It's important that people understand findings from psychology, anthropology, sociology, and neuroscience to escape the notion that any one religion represents the only truth.

    But your pleasure and prowess at games, gambling, and other numerically related pursuits can be heightened with this entertaining volume, in which the authors offer a fascinating view of some of the lesser-known and more imaginative aspects of mathematics.A brief and breezy explanation of the new language of mathematics precedes a smorgasbord of such thought-provoking subjects as the googolplex (the largest definite number anyone has yet bothered to conceive of); assorted geometries — plane and fancy; famous puzzles that made mathematical history; and tantalizing paradoxes. Gamblers receive fair warning on the laws of chance; a look at rubber-sheet geometry twists circles into loops without sacrificing certain important properties; and an exploration of the mathematics of change and growth shows how calculus, among its other uses, helps trace the path of falling bombs.Written with wit and clarity for the intelligent reader who has taken high school and perhaps college math, this volume deftly progresses from simple arithmetic to calculus and non-Euclidean geometry. It “lives up to its title in every way [and] might well have been merely terrifying, whereas it proves to be both charming and exciting." — Saturday Review of Literature.

    Though the answers may seem simple, their profound implications make the prisoner's dilemma one of the great unifying concepts of science. Watching players bluff in a poker game inspired John von Neumann--father of the modern computer and one of the sharpest minds of the century--to construct game theory, a mathematical study of conflict and deception. Game theory was readily embraced at the RAND Corporation, the archetypical think tank charged with formulating military strategy for the atomic age, and in 1950 two RAND scientists made a momentous discovery.Called the prisoner's dilemma, it is a disturbing and mind-bending game where two or more people may betray the common good for individual gain. Introduced shortly after the Soviet Union acquired the atomic bomb, the prisoner's dilemma quickly became a popular allegory of the nuclear arms race. Intellectuals such as von Neumann and Bertrand Russell joined military and political leaders in rallying to the preventive war movement, which advocated a nuclear first strike against the Soviet Union. Though the Truman administration rejected preventive war the United States entered into an arms race with the Soviets and game theory developed into a controversial tool of public policy--alternately accused of justifying arms races and touted as the only hope of preventing them.A masterful work of science writing, Prisoner's Dilemma weaves together a biography of the brilliant and tragic von Neumann, a history of pivotal phases of the cold war, and an investigation of game theory's far-reaching influence on public policy today. Most important, Prisoner's Dilemma is the incisive story of a revolutionary idea that has been hailed as a landmark of twentieth-century thought.

    The Text Was Designed To Familiarize Students With The Foundations And Principles Of Computer Science And To Strengthen The Students' Ability To Carry Out Formal And Rigorous Mathematical Arguments. In The New Fourth Edition, Author Peter Linz Has Offered A Straightforward, Uncomplicated Treatment Of Formal Languages And Automata And Avoids Excessive Mathematical Detail So That Students May Focus On And Understand The Underlying Principles. In An Effort To Further The Accessibility And Comprehension Of The Text, The Author Has Added New Illustrative Examples Throughout.

    R is one of the most powerful and flexible statistical software packages available, and enables the user to apply a wide variety of statistical methods ranging from simple regression to generalized linear modelling. Statistics: An Introduction using R is a clear and concise introductory textbook to statistical analysis using this powerful and free software, and follows on from the success of the author's previous best-selling title Statistical Computing. * Features step-by-step instructions that assume no mathematics, statistics or programming background, helping the non-statistician to fully understand the methodology. * Uses a series of realistic examples, developing step-wise from the simplest cases, with the emphasis on checking the assumptions (e.g. constancy of variance and normality of errors) and the adequacy of the model chosen to fit the data. * The emphasis throughout is on estimation of effect sizes and confidence intervals, rather than on hypothesis testing. * Covers the full range of statistical techniques likely to be need to analyse the data from research projects, including elementary material like t-tests and chi-squared tests, intermediate methods like regression and analysis of variance, and more advanced techniques like generalized linear modelling. * Includes numerous worked examples and exercises within each chapter. * Accompanied by a website featuring worked examples, data sets, exercises and solutions: http: //www.imperial.ac.uk/bio/research/crawl... Statistics: An Introduction using R is the first text to offer such a concise introduction to a broad array of statistical methods, at a level that is elementary enough to appeal to a broad range of disciplines. It is primarily aimed at undergraduate students in medicine, engineering, economics and biology - but will also appeal to postgraduates who have not previously covered this area, or wish to switch to using R.

    CONTAINS MCQ'S

    The NSA has long eluded public scrutiny, but The Puzzle Palace penetrates its vast network of power and unmasks the people who control it, often with shocking disregard for the law. With detailed information on the NSA's secret role in the Korean Airlines disaster, Iran-Contra, the first Gulf War, and other major world events of the 80s and 90s, this is a brilliant account of the use and abuse of technological espionage.

    The salient features of the book are as follows: It exactly covers the prescribed syllabus. Nothing undesirable has been included and nothing essential has been left. Its approach is explanatory and language is lucid and communicable. The exposition of the subject matter is systematic and the students are better prepared to solve the problems. All fundamentals of the included topics are explained with a micro-analysis. Sufficient number of solved examples have been given to let the students understand the various skills necessary to solve the problems. These examples are well-graded. Unsolved exercises of multi-varieties have been given in a well-graded style. Attempting those on his own, will enable a student to create confidence and independence in him/her regarding the understanding of the subject. Daily life problems and practical applications have been incorporated in the body of the text. A large number of attractive and accurate figures have been drawn which enable a student to grasp the subject in an easier way. All the answers have been checked and verified. About The Author: N.P. Bali is a prolific author of over 100 books for degree and engineering students. He has been writing books for more than forty years. His books on the following topics are well known for their easy comprehension and lucid presentation: Algebra, Trigonometry, Differential Calculus, Integral Calculus, Real Analysis, Co-ordinate Geometry, Statics, Dynamics etc. Dr. Manish Goyal has been associated with

    And the subject of these stories—how small and seemingly meaningless decisions and actions by individuals often lead to significant unintended consequences for a large group—is more important than ever. In one famous example, Thomas C. Schelling shows that a slight-but-not-malicious preference to have neighbors of the same race eventually leads to completely segregated populations.The updated edition of this landmark book contains a new preface and the author's Nobel Prize acceptance speech.

    According to theorists, the missing six are curled up in bizarre structures known as Calabi-Yau manifolds. In The Shape of Inner Space, Shing-Tung Yau, the man who mathematically proved that these manifolds exist, argues that not only is geometry fundamental to string theory, it is also fundamental to the very nature of our universe.Time and again, where Yau has gone, physics has followed. Now for the first time, readers will follow Yau’s penetrating thinking on where we’ve been, and where mathematics will take us next. A fascinating exploration of a world we are only just beginning to grasp, The Shape of Inner Space will change the way we consider the universe on both its grandest and smallest scales.

    Fully revised to meet the needs of the wide range of students beginning engineering courses, this edition has an extended Foundation section including new chapters on graphs, trigonometry, binomial series and functions and a CD-ROM

    What happened during those years and what has happened since to refine the understanding of this phenomenon is the fascinating story told here.We move from a coffee shop in Zurich, where Einstein and Max von Laue discuss the madness of quantum theory, to a bar in Brazil, as David Bohm and Richard Feynman chat over cervejas. We travel to the campuses of American universities—from J. Robert Oppenheimer’s Berkeley to the Princeton of Einstein and Bohm to Bell’s Stanford sabbatical—and we visit centers of European physics: Copenhagen, home to Bohr’s famous institute, and Munich, where Werner Heisenberg and Wolfgang Pauli picnic on cheese and heady discussions of electron orbits.Drawing on the papers, letters, and memoirs of the twentieth century’s greatest physicists, Louisa Gilder both humanizes and dramatizes the story by employing their own words in imagined face-to-face dialogues. Here are Bohr and Einstein clashing, and Heisenberg and Pauli deciding which mysteries to pursue. We see Schrödinger and Louis de Broglie pave the way for Bell, whose work is here given a long-overdue revisiting. And with his characteristic matter-of-fact eloquence, Richard Feynman challenges his contemporaries to make something of this entanglement.

    Yet despite logic's widely acknowledged importance, it remains an unbroken seal for many, due to its heavy use of jargon and mathematical symbolism.This book follows the historical development of logic, explains the symbols and methods involved and explores the philosophical issues surrounding the topic in an easy-to-follow and friendly manner. It will take you through the influence of logic on scientific method and the various sciences from physics to psychology, and will show you why computers and digital technology are just another case of logic in action.

    In his fascinating new book, he writes with characteristic clarity and personal awareness as he sheds light on the mysteries of savants' incredible mental abilities, and our own. Tammet explains that the differences between savant and non-savant minds have been exaggerated; his astonishing capacities in memory, math and language are neither due to a cerebral supercomputer nor any genetic quirk, but are rather the results of a highly rich and complex associative form of thinking and imagination. Autistic thought, he argues, is an extreme variation of a kind that we all do, from daydreaming to the use of puns and metaphors."Embracing the Wide Sky" combines meticulous scientific research with Tammet's detailed descriptions of how his mind works to demonstrate the immense potential within us all. He explains how our natural intuitions can help us to learn a foreign language, why his memories are like symphonies, and what numbers and giraffes have in common. We also discover why there is more to intelligence than IQ, how optical illusions fool our brains, and why too much information can make you dumb.Many readers will be particularly intrigued by Tammet's original ideas concerning the genesis of genius and exceptional creativity. He illustrates his arguments with examples as diverse as the private languages of twins, the compositions of poets with autism, and the breakthroughs, and breakdowns, of some of history's greatest minds. "Embracing the Wide Sky" is a unique and brilliantly imaginative portrait of how we think, learn, remember and create, brimming with personal insights and anecdotes, and explanations of the most up-to-date, mind-bending discoveries from fields ranging from neuroscience to psychology and linguistics. This is a profound and provocative book that will transform our understanding and respect for every kind of mind.

    A rich source of information for readers of all ages, this book is divided into two sections, first looking at major sources of symbols (basic shapes, colors and numbers, the natural world), then, placing symbols in context of mythologies and religions, the human life cycle, people and culture, and symbol systems. Clear cross-referencing illuminates connections between symbols, while beautiful artwork and photography make this a collector's edition to treasure.