This book deals with the philosophical and methodological aspects of information technology and the collection and analysis of data to provide insight into a problem, whether it is scientific research, policy making by government or decision making in our daily lives. The author seeks to dispels the doubts that chance is an expression of our ignorance which makes accurate prediction impossible and illustrates how our thinking has changed with quantification of uncertainty by showing that chance is no longer the obstructor but a way of expressing our knowledge. Indeed, chance can create and help in the investigation of truth. This theory is eloquently demonstrated with numerous examples of applications that statistics is the science, technology and art of extracting information from data and is based on a study of the laws of chance. It shows how statistical ideas played a vital role in scientific and other investigations even before statistics was recognized as a separate discipline, and how statistics is now evolving as a versatile, powerful and inevitable tool in diverse fields of human endeavour such as literature, legal matters, industry, archaeology and medicine. The use of statistics to the layman in improving the quality of life through wise decision-making is emphasized.

For many years now China's economy has seemed unstoppable. A slow appreciation of the renminbi in 2007 brought wave upon wave of liquidity into China and allowed its companies and banks to raise hundreds of billions in dollars via stock market listings. State banks that had started the new century as bankrupt relics of a communist past became the darlings of international investors.
Even the collapse of Lehman Brothers in 2008 and the ensuing global financial crisis seemed to have little impact on China as the government quickly responded with a huge stimulus package. But the Lehman collapse was a dramatic wake up call to the Chinese leadership. This model of bank and capital market reform had been studiously emulated for more than a decade and had brought great benefits to China. But now, although they believed it to be bankrupt, the Chinese government were bereft of new ideas. In the face of the global financial crisis the government returned to what it knows best, massive state intervention via the banking system. Ten years of banking and capital market reforms were dead.
In Red Capitalism, Carl Walter and Fraser Howie detail how the Chinese government reformed and modeled its financial system in the 30 years since it began its policy of engagement with the west. Instead of a stable series of policies producing steady growth, China's financial sector has boomed and gone bust with regularity in each decade. The latest decade is little different. Chinese banks have become objects of political struggle while they totter under balance sheets bloated by the excessive state-directed lending and bond issuance of 2009.
Looking forward, the government's response to the global financial crisis has created a banking system the stability of which can be maintained only behind the walls of a non-convertible currency, a myriad of off-balance sheet arrangements with non-public state entities and the strong support of its best borrowers--the politically potent National Champions--who are the greatest beneficiaries of the financial status quo.
China's financial system is not a model for the west and, indeed, is not a sustainable arrangement for China itself as it seeks increasingly to assert its influence internationally. This is not a story of impending collapse, but of frustrated reforms that suggests that any full opening and meaningful reform of the financial sector is not, indeed cannot be, on the government's agenda anytime soon.

What makes people smarter than computers? These volumes by a pioneering neurocomputing group suggest that the answer lies in the massively parallel architecture of the human mind. They describe a new theory of cognition called connectionism that is challenging the idea of symbolic computation that has traditionally been at the center of debate in theoretical discussions about the mind. The authors' theory assumes the mind is composed of a great number of elementary units connected in a neural network. Mental processes are interactions between these units which excite and inhibit each other in parallel rather than sequential operations. In this context, knowledge can no longer be thought of as stored in localized structures; instead, it consists of the connections between pairs of units that are distributed throughout the network. Volume 1 lays the foundations of this exciting theory of parallel distributed processing, while Volume 2 applies it to a number of specific issues in cognitive science and neuroscience, with chapters describing models of aspects of perception, memory, language, and thought. David E. Rumelhart is Professor of Psychology at the University of California, San Diego. James L. McClelland is Professor of Psychology at Carnegie-Mellon University. A Bradford Book.

The real inventor of the steam engine. The creator of the bra. The man who invented modern banking. The creator of the computer operating system. These and scores of others are the characters that populate Harold Evans's rollicking, brilliant history of the men and women who made America great. Vast and beautifully designed with hundreds of duotones and photos throughout (many never before published), the book is itself a creation as grand as those it describes. Evans reveals the surprising truths behind many of the creations that made our modern world, as well as the lessons we can learn by studying the great entrepreneurs and innovators of the past two centuries.

This book brings together a number of previously published articles by Stanley L. Engerman and Kenneth L. Sokoloff. Its essays deal with differences in the rates of economic growth in Latin American and mainland North America, specifically the United States and Canada. It demonstrates how relative differences in growth over time are related to differences in the institutions that developed in different economies. This variation is driven by differences in major institutions - suffrage, education, tax policy, land and immigration policy, and banking and financial organizations. These factors, in turn, are all related to differences in endowments, climate and natural resources. Providing a comprehensive treatment of its topic, the essays have been revised to reflect new developments and research.

This book is about trading, the people who trade securities and contracts, the marketplaces where they trade, and the rules that govern it. Readers will learn about investors, brokers, dealers, arbitrageurs, retail traders, day traders, rogue traders, and gamblers; exchanges, boards of trade,
dealer networks, ECNs (electronic communications networks), crossing markets, and pink sheets. Also covered in this text are single price auctions, open outcry auctions, and brokered markets limit orders, market orders, and stop orders. Finally, the author covers the areas of program trades, block
trades, and short trades, price priority, time precedence, public order precedence, and display precedence, insider trading, scalping, and bluffing, and investing, speculating, and gambling.

This engaging text examines U.S. history as revealed through the experiences of all Americans, both ordinary and extraordinary. With a thought-provoking and rich presentation, the authors explore the complex lives of Americans of all national origins and cultural backgrounds, at all levels of society, and in all regions of the country. A vibrant four-color design and compact size make this book accessible, convenient, and easy-to read.

This engaging text examines U.S. history as revealed through the experiences of all Americans, both ordinary and extraordinary. With a thought-provoking and rich presentation, the authors explore the complex lives of Americans of all national origins and cultural backgrounds, at all levels of society, and in all regions of the country. A vibrant four-color design and compact size make this book accessible, convenient, and easy-to read.

A contemporary analytical approach to international relations written at a level that introductory students can grasp. Why are there wars? Why do countries have a hard time cooperating to prevent genocides or global environmental problems? Why are some countries rich while others are poor? Organized around the puzzles that draw scholars and students alike to the study of world politics, this book gives students the tools they need to think analytically about compelling questions like these.
World Politics introduces a contemporary analytical framework based on interests, interactions, and institutions. Drawing extensively on recent research, the authors use this flexible framework throughout the text to get students thinking like political scientists as they explore the major topics in international relations. .

The capstone and crowning achievement of the Future History series, from the New York Times bestselling Grand Master of Science Fiction...

Time Enough for Love follows Lazarus Long through a vast and magnificent timescape of centuries and worlds. Heinlein's longest and most ambitious work, it is the story of a man so in love with Life that he refused to stop living it; and so in love with Time that he became his own ancestor.

Robots are poised to transform today's society as completely as the Internet did twenty years ago. Pulitzer prize-winning New York Times science writer John Markoff argues that we must decide to design ourselves into our future, or risk being excluded from it altogether.

In the past decade, Google introduced us to driverless cars; Apple debuted Siri, a personal assistant that we keep in our pockets; and an Internet of Things connected the smaller tasks of everyday life to the farthest reaches of the Web. Robots have become an integral part of society on the battlefield and the road; in business, education, and health care. Cheap sensors and powerful computers will ensure that in the coming years, these robots will act on their own. This new era offers the promise of immensely powerful machines, but it also reframes a question first raised more than half a century ago, when the intelligent machine was born. Will we control these systems, or will they control us?

In Machines of Loving Grace , John Markoff offers a sweeping history of the complicated and evolving relationship between humans and computers. In recent years, the pace of technological change has accelerated dramatically, posing an ethical quandary. If humans delegate decisions to machines, who will be responsible for the consequences? As Markoff chronicles the history of automation, from the birth of the artificial intelligence and intelligence augmentation communities in the 1950s and 1960s, to the modern-day brain trusts at Google and Apple in Silicon Valley, and on to the expanding robotics economy around Boston, he traces the different ways developers have addressed this fundamental problem and urges them to carefully consider the consequences of their work. We are on the brink of the next stage of the computer revolution, Markoff argues, and robots will profoundly transform modern life. Yet it remains for us to determine whether this new world will be a utopia. Moreover, it is now incumbent upon the designers of these robots to draw a bright line between what is human and what is machine.

After nearly forty years covering the tech industry, Markoff offers an unmatched perspective on the most drastic technology-driven societal shifts since the introduction of the Internet. Machines of Loving Grace draws on an extensive array of research and interviews to present an eye-opening history of one of the most pressing questions of our time, and urges us to remember that we still have the opportunity to design ourselves into the future—before it's too late.

One of our most innovative, popular thinkers takes on-in exhilarating style-one of our key questions: Where do good ideas come from?
With Where Good Ideas Come From , Steven Johnson pairs the insight of his bestselling Everything Bad Is Good for You and the dazzling erudition of The Ghost Map and The Invention of Air to address an urgent and universal question: What sparks the flash of brilliance? How does groundbreaking innovation happen? Answering in his infectious, culturally omnivorous style, using his fluency in fields from neurobiology to popular culture, Johnson provides the complete, exciting, and encouraging story of how we generate the ideas that push our careers, our lives, our society, and our culture forward.
Beginning with Charles Darwin's first encounter with the teeming ecosystem of the coral reef and drawing connections to the intellectual hyperproductivity of modern megacities and to the instant success of YouTube, Johnson shows us that the question we need to ask is, What kind of environment fosters the development of good ideas? His answers are never less than revelatory, convincing, and inspiring as Johnson identifies the seven key principles to the genesis of such ideas, and traces them across time and disciplines.
Most exhilarating is Johnson's conclusion that with today's tools and environment, radical innovation is extraordinarily accessible to those who know how to cultivate it. Where Good Ideas Come From is essential reading for anyone who wants to know how to come up with tomorrow's great ideas.

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Now in its Fourth Edition, this unrivaled, seminal work continues its long tradition of providing balanced insight and thorough historical background. Under the new authorial leadership of Alston Purvis, this authoritative book offers more than 450 new images, along with expansive coverage of such topics as Italian, Russian, and Dutch design. It reveals a saga of creative innovators, breakthrough technologies, and important design innovations.

Visualizing Data is about visualization tools that provide deep insight into the structure of data. There are graphical tools such as coplots, multiway dot plots,and the equal count algorithm. There are fitting tools such as loess and bisquare that fit equations, nonparametric curves,and nonparametric surfaces to data.
But the book is much more than just a compendium of useful tools. It conveys a strategy for data analysis that stresses the use of visualization to thoroughly study the structure of data and to check the validity of statistical models fitted to data. The result of the tools and the strategy is a vast increase in what you can learn from your data. The book demonstrates this by reanalyzing many data sets from the scientific literature, revealing missed effects and inappropriate models fitted to data.

Visual Explanations: Images and Quantities, Evidence and Narrative is about pictures of verbs, the representation of mechanism and motion, process and dynamics, causes and effects, explanation and narrative. Practical applications and examples include statistical graphics, charts for making important decisions in engineering and medicine, technical manuals, diagrams, design of computer interfaces and websites and on-line manuals, animations and scientific visualizations, techniques for talks, and design strategies for enhancing the rate of information transfer in print, presentations, and computer screens. The use of visual evidence in deciding to launch the space shuttle Challenger is discussed in careful detail. Video snapshots show redesigns of a supercomputer animation of a thunderstorm. The book is designed and printed to the highest standards, with luscious color throughout and four built-in flaps for showing motion and before/after effects.

An introductory text in nonlinear dynamics and chaos, emphasizing applications in several areas of science, which include vibrations, biological rhythms, insect outbreaks, and genetic control systems. Contains a rich selection of illustrations, with many exercises and examples. Softcover.

While most people may not be familiar with the name J. C. R. Licklider, he was the guiding spirit behind the greatest revolution of the modern era. At a time when most computers were big, ponderous mainframes, he envisioned them as desktop tools that could empower individuals, foster creativity, and allow the sharing of information all over the world. Working from an obscure office in the depths of the Pentagon, he set in motion the forces that could make his vision real. Writing with the same novelistic flair that made his Complexity "the most exciting intellectual adventure story of the year" (The Washington Post), Waldrop presents the history of this great enterprise and the first full-scale portrait of the man whose dream of a "human-computer symbiosis" changed the course of science and culture, gave us the modern world of computing, and laid the foundation for the Internet age.
"Waldrop's account of [Licklider's] and many others' world-transforming contributions is compelling." (John Allen Paulos, The New York Times Book Review)
"A masterpiece! A mesmerizing but balanced and comprehensive look at the making of the information revolution." (John Seely Brown, former director of Xerox PARC, and coauthor of The Social Life of Information)