in this elegant little book." --Forest Baskett, General Partner, New Enterprise Associates"Paul's patience and architectural experience helped to organize Alex's mathematical approach into a tightly-structured edifice--an impressive feat!" --Robert W. Taylor, Founder of Xerox PARC CSL and DEC Systems Research Center Elements of Programming provides a different understanding of programming than is presented elsewhere. Its major premise is that practical programming, like other areas of science and engineering, must be based on a solid mathematical foundation. The book shows that algorithms implemented in a real programming language, such as C++, can operate in the most general mathematical setting. For example, the fast exponentiation algorithm is defined to work with any associative operation. Using abstract algorithms leads to efficient, reliable, secure, and economical software.This is not an easy book. Nor is it a compilation of tips and tricks for incremental improvements in your programming skills. The book's value is more fundamental and, ultimately, more critical for insight into programming. To benefit fully, you will need to work through it from beginning to end, reading the code, proving the lemmas, and doing the exercises. When finished, you will see how the application of the deductive method to your programs assures that your system's software components will work together and behave as they must.The book presents a number of algorithms and requirements for types on which they are defined. The code for these descriptions--also available on the Web--is written in a small subset of C++ meant to be accessible to any experienced programmer. This subset is defined in a special language appendix coauthored by Sean Parent and Bjarne Stroustrup.Whether you are a software developer, or any other professional for whom programming is an important activity, or a committed student, you will come to understand what the book's experienced authors have been teaching and demonstrating for years--that mathematics is good for programming, and that theory is good for practice.

Introduction to Mathematical Thinking


Keith Devlin - 2012
    This is not the same as “doing math.” The latter usually involves the application of formulas, procedures, and symbolic manipulations; mathematical thinking is a powerful way of thinking about things in the world -- logically, analytically, quantitatively, and with precision. It is not a natural way of thinking, but it can be learned. Mathematicians, scientists, and engineers need to “do math,” and it takes many years of college-level education to learn all that is required. Mathematical thinking is valuable to everyone, and can be mastered in about six weeks by anyone who has completed high school mathematics. Mathematical thinking does not have to be about mathematics at all, but parts of mathematics provide the ideal target domain to learn how to think that way, and that is the approach taken by this short but valuable book. The book is written primarily for first and second year students of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) at colleges and universities, and for high school students intending to study a STEM subject at university. Many students encounter difficulty going from high school math to college-level mathematics. Even if they did well at math in school, most are knocked off course for a while by the shift in emphasis, from the K-12 focus on mastering procedures to the “mathematical thinking” characteristic of much university mathematics. Though the majority survive the transition, many do not. To help them make the shift, colleges and universities often have a “transition course.” This book could serve as a textbook or a supplementary source for such a course. Because of the widespread applicability of mathematical thinking, however, the book has been kept short and written in an engaging style, to make it accessible to anyone who seeks to extend and improve their analytic thinking skills. Going beyond a basic grasp of analytic thinking that everyone can benefit from, the STEM student who truly masters mathematical thinking will find that college-level mathematics goes from being confusing, frustrating, and at times seemingly impossible, to making sense and being hard but doable. Dr. Keith Devlin is a professional mathematician at Stanford University and the author of 31 previous books and over 80 research papers. His books have earned him many awards, including the Pythagoras Prize, the Carl Sagan Award, and the Joint Policy Board for Mathematics Communications Award. He is known to millions of NPR listeners as “the Math Guy” on Weekend Edition with Scott Simon. He writes a popular monthly blog “Devlin’s Angle” for the Mathematical Association of America, another blog under the name “profkeithdevlin”, and also blogs on various topics for the Huffington Post.

Sun, Moon and Earth


Robin Heath - 1999
    We all dance to these primary rhythms. This book reveals the poetic cosmology that lies within the cycles of the Sun and Moon as seen from the Earth.

Course of Theoretical Physics: Vol. 1, Mechanics


L.D. Landau - 1969
    The exposition is simple and leads to the most complete direct means of solving problems in mechanics. The final sections on adiabatic invariants have been revised and augmented. In addition a short biography of L D Landau has been inserted.

A Student's Guide to Maxwell's Equations


Daniel Fleisch - 2007
    In this guide for students, each equation is the subject of an entire chapter, with detailed, plain-language explanations of the physical meaning of each symbol in the equation, for both the integral and differential forms. The final chapter shows how Maxwell's equations may be combined to produce the wave equation, the basis for the electromagnetic theory of light. This book is a wonderful resource for undergraduate and graduate courses in electromagnetism and electromagnetics. A website hosted by the author at www.cambridge.org/9780521701471 contains interactive solutions to every problem in the text as well as audio podcasts to walk students through each chapter.

How the Brain Learns Mathematics


David A. Sousa - 2007
    Sousa discusses the cognitive mechanisms for learning mathematics and the environmental and developmental factors that contribute to mathematics difficulties. This award-winning text examines:Children's innate number sense and how the brain develops an understanding of number relationships Rationales for modifying lessons to meet the developmental learning stages of young children, preadolescents, and adolescents How to plan lessons in PreK-12 mathematics Implications of current research for planning mathematics lessons, including discoveries about memory systems and lesson timing Methods to help elementary and secondary school teachers detect mathematics difficulties Clear connections to the NCTM standards and curriculum focal points

Introduction to Fluid Mechanics [With CDROM]


Robert W. Fox - 2003
    This new edition simplifies many of the steps involved in analysis by using the computer application Excel. Over 100 detailed example problems illustrate important fluid mechanics concepts: Approximately 1300 end-of-chapter problems are arranged by difficulty level and include many problems that are designed to be solved using Excel. The CD for the book includes: A Brief Review of Microsoft Excel and numerous Excel files for the example problems and for use in solving problems. The new edition includes an expanded discussion of pipe networks, and a new section on oblique shocks and expansion waves.

The Protocols (TCP/IP Illustrated, Volume 1)


W. Richard Stevens - 1993
    In eight chapters, it provides the most thorough coverage of TCP available. It also covers the newest TCP/IP features, including multicasting, path MTU discovery and long fat pipes. The author describes various protocols, including ARP, ICMP and UDP. He utilizes network diagnostic tools to actually show the protocols in action. He also explains how to avoid silly window syndrome (SWS) by using numerous helpful diagrams. This book gives you a broader understanding of concepts like connection establishment, timeout, retransmission and fragmentation. It is ideal for anyone wanting to gain a greater understanding of how the TCP/IP protocols work.

Solid State Physics


Neil W. Ashcroft - 1976
    This book provides an introduction to the field of solid state physics for undergraduate students in physics, chemistry, engineering, and materials science.

Computers and Intractability: A Guide to the Theory of NP-Completeness


Michael R. Garey - 1979
    Johnson. It was the first book exclusively on the theory of NP-completeness and computational intractability. The book features an appendix providing a thorough compendium of NP-complete problems (which was updated in later printings of the book). The book is now outdated in some respects as it does not cover more recent development such as the PCP theorem. It is nevertheless still in print and is regarded as a classic: in a 2006 study, the CiteSeer search engine listed the book as the most cited reference in computer science literature.

Machine Learning: A Probabilistic Perspective


Kevin P. Murphy - 2012
    Machine learning provides these, developing methods that can automatically detect patterns in data and then use the uncovered patterns to predict future data. This textbook offers a comprehensive and self-contained introduction to the field of machine learning, based on a unified, probabilistic approach.The coverage combines breadth and depth, offering necessary background material on such topics as probability, optimization, and linear algebra as well as discussion of recent developments in the field, including conditional random fields, L1 regularization, and deep learning. The book is written in an informal, accessible style, complete with pseudo-code for the most important algorithms. All topics are copiously illustrated with color images and worked examples drawn from such application domains as biology, text processing, computer vision, and robotics. Rather than providing a cookbook of different heuristic methods, the book stresses a principled model-based approach, often using the language of graphical models to specify models in a concise and intuitive way. Almost all the models described have been implemented in a MATLAB software package—PMTK (probabilistic modeling toolkit)—that is freely available online. The book is suitable for upper-level undergraduates with an introductory-level college math background and beginning graduate students.

LATEX: A Document Preparation System: User's Guide and Reference Manual


Leslie Lamport - 1985
    The new edition features additional styles and functions, improved font handling, and enhanced graphics capabilities. Other parts of the book have been revised to reflect user comments and suggestions. Selected sections have been rewritten to explain challenging concepts or functions, and the descriptions of both MakeIndex and BibTEX have been updated. New LATEX users will want to start with this book, and current users, particularly as they upgrade to the LATEX2e software, will be eager to obtain the most up-to-date version of its associated manual. Features Revised version of the authoritative user's guide and reference manual for the LATEX computer typesetting system. Features the new standard software release - LATEX2e. Sections rewritten to explain difficult concepts or functions.

Chaos: A Very Short Introduction


Leonard A. Smith - 2007
    Even the simplest system of cause and effect can be subject to chaos, denying us accurate predictions of its behaviour, and sometimes giving rise to astonishing structures of large-scale order. Our growing understanding of Chaos Theory is having fascinating applications in the real world - from technology to global warming, politics, human behaviour, and even gambling on the stock market. Leonard Smith shows that we all have an intuitive understanding of chaotic systems. He uses accessible maths and physics (replacing complex equations with simple examples like pendulums, railway lines, and tossing coins) to explain the theory, and points to numerous examples in philosophy and literature (Edgar Allen Poe, Chang-Tzu, Arthur Conan Doyle) that illuminate the problems. The beauty of fractal patterns and their relation to chaos, as well as the history of chaos, and its uses in the real world and implications for the philosophy of science are all discussed in this Very Short Introduction.

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.