If your job requires you to manage and analyze all kinds of data, turn to Head First Data Analysis, where you'll quickly learn how to collect and organize data, sort the distractions from the truth, find meaningful patterns, draw conclusions, predict the future, and present your findings to others. Whether you're a product developer researching the market viability of a new product or service, a marketing manager gauging or predicting the effectiveness of a campaign, a salesperson who needs data to support product presentations, or a lone entrepreneur responsible for all of these data-intensive functions and more, the unique approach in Head First Data Analysis is by far the most efficient way to learn what you need to know to convert raw data into a vital business tool. You'll learn how to:Determine which data sources to use for collecting information Assess data quality and distinguish signal from noise Build basic data models to illuminate patterns, and assimilate new information into the models Cope with ambiguous information Design experiments to test hypotheses and draw conclusions Use segmentation to organize your data within discrete market groups Visualize data distributions to reveal new relationships and persuade others Predict the future with sampling and probability models Clean your data to make it useful Communicate the results of your analysis to your audience Using the latest research in cognitive science and learning theory to craft a multi-sensory learning experience, Head First Data Analysis uses a visually rich format designed for the way your brain works, not a text-heavy approach that puts you to sleep.

    Feynman gave his famous course on computation at the California Institute of Technology, he asked Tony Hey to adapt his lecture notes into a book. Although led by Feynman, the course also featured, as occasional guest speakers, some of the most brilliant men in science at that time, including Marvin Minsky, Charles Bennett, and John Hopfield. Although the lectures are now thirteen years old, most of the material is timeless and presents a “Feynmanesque” overview of many standard and some not-so-standard topics in computer science such as reversible logic gates and quantum computers.

    Clojure's clean, careful design lets you write programs that get right to the essence of a problem, without a lot of clutter and ceremony. Clojure is Lisp reloaded. Clojure has the power inherent in Lisp, but is not constrained by the history of Lisp. Clojure is a functional language. Data structures are immutable, and functions tend to be side-effect free. This makes it easier to write correct programs, and to compose large programs from smaller ones. Clojure is concurrent. Rather than error-prone locking, Clojure provides software transactional memory. Clojure embraces Java. Calling from Clojure to Java is direct, and goes through no translation layer. Clojure is fast. Wherever you need it, you can get the exact same performance that you could get from hand-written Java code. Many other languages offer some of these features, but the combination of them all makes Clojure sparkle. Programming Clojure shows you why these features are so important, and how you can use Clojure to build powerful programs quickly.

    By presenting actual experiences and analyzing them as they are described, the author conveys the developmental thought processes employed and shows a style of thinking that leads to successful results is something that can be learned. Along with spectacular successes, the author also conveys how failures contributed to shaping the thought processes. Provides the reader with a style of thinking that will enhance a person's ability to function as a problem-solver of complex technical issues. Consists of a collection of stories about the author's participation in significant discoveries, relating how those discoveries came about and, most importantly, provides analysis about the thought processes and reasoning that took place as the author and his associates progressed through engineering problems.

    K. Dewdney's The Turing Omnibus.Updated and expanded, The Turing Omnibus offers 66 concise, brilliantly written articles on the major points of interest in computer science theory, technology, and applications. New for this tour: updated information on algorithms, detecting primes, noncomputable functions, and self-replicating computers--plus completely new sections on the Mandelbrot set, genetic algorithms, the Newton-Raphson Method, neural networks that learn, DOS systems for personal computers, and computer viruses.Contents:1 Algorithms 2 Finite Automata 3 Systems of Logic 4 Simulation 5 Godel's Theorem 6 Game Trees 7 The Chomsky Hierarchy 8 Random Numbers 9 Mathematical Research 10 Program Correctness 11 Search Trees 12 Error-Corecting Codes 13 Boolean Logic 14 Regular Languages 15 Time and Space Complexity 16 Genetic Algorithms 17 The Random Access Machine 18 Spline Curves 19 Computer Vision 20 Karnaugh Maps 21 The Newton-Raphson Method 22 Minimum Spanning Trees 23 Generative Grammars 24 Recursion 25 Fast Multiplication 26 Nondeterminism 27 Perceptrons 28 Encoders and Multiplexers 29 CAT Scanning 30 The Partition Problem 31 Turing Machines 32 The Fast Fourier Transform 33 Analog Computing 34 Satisfiability 35 Sequential Sorting 36 Neural Networks That Learn 37 Public Key Cryptography 38 Sequential Cirucits 39 Noncomputerable Functions 40 Heaps and Merges 41 NP-Completeness 42 Number Systems for Computing 43 Storage by Hashing 44 Cellular Automata 45 Cook's Theorem 46 Self-Replicating Computers 47 Storing Images 48 The SCRAM 49 Shannon's Theory 50 Detecting Primes 51 Universal Turing Machines 52 Text Compression 53 Disk Operating Systems 54 NP-Complete Problems 55 Iteration and Recursion 56 VLSI Computers 57 Linear Programming 58 Predicate Calculus 59 The Halting Problem 60 Computer Viruses 61 Searching Strings 62 Parallel Computing 63 The Word Problem 64 Logic Programming 65 Relational Data Bases 66 Church's Thesis

    The kernel handles all interactions between the CPU and the external world, and determines which programs will share processor time, in what order. It manages limited memory so well that hundreds of processes can share the system efficiently, and expertly organizes data transfers so that the CPU isn't kept waiting any longer than necessary for the relatively slow disks.The third edition of Understanding the Linux Kernel takes you on a guided tour of the most significant data structures, algorithms, and programming tricks used in the kernel. Probing beyond superficial features, the authors offer valuable insights to people who want to know how things really work inside their machine. Important Intel-specific features are discussed. Relevant segments of code are dissected line by line. But the book covers more than just the functioning of the code; it explains the theoretical underpinnings of why Linux does things the way it does.This edition of the book covers Version 2.6, which has seen significant changes to nearly every kernel subsystem, particularly in the areas of memory management and block devices. The book focuses on the following topics:Memory management, including file buffering, process swapping, and Direct memory Access (DMA)The Virtual Filesystem layer and the Second and Third Extended FilesystemsProcess creation and schedulingSignals, interrupts, and the essential interfaces to device driversTimingSynchronization within the kernelInterprocess Communication (IPC)Program executionUnderstanding the Linux Kernel will acquaint you with all the inner workings of Linux, but it's more than just an academic exercise. You'll learn what conditions bring out Linux's best performance, and you'll see how it meets the challenge of providing good system response during process scheduling, file access, and memory management in a wide variety of environments. This book will help you make the most of your Linux system.

    Whether you're building the next killer app, investing in a startup, or simply curious about the technology, this practical book is essential reading.Bitcoin, the first successful decentralized digital currency, is still in its infancy and it's already spawned a multi-billion dollar global economy. This economy is open to anyone with the knowledge and passion to participate. Mastering Bitcoin provides you with the knowledge you need (passion not included).This book includes:A broad introduction to bitcoin--ideal for non-technical users, investors, and business executivesAn explanation of the technical foundations of bitcoin and cryptographic currencies for developers, engineers, and software and systems architectsDetails of the bitcoin decentralized network, peer-to-peer architecture, transaction lifecycle, and security principlesOffshoots of the bitcoin and blockchain inventions, including alternative chains, currencies, and applicationsUser stories, analogies, examples, and code snippets illustrating key technical concepts

    In this book, Steve Souders, web performance evangelist at Google and former Chief Performance Yahoo!, provides valuable techniques to help you optimize your site's performance.Souders' previous book, the bestselling High Performance Web Sites, shocked the web development world by revealing that 80% of the time it takes for a web page to load is on the client side. In Even Faster Web Sites, Souders and eight expert contributors provide best practices and pragmatic advice for improving your site's performance in three critical categories:JavaScript-Get advice for understanding Ajax performance, writing efficient JavaScript, creating responsive applications, loading scripts without blocking other components, and more.Network-Learn to share resources across multiple domains, reduce image size without loss of quality, and use chunked encoding to render pages faster.Browser-Discover alternatives to iframes, how to simplify CSS selectors, and other techniques. Speed is essential for today's rich media web sites and Web 2.0 applications. With this book, you'll learn how to shave precious seconds off your sites' load times and make them respond even faster.This book contains six guest chapters contributed by Dion Almaer, Doug Crockford, Ben Galbraith, Tony Gentilcore, Dylan Schiemann, Stoyan Stefanov, Nicole Sullivan, and Nicholas C. Zakas.

    This introduction is ideal for beginners: it requires no previous programming experience and all concepts are explained from first principles via carefully chosen examples. Each chapter includes exercises that range from the straightforward to extended projects, plus suggestions for further reading on more advanced topics. The author is a leading Haskell researcher and instructor, well-known for his teaching skills. The presentation is clear and simple, and benefits from having been refined and class-tested over several years. The result is a text that can be used with courses, or for self-learning. Features include freely accessible Powerpoint slides for each chapter, solutions to exercises and examination questions (with solutions) available to instructors, and a downloadable code that's fully compliant with the latest Haskell release.

    Now, 10 years later and in the third edition, this classic still reigns supreme as the book written by an SQL master that teaches future SQL masters. These are not just tips and techniques; Joe also offers the best solutions to old and new challenges and conveys the way you need to think in order to get the most out of SQL programming efforts for both correctness and performance.In the third edition, Joe features new examples and updates to SQL-99, expanded sections of Query techniques, and a new section on schema design, with the same war-story teaching style that made the first and second editions of this book classics.

    Whether you're new to Java programming and need something to bridge the gap between theory-laden reference manuals and real-world programs or you're a seasoned Java programmer looking for a new perspective or a different problem-solving context, this book will help you make the most of your Java knowledge. Packed with hundreds of tried-and-true Java recipes covering all of the major APIs from the 1.4 version of Java, this book also offers significant first-look recipes for the most important features of the new 1.5 version, which is in beta release. You get practical solutions to everyday problems, and each is followed by a detailed, ultimately useful explanation of how and why the technology works. Java Cookbook, 2nd Edition includes code segments covering many specialized APIs--like those for working with Struts, Ant and other new popular Open Source tools. It also includes expanded Mac OS X Panther coverage and serves as a great launching point for Java developers who want to get started in areas outside of their specialization. In this major revision, you'll find succinct pieces of code that can be easily incorporated into other programs. Focusing on what's useful or tricky--or what's useful and tricky--Java Cookbook, 2nd Edition is the most practical Java programming book on the market.

    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.

    They get frustrated losing their scroll position; they get annoyed waiting for refresh; they struggle to reorient themselves on every new page. And the list goes on. With asynchronous JavaScript and XML, known as "Ajax," you can give them a better experience. Once users have experienced an Ajax interface, they hate to go back. Ajax is new way of thinking that can result in a flowing and intuitive interaction with the user.Ajax in Action helps you implement that thinking--it explains how to distribute the application between the client and the server (hint: use a "nested MVC" design) while retaining the integrity of the system. You will learn how to ensure your app is flexible and maintainable, and how good, structured design can help avoid problems like browser incompatibilities. Along the way it helps you unlearn many old coding habits. Above all, it opens your mind to the many advantages gained by placing much of the processing in the browser. If you are a web developer who has prior experience with web technologies, this book is for you. Purchase of the print book comes with an offer of a free PDF, ePub, and Kindle eBook from Manning. Also available is all code from the book.

    With the many upgraded features, C# is more expressive than ever. However, an in depth understanding is required to get the most out of the language.C# in Depth, Second Edition is a thoroughly revised, up-to-date book that covers the new features of C# 4 as well as Code Contracts. In it, you'll see the subtleties of C# programming in action, learning how to work with high-value features that you'll be glad to have in your toolkit. The book helps readers avoid hidden pitfalls of C# programming by understanding "behind the scenes" issues.Purchase of the print book comes with an offer of a free PDF, ePub, and Kindle eBook from Manning. Also available is all code from the book.

    C++ Templates: The Complete Guide provides software architects and engineers with a clear understanding of why, when, and how to use templates to build and maintain cleaner, faster, and smarter software more efficiently. C++ Templates begins with an insightful tutorial on basic concepts and language features. The remainder of the book serves as a comprehensive reference, focusing first on language details, then on a wide range of coding techniques, and finally on advanced applications for templates. Examples used throughout the book illustrate abstract concepts and demonstrate best practices. Readers learn: The exact behaviors of templates How to avoid the pitfalls associated with templates Idioms and techniques, from the basic to the previously undocumented How to reuse source code without threatening performance or safety How to increase the efficiency of C++ programs How to produce more flexible and maintainable software This practical guide shows programmers how to exploit the full power of the template features in C++.