The pass was intercepted and the Seahawks lost. Critics called it the dumbest play in history. But was the call really that bad? Or did Carroll actually make a great move that was ruined by bad luck?Even the best decision doesn't yield the best outcome every time. There's always an element of luck that you can't control, and there is always information that is hidden from view. So the key to long-term success (and avoiding worrying yourself to death) is to think in bets: How sure am I? What are the possible ways things could turn out? What decision has the highest odds of success? Did I land in the unlucky 10% on the strategy that works 90% of the time? Or is my success attributable to dumb luck rather than great decision making?Annie Duke, a former World Series of Poker champion turned business consultant, draws on examples from business, sports, politics, and (of course) poker to share tools anyone can use to embrace uncertainty and make better decisions. For most people, it's difficult to say "I'm not sure" in a world that values and, even, rewards the appearance of certainty. But professional poker players are comfortable with the fact that great decisions don't always lead to great outcomes and bad decisions don't always lead to bad outcomes.By shifting your thinking from a need for certainty to a goal of accurately assessing what you know and what you don't, you'll be less vulnerable to reactive emotions, knee-jerk biases, and destructive habits in your decision making. You'll become more confident, calm, compassionate and successful in the long run.

    In this fascinating book, Mario Livio tells the tale of a number at the heart of that mystery: phi, or 1.6180339887...This curious mathematical relationship, widely known as "The Golden Ratio," was discovered by Euclid more than two thousand years ago because of its crucial role in the construction of the pentagram, to which magical properties had been attributed. Since then it has shown a propensity to appear in the most astonishing variety of places, from mollusk shells, sunflower florets, and rose petals to the shape of the galaxy. Psychological studies have investigated whether the Golden Ratio is the most aesthetically pleasing proportion extant, and it has been asserted that the creators of the Pyramids and the Parthenon employed it. It is believed to feature in works of art from Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa to Salvador Dali's The Sacrament of the Last Supper, and poets and composers have used it in their works. It has even been found to be connected to the behavior of the stock market!The Golden Ratio is a captivating journey through art and architecture, botany and biology, physics and mathematics. It tells the human story of numerous phi-fixated individuals, including the followers of Pythagoras who believed that this proportion revealed the hand of God; astronomer Johannes Kepler, who saw phi as the greatest treasure of geometry; such Renaissance thinkers as mathematician Leonardo Fibonacci of Pisa; and such masters of the modern world as Goethe, Cezanne, Bartok, and physicist Roger Penrose. Wherever his quest for the meaning of phi takes him, Mario Livio reveals the world as a place where order, beauty, and eternal mystery will always coexist.From the Hardcover edition.

    If reason is so useful, why didn't it also evolve in other animals? If reason is that reliable, why do we produce so much thoroughly reasoned nonsense? In their groundbreaking account of the evolution and workings of reason, Hugo Mercier and Dan Sperber set out to solve this double enigma. Reason, they argue with a compelling mix of real-life and experimental evidence, is not geared to solitary use, to arriving at better beliefs and decisions on our own. What reason does, rather, is help us justify our beliefs and actions to others, convince them through argumentation, and evaluate the justifications and arguments that others address to us.In other words, reason helps humans better exploit their uniquely rich social environment. This interactionist interpretation explains why reason may have evolved and how it fits with other cognitive mechanisms. It makes sense of strengths and weaknesses that have long puzzled philosophers and psychologists--why reason is biased in favor of what we already believe, why it may lead to terrible ideas and yet is indispensable to spreading good ones.Ambitious, provocative, and entertaining, The Enigma of Reason will spark debate among psychologists and philosophers, and make many reasonable people rethink their own thinking.

    The clarity and eloquence of the presentation make it popular with teachers and students alike. The text aims to expand the reader's view of the field and to present standard material in a novel way. All of the most important topics in the field are covered with a fresh perspective, including iterative methods for systems of equations and eigenvalue problems and the underlying principles of conditioning and stability. Presentation is in the form of 40 lectures, which each focus on one or two central ideas. The unity between topics is emphasized throughout, with no risk of getting lost in details and technicalities. The book breaks with tradition by beginning with the QR factorization - an important and fresh idea for students, and the thread that connects most of the algorithms of numerical linear algebra.

    Therefore, this book provides the fundamental concepts and techniques of real analysis for readers in all of these areas. It helps one develop the ability to think deductively, analyze mathematical situations and extend ideas to a new context. Like the first two editions, this edition maintains the same spirit and user-friendly approach with some streamlined arguments, a few new examples, rearranged topics, and a new chapter on the Generalized Riemann Integral.

    Introductory Graph Theory presents a nontechnical introduction to this exciting field in a clear, lively, and informative style. Author Gary Chartrand covers the important elementary topics of graph theory and its applications. In addition, he presents a large variety of proofs designed to strengthen mathematical techniques and offers challenging opportunities to have fun with mathematics. Ten major topics — profusely illustrated — include: Mathematical Models, Elementary Concepts of Graph Theory, Transportation Problems, Connection Problems, Party Problems, Digraphs and Mathematical Models, Games and Puzzles, Graphs and Social Psychology, Planar Graphs and Coloring Problems, and Graphs and Other Mathematics. A useful Appendix covers Sets, Relations, Functions, and Proofs, and a section devoted to exercises — with answers, hints, and solutions — is especially valuable to anyone encountering graph theory for the first time. Undergraduate mathematics students at every level, puzzlists, and mathematical hobbyists will find well-organized coverage of the fundamentals of graph theory in this highly readable and thoroughly enjoyable book.

    It givessyntax and output for accomplishing many analyses through the mostrecent releases of SAS, SPSS, and SYSTAT, some not available insoftware manuals. The book maintains its practical approach, stillfocusing on the benefits and limitations of applications of a techniqueto a data set -- when, why, and how to do it. Overall, it providesadvanced students with a timely and comprehensive introduction totoday's most commonly encountered statistical and multivariatetechniques, while assuming only a limited knowledge of higher-levelmathematics.

    It can be freely downloaded and it works on multiple computer platforms. This book provides an elementary introduction to R. In each chapter, brief introductory sections are followed by code examples and comments from the computational and statistical viewpoint. A supplementary R package containing the datasets can be downloaded from the web.

    Loosely based on neuron behavior inside of human brains, these systems are rapidly catching up with the intelligence of their human creators, defeating the world champion Go player, achieving superhuman performance on video games, driving cars, translating languages, and sometimes even helping law enforcement fight crime. Deep Learning is a revolution that is changing every industry across the globe.Grokking Deep Learning is the perfect place to begin your deep learning journey. Rather than just learn the “black box” API of some library or framework, you will actually understand how to build these algorithms completely from scratch. You will understand how Deep Learning is able to learn at levels greater than humans. You will be able to understand the “brain” behind state-of-the-art Artificial Intelligence. Furthermore, unlike other courses that assume advanced knowledge of Calculus and leverage complex mathematical notation, if you’re a Python hacker who passed high-school algebra, you’re ready to go. And at the end, you’ll even build an A.I. that will learn to defeat you in a classic Atari game.

    In Standard Deviations, economics professor Gary Smith walks us through the various tricks and traps that people use to back up their own crackpot theories. Sometimes, the unscrupulous deliberately try to mislead us. Other times, the well-intentioned are blissfully unaware of the mischief they are committing. Today, data is so plentiful that researchers spend precious little time distinguishing between good, meaningful indicators and total rubbish. Not only do others use data to fool us, we fool ourselves.With the breakout success of Nate Silver’s The Signal and the Noise, the once humdrum subject of statistics has never been hotter. Drawing on breakthrough research in behavioral economics by luminaries like Daniel Kahneman and Dan Ariely and taking to task some of the conclusions of Freakonomics author Steven D. Levitt, Standard Deviations demystifies the science behind statistics and makes it easy to spot the fraud all around.

    But there is one other motive which is as strong as any of these — the search for beauty. Mathematics is an art, and as such affords the pleasures which all the arts afford." In this erudite, entertaining college-level text, Morris Kline, Professor Emeritus of Mathematics at New York University, provides the liberal arts student with a detailed treatment of mathematics in a cultural and historical context. The book can also act as a self-study vehicle for advanced high school students and laymen. Professor Kline begins with an overview, tracing the development of mathematics to the ancient Greeks, and following its evolution through the Middle Ages and the Renaissance to the present day. Subsequent chapters focus on specific subject areas, such as "Logic and Mathematics," "Number: The Fundamental Concept," "Parametric Equations and Curvilinear Motion," "The Differential Calculus," and "The Theory of Probability." Each of these sections offers a step-by-step explanation of concepts and then tests the student's understanding with exercises and problems. At the same time, these concepts are linked to pure and applied science, engineering, philosophy, the social sciences or even the arts.In one section, Professor Kline discusses non-Euclidean geometry, ranking it with evolution as one of the "two concepts which have most profoundly revolutionized our intellectual development since the nineteenth century." His lucid treatment of this difficult subject starts in the 1800s with the pioneering work of Gauss, Lobachevsky, Bolyai and Riemann, and moves forward to the theory of relativity, explaining the mathematical, scientific and philosophical aspects of this pivotal breakthrough. Mathematics for the Nonmathematician exemplifies Morris Kline's rare ability to simplify complex subjects for the nonspecialist.

    It includes rewritten and clarified proofs and derivations, as well as new topics such as Arnoldi iteration, and domain decomposition methods.

    The result is a completely accessible introduction to the main themes of the philosophy of science. Intended for undergraduates and general readers with no prior background in philosophy, Theory and Reality covers logical positivism; the problems of induction and confirmation; Karl Popper's theory of science; Thomas Kuhn and "scientific revolutions"; the views of Imre Lakatos, Larry Laudan, and Paul Feyerabend; and challenges to the field from sociology of science, feminism, and science studies. The book then looks in more detail at some specific problems and theories, including scientific realism, the theory-ladeness of observation, scientific explanation, and Bayesianism. Finally, Godfrey-Smith defends a form of philosophical naturalism as the best way to solve the main problems in the field. Throughout the text he points out connections between philosophical debates and wider discussions about science in recent decades, such as the infamous "science wars." Examples and asides engage the beginning student; a glossary of terms explains key concepts; and suggestions for further reading are included at the end of each chapter. However, this is a textbook that doesn't feel like a textbook because it captures the historical drama of changes in how science has been conceived over the last one hundred years.Like no other text in this field, Theory and Reality combines a survey of recent history of the philosophy of science with current key debates in language that any beginning scholar or critical reader can follow.

    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

    Intuition and computational abilities are stressed. Original material on DE and multiple integrals has been expanded.