Book Description

This text for the 2-semester introductory organic chemistry lab offers a series of clear and concise experiments that encourage accurate observation and deductive reasoning. An engaging prose and a focus on biochemical and biomedical applications render the narrative ideally suited for the mainstream organic chemistry laboratory. Emphasis is placed on safety and the disposal of hazardous waste.

Pre-lab exercises, marginal notes, clear line drawings, and questions help retain student interest and comprehension from lesson to lesson. This new edition includes "In this experiment" objectives that clarify the goals of procedures. Optional, additional "For Further Investigation" features offer an in-depth exploration of the chemical principles presented. Students may also determine the precise structure of molecules using the "Computational Chemistry" computer-based calculations.

• New! This edition includes material on mass spectroscopy in Chapter 14.
• The experiments presented make use of less costly and safe solvents.
• Extensive references to relevant Websites allow students to further explore chemical concepts.
• A supplementary Instructor's Guide contains assessments of the relative difficulty of—and time needed for—each experiment, as well as trouble-shooting tips, answers to end-of-chapter questions, a list of chemicals and apparatus required for each experiment per student and per 24-hour student laboratory, sources of supply for unusual items, and a guide for the hardware and software needed for running computational chemistry and molecular mechanics experiments.

Reviews (2)

An old classic, but still useful.
This classic is getting old...
But you cand find some important informations inside, classic protocols and keys-data to the antibodies-world.
A must-have reference for any today-biologist working with antibodies (immunostaining, immunoprecipitation, Western-blot, antibodies production, etc...).

An excellent summary of immunological methods.
This book is indespensible for those wishing to set up any type of antibody related methodology. Gives excellent overviews of immunodiagnostic methods (ELISA,RIA,etc.), antibody production (polyclonal and monoclonal), and includes basic summaries on the nature of the immune sytem in vivo. Especially useful to researchers developing immuno-techniques as it gives detailed methodologies. ... Read more

Book Description

Did Newton "unweave the rainbow" by reducing it to its prismatic colors, as Keats contended? Did he, in other words, diminish beauty? Far from it, says acclaimed scientist Richard Dawkins; Newton's unweaving is the key to much of modern astronomy and to the breathtaking poetry of modern cosmology. Mysteries don't lose their poetry because they are solved: the solution often is more beautiful than the puzzle, uncovering deeper mysteries.
With the wit, insight, and spellbinding prose that have made him a best-selling author, Dawkins takes up the most important and compelling topics in modern science, from astronomy and genetics to language and virtual reality, combining them in a landmark statement of the human appetite for wonder.
This is the book Richard Dawkins was meant to write: a brilliant assessment of what science is (and isn't), a tribute to science not because it is useful but because it is uplifting. ... Read more

Reviews (76)

Unweaving the mysteries of the mind and universe
After reading Dawkins' classic works on evolution and combatting creationism (_The Selfish Gene_, _The Blind Watchmaker_ and _Climbing Mount Improbable_), I was unsure as to what more our Prof. Dawkins could relate to us in his latest instalment. However, to my delight it seems that my skepticism was ill-founded.

In this volume Dawkins does for Science in general what his previous books did for evolution. The book's title refers to Keat's criticism of Newton for destroying the mystery and beauty of the rainbow. Dawkins' mission in this book is to show the public that naturalistic science is just as, if not more intriguing than a poet's perspective of the natural world. Dawkins takes the reader on a journey that spans the mysteries of the rainbow, radio waves and genetics with occasional interludes in debunking the pseudo-science of astrology and other supersitions. Dawkins' writing is riddled with quotes from famous poets and the prose itself is akin to that poetry.

For those lay readers that consider themselves experts in the realms of ccience, this book may seem a bit simplistic in places. At times I found myself wondering about the relevance of certain chapters in the book to the central tenet that science in its most natural form is poetic, however I enjoyed the digressions as they were interesting nonetheless. Overall, I enjoyed this book thoroughly and in paritcular I felt a warmth emanating from the prose that could only have been exuded by one of the most brilliant humanistic thinkers of our time.

Fact vs. Fiction
A fabulous book on a fabulous subject, in this book Richard Dawkins continues his understandable explanations of natural selection and evolution while at the same time championing the cause of science in a society obsessed with aesthetics and poetry.

The general scientific topics he explores I felt made the book a LITTLE less reachable than his other works. Chapters 3-5 particularly go into scientific areas one feels that Dawkins himself doesn't wholely understand and therefore you feel as if you're trusting him that he's getting the explanation right.

However he does his best and his best is better than most! Also he should be forgiven for delving deep into a variety of subjects considering his applaudable goal of showing without-a-doubt the poetic and aesthetic brilliance that can and SHOULD be found in science of all kinds.

While I feel that the book was sadly lacking in his wonderful writing on the topics of religion and theology (most of the time he touches on these topics only to make the point that statistics and mathematics are more reliable) it still accomplishes his point of showcasing the wonders of sciences often assumed to be dull and lifeless.

A wonderful read for anybody looking for the pizazze in science and fact that is generally believed only to be found in fairy tales and illusions.

Who is afraid of good science destroying aesthetics?
As someone who enjoyed this book in particular, and who enjoys books on science in general, I am bewildered by some of its very negative reviews. I am however conscious of some of its limitations. One reason might be that this otherwise wonderful book covers so many different ideas, and often unevenly. I could see why it would be easy to have unmet expectations. So it is helpful first to be clear about some of the topics this book is NOT fundamentally about: a systematic exposition of the scientific method; the history of science; the mind-body debate; evolutionary biology (not particularly, even though this is the author?s specialty); and how poets and artists might do a better job in their works of representing science.

Even if the somewhat meandering manner of the book does not upset you, you might be upset by Dawkins? rhetorical style (I was not) . You might prefer more subtlety to his no-holds-barred approach to labeling some of the enemies of good science. The catalogue includes: ?pseudo-scientists?.populist dumbing down?hostility from academics sophisticated in fashionable disciplines?purveyors of cultural relativism?few vocal fifth columnists within science?.? He has no compunction in bemoaning a lack of either understanding or appreciation of science from many of the titans of the world of arts and poetry including Coleridge, Keats, and Ruskin, among others.

So, why is this a worthy read? I believe it is because Dawkins tackles a subject which is fundamental to what it means to be human. It is also a subject which few writers, scientists or non-scientists, handle well: why good science can (and should) be a pleasurable and passionate pursuit, for both scientists and non-scientists. Dawkins would like to think that enjoying science could be like enjoying music even if one does not play an instrument ? a view I find very encouraging.

This book is a spirited attempt to rescue us from the misplaced view that science is at odds with aesthetics. Dawkins makes no apologies for clearly distinguishing how scientists can view the world differently from poets, without losing an appreciation of beauty. QUOTE The mystic is content to bask in the wonder and revel in a mystery that we were not meant to understand. The scientist feels the same wonder but is restless, not content; recognizes the mystery as profound, then adds, ?But we?re working on it.? UNQUOTE

Even if poets and scientists may view mystery and beauty differently, Dawkins holds that ?the spirit of wonder which led Blake to Christian mysticism, Keats to Arcadian myth and Yeats to Fenians and fairies is the very same that moves great scientists..? I can sympathize with Dawkins? lament with the distortions of science we can find in poetry, because he demonstrates the scientists? appreciation of artistic endeavor in an ability to reconstruct poetic passages completely in scientific terms. I was moved by one stanza he quotes which I reproduce here:

To see a world in a grain of sand,
And a heaven in a wild flower,
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand.
And eternity in an hour

When he wrote the above four lines, William Blake could not have been expected in 1803 to anticipate new concepts of space and time and discoveries of quantum physics. And cosmology in twentieth century science. Yet, we can today marvel at his stanza and cherish these lines while understanding them completely in terms of modern science, which stikes me as a remarkable product of human artistic and scientific achievement.

The title of the book refers to Keats' lament of Sir Issac Newton's use of prisms to decompose the components of white light, supposedly because this experiment destroyed a sense of beauty and wonder related to observing the rainbow. It is clearly emblematic of how such poetic lament is at odds with the sheer wonder that scientific discoveries such as Neton's can evoke. It was this discovery, together with those of later scientists, which have led us to understand in the twentieth century how we are part of a much larger universe than humans previously imagined, which is expanding, and which is made up of the same common material everywhere, and has revealed to us even greater mysteries that we could not have previously imagined.

For adults who may have acquired a distaste of science from unfortunate early school experiences, this book may restore a sense of wonder and beauty to this endeavor. Or, by offering some wonderful imagery to convey some simple but important scientific idea, this book may help adults and children dialogue about science in an accessible way. For example, the author compares the time scale of biological evolution to the span between the fingertips of left and right hands when both arms are outstretched in a gesture of open embrace. The epoch when simple celled organisms and bacteria were the only form of life forms the large bulk of this span, with dinosaurs only appearing at the point in the upper part of the right palm, and human beings appear only at the very fingertips!

This book reminds us of that unfortunate chasm in our culture between poetic or artistic expression and scientific endeavor. I confess that as an advocate of greater scientific literacy among the general public, I would be happy to see more of this genre.

The Darwinisation of the "Cambrian Explosion"
Let's assume that Gould is right in his observation that the Burgess Shell is a testimony to an incredibly hectic period diversification, on a different time scale from what we experience now. The high rate of change in life forms (new phyla "bursting") in the period leading to the Cambrian and through its early stages surely doesn't have to mean large evolutionary "jumps", but rather a different "natural frequency" of the standard, gradual evolution process by the tried and true Darwinian mechanism. What has to be explained is the causes of the different rate. It is quite safe to postulate that this rate is determined by the feedback between different parts of the Darwinian mechanism, just as is the case for other cyclic phenomena. The cycle in this instant is the generation and elimination of life forms. It seems that the current rate is "optimize" to populate every possible ecological niche, but that does not mean it's the one and only possible rates. On the contrary. Different ecological situation surely must influence this rate. For example, in a resource-rich and under-populated environment, such as a "virgin" island, mutations that normally would be considered "unfit", will survive. This is the conventional rationalization behind the "Explosion" metaphor, if you don't take it to mean "instantaneous", just incredibly fast. So it boils down to the question the speed of the evolutionary process and what controls it.

We know the engine of change and mechanism of "Quality Control" by which most of the changes are rejected. Those two work as a superbly coordinated team' at least as far as the end result is concerned. Evolution might be a blind watchmaker, but also a very successful one. Creationists may even ask who created the watchmaker! In other words, how come that the parameters of the evolutionary process have the values that actually produce evolution? We surly reject the "Intelligent Design" type of answers, but that does not free us from the need to provide a satisfactory scientific answer. Which brings me to speculate, that the apparent correspondence between the different parts of the evolutionary equation is too well fine-tuned to escape the conclusion that the evolutionary mechanism itself evolved in a similar process. The blind watchmaker was fine-tuned by a blind watchmaker - and it's not a meaningless recursion.

We all know the essential ingredients of the formula used to tune natural evolution:
1. The conservative force of genetic inheritance, operating like gravity on pendulum
2. The erratic drive of mutation, generating the required perturbations from stasis, pushing the pendulum in every possible way
3. The environment enhancing the successful "modes of oscillation" to be conserved, as in a resonant mechanism, and rejecting the non-resonant modes.

(The clockwork metaphor is intentional, but should not be take to imply one-to-one correspondence between the two mechanisms. It's just "poetics"' hopefully a good one.)

In the Pre-Cambrian environment, the initial survival rate of new mutant was presumably higher, but not for a long time. Soon enough, the available resources must have been fully utilized and the Darwinian competition begun. The conventional rationalization about overly abundant environment can't be justified in geological time-scale. However, the mutation rate and the conservative constrains of the genetic mechanism could be quite different than what we see now. Actually, even today we do see a great variation in mutation (successful ones too!) rate between different life forms. For example, certain microbes mutate before out eyes almost day to day. With a much higher rate of evolution than we experience today in multi-cellular life forms, it would seems that phyla were "invented" during the Pre-Cambrian in a very short geological time span, requiring large successful "jumps", while actually the great many steps required to accomplish the transition just happened very quickly. But the environment is the "negative" aspect of the Darwinian process, culling the unfit, not the "positive" force blindly experimenting in new life forms. To understand the "explosion" we must allow for a different equilibrium of checks-and-balances between the conservative and the mutating forces in the genetic mechanism itself, namely the copying of DNA.

Of the many "exotic" life forms populating the Pre-Cambrian world, few survived. The new environmental condition narrowed the criteria for passing the survival test, a change that was mirrored in the optimal balance between conservation and change in the selection formula for the genetic material (DNA, RNA, what have you) and its associated molecular mechanism. Gone were the days when sloppy copying was tolerated - even encouraged - by the QA department. The fast mutating life forms lost to the ones based on a very pedantic DNA copy machine. The conservatives won the day and the wild variation of gene-inheritance alternatives dwindled to one. Only phyla that adapted this mechanism survived. This mechanism is so biased towards conservatism, that no new phyla could arise since it came to dominate file. The explosion deserves its name only if you assume that the current mechanism is what always was - an idea as absurd as assuming that the species themselves are what they always were.

In other words, we have to apply the Darwinian adaptation mechanism to the molecular infrastructure underlying the genes, as we do to the genes themselves, in order to understand the fine-tuning of the evolutionary rate we see today. In the early stages of the evolution of multi-cellular life form, before low mutation rate was selected (frequency-locked) by natural selection, the appearance of radically new life forms took just millions of years, rather than hundreds of millions. The natural selection of gene conservation mechanism was affected, probably, by selecting the very stable and predictable DNA/RNA one over alternatives (for example "horizontal" transfer of genes, as in bacteria) and all the other parts of the fine molecular dance of the genes. You may think of this as the mirror process to the one leading to the selection of sexual strategy. The later was selected to enrich the variation after the first fixed the rate at a too low value relative to environmental changes.

To summarize, what I'm trying to propose is that the same logical thinking that make Classic Darwinian evolution inhabitable apply also to the evolution of the genetic mechanism underlying the Darwinian process. It couldn't be as good as we experience it now if it didn't undergo a multi-staged fine-tuning under selective forces. Once this postulate is accepted, the "Cambrian Explosion" becomes a legitimate part of evolutionary orthodoxy.

Every book helps
The last review by Ryan answers the question posed by the previous review by Kevin, as many times as a book is published that goes over these same grounds there will be those who fail, deliberately or otherwise, to understand the points being made.

To those who complain that Dawkins is reducing humans to a collection of synapses the answer if you read anything that Dawkins has ever written is that yes we are such a collection and we are also just meat and bones but what's your point? I can live, love, laugh, cry etc just as much as you can but I also have a clearer appreciation of how these thing have come to be than you with your mysticism. The evidence is all with Dawkins, the complainants never really advance anything more than wishful thinking and mere assertion, 'we are not just...' 'there has to be something more....', no there doesn't, what we have is inspiring and beautiful enough and that is what this book (all of it)is about. ... Read more

Book Description

Over 120 delightful pen-and-ink illustrations by the author, add another dimension of good-natured charm to these wide-ranging explorations. A mind-expanding volume for the layman and the science-minded.
... Read more

Reviews (15)

The book that introduced me to the wonders of science
I read this book long long ago (30 years) in a place far far away (in Chenappady, India where I was born and raised). I was in high school and Prof. Gamow introduced me to the wonders of science - everything from Fermat's last theorem to the theory of relativity to the stars and galaxies and atoms and electrons. This book influenced my career choices; it taught me to look up and wonder, to sit down and think, and to appreciate the wonders of science and the greatness of the minds of the scientists who explored and invented and dreamed up science and math. I read the book from cover to cover again recently, and I still loved it! Thank you Prof. Gamow.

A nice introduction to Science and Math
This book was written, thank god, before physics got so esoteric that it started sounding like metaphysics+philosophy, and the only thing that kept it physics was that math was still involved a bit. It clearly explains a lot of concepts clearly, but its not a baby book either. The book is fun to read, never boring and wide-ranging. Gamow has written other good books eplaining elementary relativity and quantum mechanics to the mostly layman, such as his 'Mr. Thompkins' series, which I loved. I hope that other athors can try to explain concepts so clearly and lucidly, in a friendly manner without sounding overbearing.

Much more than it seems
This book is brillant in many different ways. Not only does Gamow explain the mysteries of the universe in a way that is easy to understand, but his book covers more ground that even he realized when he wrote it. Much of the book, (the sections on extremely large numbers, the drunkard's walk, the law of entropy, etc) is now being studied from a computer science point of view. I studied much of this material in my computer science classes, only not in an atomic point of view, like Gamow, but in a binary point of view. The theories and proofs are the same, just the application is slightly different. I cannot recomend this book highly enough. It is extremely readable and you don't need a doctorate in physics or math to understand what is being taught.

One, Two, Three .....Infinity
I read this book for the first time when I was in school, almost 26 years ago.

I have been searching this book for the last almost 10 years, and suddenly thought of checking on Amazon.

Not only did I locate the book, but also I received the book within 5 days of ordering. I am re-learning the concepts that Dr. Gamow introduced almost 60 years ago.

treats and tricks
Intellectual treats, whimsy, but deep. Illustrated with lovely drawings by Gamow himself. Much of it can be understood by a child, and other parts might require a little concentration. All of it is great fun. The author Gamow started in nuclear physics, during the Golden Age of Physics, worked with Niels Bohr, then later in the US, on the Manhattan Project during WWII, and after the war, he was professor in Boulder Colorado. The books he wrote are pearls, and they have been equally popular with my parent's generation as with mine. Luckely some have been reprinted! Other Gamow titles: Biography of Physics, Atomic Energy [dedicated to the hope of lasting peace], Physics of the Strapless Evning Gown,...We are lucky that Dover has reprinted some of them. Do more Dover! ... Read more

Book Description

This book provides information regarding the new and rapidly changing subject of genomics, a rapidly exploding field exploring the complete genome sequence of a variety of organisms. With its emphasis on computational analysis, high-through-put technologies, and identification of biological networks, this book covers comparative genomics, structural genomics, phylogenomics, and pharmacogenomics. For professionals in the field of biology and genomics.

Book Description

With the same user-friendly, quirky, and perceptive approach that made Innumeracy a bestseller, John Allen Paulos travels though the pages of the daily newspaper showing how math and numbers are a key element in many of the articles we read every day.From the Senate, SATs, and sex, to crime, celebrities, and cults, he takes stories that may not seem to involve mathematics at all and demonstrates how a lack of mathematical knowledge can hinder our understanding of them. ... Read more

Reviews (22)

All the Quantification That's Fit to Print
I found Professor Paulos's book, Innumeracy, to be a delightful expression of the key elements of mathematical ignorance that can be harmful, along with many new ways to see and think about the world around. You can imagine how much more pleased I was to find that A Mathematician Reads the Newspaper is an improvement over that valuable book. Every editor and newspaper writer should be required to read and apply this book before beginning their careers. Almost all those who love the news will find some new appreciation for how it could be better reported. Those who will benefit most are those with the least amount of background in math, logic and psychology. Although the subjects are often related to math, if you can multiple two numbers together using a calculator you will probably understand almost all of the sections. If you already know math well, this book will probably only provide amusement in isolated examples and you may not find it has enough new to really educate you. Most of the points are regularly treated in the mathematics literature.

In the introduction, Professor Paulos reveals a long and abiding love for newspapers. And he reads a lot of them. He subscribes to the Philadelphia Inquirer and the New York Times, skims the Wall Street Journal and the Philadelphia Daily News, and occasionally looks at USA Today (he likes weather maps in color on occasion), the Washington Post, the suburban Ambler Gazette, the Bar Harbor Times, the local paper of any city he is in, and the tabloids.

This knowledge is reflected in the book's structure. There are four sections, reflecting the typical four section format of many weekday papers. The four sections are:

(1) Politics, Economics and the Nation

(2) Local, Business and Social Issues

(3) Lifestyle, Spin and Soft News

(4) Science, Medicine and the Environment

Then, within each section, he uses a headline and subtitle for each subsection to capture the essence of a story type that we have all read lots of. For example, "Lani 'Quota Queen' Guinier: Voting, Power, and Mathematics" is the subsection that looks at how different ways of compiling votes would affect the power of individual interest groups and minorities. "SAT Top Quartile Score Declines: Correlation, Prediction and Improvement" examines all of those many stories we read about the SAT and what they really mean. Each subsection tends to run from 2-5 pages. As a result, this book can be read in 10 minute intervals very comfortably. In that sense, it's an ideal book for commuters who've finished reading their daily paper and still have more time on their hands.

This book covers many of the same topics as Innumeracy. I suggest that if you feel you really understand that subject that you skip the relevant subsection here unless you find the treatment amusing in its opening lines. Professor Paulos tends to repeat examples from Innumeracy and while that makes the book easier to understand, the repetition can dull your interest.

I found the book to be most appealing when it pointed out the fundamental absurdity of some approach that is commonly used now. One of the most powerful examples involved pointing out that putting one pint of toxic material into the ocean would create a frequency of molecules in the entire ocean that would sound scary to anyone, even though the material would be extremely dilute. Naturally, as an author, I was in complete agreement with his point about the too infrequent reviewing of new books (except on Amazon.com, of course!). My mind was also expanded by the problem of whether Moslems should pray towards Mecca straight through the Earth or as though they were traveling over the top of the Earth.

You probably won't agree with all of his solutions . . . or even think that all of the problems he cites are important ones. But you'll find yourself amused and informed more often than not. That's better than you can expect from all but a tiny fraction of nonfiction books. Take a peek at "Recession Forecast If Steps Not Taken" as a test of your potential interest in the book. This subsection explores chaos theory and why it's not possible to forecast accurately all of the things that people regularly claim to forecast (such as the weather, the economy and many social trends).

After you finish the book, I suggest that you pick out a newspaper article that falls into some of these errors . . . and write a letter to the editor suggesting how it could have been improved. If we all did that even once a year, newspaper reporting would soon improve and we would all be better informed.

Intriguing and entertaining - a perfect "commuting" book.
Althought it took a few chapters to get in to the groove of the book, "A Mathematician Reads the Newspaper" quickly drew my interest. Although some topics are repetitive, and at times you wonder what the point is, in essence the author does a good job at teaching us how to understand what we read. Broken down in short (2-3 page) chapters, this book is ideal for people who need something to read for 5-10 minutes - although it is just as rewarding in a longer-term reading session. The use of complex math is limited, and he explains things well - although some may have to re-read his mathematical and logical points to fully understand them. Overall, for people intrigued with logic, mathematics, or understanding how people perceive the world, it's a worthy read.

Disappointed
The book is dedicated "To storytelling number-crunchers and number-crunching storytellers," and I consider myself in this group. However, the book is written for those who are not really familiar with statistics and number crunching. Some interesting topics and stories, but no Aha's.

An excellent book
Well worth the read. It's not preachy like Innumeracy, it entertainingly goes through the ways that news sources screw up their numbers.

A mixed bag
This book had a few good examples of how numbers are used and abused in the media. The book was genenrally good when it kept its discussion to narrowly defined cases (the contamination of a pollutant in the water, e.g.). However, the discussion of the broader issues, especially any topic to do with ethics, came across as astoundingly naive and uncritical its hidden assumptions. Much as the author would like to believe, not every problem is quantifiable, at least not in the simplistic way done here. Read this book if you want to see a reason why mathematicians do not hold all the answers. ... Read more

Book Description

The landscape of homological algebra has evolved over the past half-century into a fundamental tool for the working mathematician. This book provides a unified account of homological algebra as it exists today. The historical connection with topology, regular local rings, and semi-simple Lie algebras is also described. The first half of the book takes as its subject the canonical topics in homological algebra: derived functors, Tor and Ext, projective dimensions and spectral sequences. Homology of group and Lie algebras illustrate these topics. Intermingled are less canonical topics, such as the derived inverse limit functor lim1, local cohomology, Galois cohomology, and affine Lie algebras. The last part of the book covers less traditional topics that are a vital part of the modern homological toolkit:simplicial methods, Hochschild and cyclic homology, derived categories and total derived functors. ... Read more

Reviews (1)

Great homological algebra book!
This book was absolutely priceless for me while I was doing my qualifying exams and dissertation. Excellently written, with modern notation and applications and a clearly-exposited writing style. I wish all "hard" math books were written like this. Thanks Prof. Weibel ... Read more

Book Description

Book Description

Subgroup growth studies the distribution of subgroups of finite index in a group as a function of the index. In the last two decades this topic has developed into one of the most active areas of research in infinite group theory; this book is a systematic and comprehensive account of the substantial theory which has emerged.As well as determining the range of possible 'growth types', for finitely generated groups in general and for groups in particular classes such as linear groups, a main focus of the book is on the tight connection between the subgroup growth of a group and its algebraic structure. A wide range of mathematical disciplines play a significant role in this work: as well as various aspects of infinite group theory, these include finite simple groups and permutation groups, profinite groups, arithmetic groups and Strong Approximation, algebraic and analytic number theory, probability, and p-adic model theory. Relevant aspects of such topics are explained in self-contained 'windows'. ... Read more

Amazon.com

"Pure mathematics," Albert Einstein once remarked, "is, in its way, the poetry of logical ideas." In The Universe and the Teacup, Los Angeles Times science writer K. C. Cole discusses some of the ways this "poetry" can be used to look at science and other realms of experience.

Mathematics, Cole explains, enables us to "translate the complexity of the world into manageable patterns," whether we're trying to comprehend the risks of smoking or the usefulness of DNA matches in criminal investigations. Cole also looks at how mathematical principles apply in unexpected fields. One chapter, for example, vindicates the theories on voting rights that cost Lani Guinier her Justice Department nomination in 1993.

Without relying on a single equation, Cole's gently humorous prose helps make mathematics unthreatening to laypeople, enabling them to better understand the world in which they live. ... Read more

Reviews (33)

The Politics of Truth and Beauty
Despite the title, not once in this book is an actual mathematical problem presented coherently. Instead, Cole drones on about the virtues of cooperation, the importance of minorities, and other left-wing philosophical themes. I'm a liberal and would tend to agree with her politically, but that ignores the central problem with this book: Cole's failure to make the distinction between mathematics itself and beliefs that just happen to be justified by statistics or quasi-mathematical reasoning.

Perhaps The Universe and the Teacup is best described as a meta-popularization, since virtually all of Cole's sources are themselves popularizations. She hypes such familiar staples of popular science writing as fuzzy logic, chaos and complexity theory ("all the rage these days" -- I thought that's what they said back in the 80's), and Godel's theorem (both "a shattering blow" AND "a staggering blow to our sense of certainty"), without showing that she understands any of these things on more than a superficial level. (I don't claim to be an expert on these topics, either, but then again I didn't write a book about them.)

For general readers interested in how mathematics relates to everyday life, I'd recommend John Allen Paulos "Innumeracy"; for a survey of modern mathematics, both "From Here To Infinity" by Ian Stewart and "Archimedes' Revenge" by Paul Hoffman succeed where "The Universe and the Teacup" fails.

The Leonardo da Vinci of science writing!
That's a direct quote from Amazon, and boy, were they right. Only Cole would link the O.J. Simpson trial to the discovery of the top quark in order to explain various roads to truth. The best part is the relationship between beauty and truth, in which she explains the unexplainable--showing how Einstein's theories (and in fact, all modern physics) is based on the notion of symmetry. But there's also so much less etheral food for thought here: the geometry of fairness, for example!

what is truth exactly
Being disenchanted with religion, I picked up this and other books in search of some other kind of truth. I do feel as though after reading this book I have a much better understanding of what 'truth' is and what it's not. I think those who nit-pick about their claims of little discrepancies in the book are really missing out on the bigger picture. The book is full of interesting little facts and factoids but the interesting thing to me was to see how she's pulled together these common insights that are gained from so many fields of study. I think this was just about my favorite book ever.

So many better choices out there.
Chapter two, second paragraph: "The Milky Way galaxy contains 200 billion stars..."
Chapter two, a few pages later: "Fifteen billion is also more or less the number of stars in the galaxy." Obviously, the number of stars in the galaxy is not precisely known, but we do know that 15 billion and 200 billion are two different things. One of the author's "truths" is self-evidently not true. Purveyors of "truth and beauty", whether scientists, gurus, philosophers, spiritual leaders, or journalists, often regard their subject and their audience far too casually. Here we have a case in point. Perhaps most books contain 'typos' and the miscues inherent to humanity, but here it seems that both the author and the editor were asleep at the wheel, something that needs to be addressed if the book achieves a second printing (and I don't see why that would happen).
The subject is truly fascinating; or at least it should be -- the relationship of aesthetics, mathematics, and logic. At the deepest levels of the human intellect's inquiries, the answers are all about a mysterious mathematical beauty. The reality of this escapes most people, which is why the "National Bestseller" heading on the cover of Cole's book intrigued me. Apparently the book has enjoyed a larger readership than most such popularizations. Unfortunately the superficial, disjoined 'newspaper style' of science serves the material poorly. The writing rambles almost aimlessly. The books of many mathematicians and physicists have examined the relationship of reality, reason, mathematics, and aesthetics. Devlin's 'The Language of Mathematics' is very good. Fairly recent works by Penrose, Davies, Rucker, Berlinski, Greene, and others come to mind. Some of these books are far better than others. This volume is one of the others.

how to write a book in five minutes
Should it be that easy to write a book? Collect all the bits and pieces from newspapers' weekend-supplements and almost scientific coffeetable-talk and toss in some currently fashionable phrases concerning physics and mathematics, stir until the lumps have disappeared and do not bother with the spices of explanation and insight. If you love math and physics, stay off ! ... Read more

Book Description

The second edition of this book is unique in that it focuses on methods for making formal statistical inference from all the models in an a priori set (Multi-Model Inference). A philosophy is presented for model-based data analysis and a general strategy outlined for the analysis of empirical data. The book invites increased attention on a priori science hypotheses and modeling.

Kullback-Leibler Information represents a fundamental quantity in science and is Hirotugu Akaike's basis for model selection. The maximized log-likelihood function can be bias-corrected as an estimator of expected, relative Kullback-Leibler information. This leads to Akaike's Information Criterion (AIC) and various extensions. These methods are relatively simple and easy to use in practice, but based on deep statistical theory. The information theoretic approaches provide a unified and rigorous theory, an extension of likelihood theory, an important application of information theory, and are objective and practical to employ across a very wide class of empirical problems.

The book presents several new ways to incorporate model selection uncertainty into parameter estimates and estimates of precision. An array of challenging examples is given to illustrate various technical issues.

This is an applied book written primarily for biologists and statisticians wanting to make inferences from multiple models and is suitable as a graduate text or as a reference for professional analysts. ... Read more

Reviews (2)

authoritative and thorough treatment
Burnham and Anderson have put together a scholarly account of the developments in model selection techniques from the information theoretic viewpoint. This is an important practical subject. As computer algorithms become more and more available for fitting models and data mining and exploratory analysis become more popular and used more by novices, problems with overfitting models will again raise their ugly heads. This has been an issue for statisticians for decades. But the problems and the art of model selection has not been commonly covered in elementary courses on statistics and regression. George Box puts proper emphasis on the iterative nature of model selection and the importance of applying the principle of parismony in many of his books. Classic texts on regression like Draper and Smith point out the pitfalls of goodness of ift measures like R-square and explain Mallows Cp and adjusted R-square. There are now also a few good books devoted to model selection including the book by McQuarrie and Tsai (that I recently reviewed for Amazon) and the Chapman and Hall monograph by A. J. Miller.

Burnham and Anderson address all these issues and provide the best coverage to date on bootstrap and cross-validation approaches. They also are careful in their historical account and in putting together some coherence to the scattered literature. They are thorough in their references to the literature. Their theme is the information theoretic measures based on the Kullback-Liebler distance measure. The breakthrough in this theory came from Akaike in the 1970s and improvements and refinement came later. The authors provide the theory, but more importantly, they provide many real examples to illustrate the problems and show how the methods work.

They also refer to the recent work in Bayesian methods. Chapter 1 is a great introduction that everyone should read. Being a fan of the bootstrap I was interested in their coverage of it in chapters 4, 5 and 6 (much of which is the authors' own work).

Because the authors work in biological fields they cover survival models as well as the standard time series and regression models where most of the emphasis has been placed on model selection in the past.

It is a great reference source and an important book for learning about model selection as part of the inferential process. The pictures of the famous contributors inserted throughout the book is also nice to see. We have Akaike, Boltzmann, Shibata, Kullback, and Liebler brought to life in photographs or sketches.

A breakthrough book on statistical modeling building
Statistical data analysis usually goes through cycles of exploring and looking for patterns in data, often through model construction, analyzing residuals and modifying model fits, until all unusual features being explained. Though this practice has been going on for more than 100 years, it has not been closely examined to see whether the fact that your analysis based on the best fitted model using the same data set should be biased, or plainly you cheated by over-analyzing your data. This book by the two productive authors say yes, and you should rethink about what you have been doing. A highly applaudable and timely efforts on the part of the authors, considering that the trend of over-analyzing your data is increasing rapidly with recent explosion of data and intensive computer analysis in the data mining industry. It's not as hopeless or bad as you think, and there are ways to avoid pitfalls and there may exist ways of making some valid inference out of this model selection process. So enjoy reading this book and think! ... Read more

Book Description

The Explanatory Supplement provides a detailed description of how to perform practical astronomy or spherical astronomy. This completely revised and rewritten edition is an authoritative source on astronomical phenomena and calendars. ... Read more

Reviews (1)

Explanatory Supplement to the Astronomical Almanac
If you need to know the details of astronomical or geodetic computations, or need to know how the tables in the Astronomical Almanac are computed, or need to know what the various versions of "Universal Time" are and how to compute them, you need this book. It is the definitive reference for many things, and gives you the definitive reference for the rest. ... Read more

Reviews (4)

Not to be used with the Alternate Edition
I bought this book assuming it was the solution guide to the Alternate Edition book (since Amazon.com had it listed as the solutions manual for the Alternate Edition) but it is completely different problems. This is to accompany ONLY the 10th Edition.

Helpful
The solutions manual is helpful IF you already know what you are doing for the most part. The explanations are sometimes step-by-step, but many of them are not. This manual does not "hold your hand" like some of the others that I've had experience with.

I would still recommend purchasing this book because of its low price.

NOoooOoooooooOooo
IS THERE AN ANSWER BOOK for the EVEN NUMBERED PROBLEMS? I need help with the EXPLORATIONS problems.
- Yi Sun

Incredible
Actually i can summarize this book with only 1 word: Incredible
This is the book can save a life, This book provides everything to pass the exams (of course you should have the main book too) I strongly recommand this book to the students who have some problems with Calculus 101. ... Read more

Reviews (2)

Well worth it!
This book is on my "short list" of essential references. Species are covered in clear, concise descriptions. This well organized volume makes hunting for similar species as easy as turning a page. The photos? I can't say enough about the clear, photos that make insect identification a good deal easier!

While an excellent book for the landscape professional, scientist, or advanced gardener, beginners might be a bit overwhelmed by the technical language and scientific names.

This is a much needed and fabulous manual.
When trying to identify a particular problem with growing trees or shrubs knowing what kinds of insects are possible culprits is a major step. This book gives us, in color photos and descriptions, most of the common larvae that can be found feeding on the particular plants. Even Entomology texts often refuse to deal with larvae of insects, keeping only the adults in the keys and descriptions (even though the adults are often not pests!). This guide will be a welcome addition to any plant clinic, grower, or Entomology professor or student's bookshelf. ... Read more

Book Description

Presents an evolutionary theory of technological change based on recent scholarship in the history of technology and on relevant material drawn from economic history and anthropology.Challenges the popular notion that technological advances arise from the efforts of a few heroic individuals who produce a series of revolutionary inventions that owe little or nothing to the technological past.Therefore, the book's argument is shaped by analogies drawn selectively from the theory of organic evolution, and not from the theory and practice of political revolution.Three themes appear, with variations, throughout the study. The first is diversity: an acknowledgment of the vast numbers of different kinds of made things (artifacts) that long have been available to humanity.The second theme is necessity: the mistaken belief that humans are driven to invent new artifacts in order to meet basic biological needs such as food, shelter, and defense.And the third theme is technological evolution: an organic analogy that explains both the emergence of the novel artifacts and their subsequent selection by society for incorporation into its material life without invoking either biological necessity or technological process. ... Read more

Book Description

Unsurpassed in its coverage, usability, and authority since first published in 1969, the three-volume Instrument Engineers' Handbook continues to be the premier reference for instrument engineers around the world. It helps users select and implement hundreds of measurement and control instruments and analytical devices and design the most cost-effective process control systems that optimize production and maximize safety.Volume 1: Process Measurement and Analysis now enters its fourth edition, fully updated and with increased emphasis on installation and maintenance consideration. Its coverage is now fully globalized with product descriptions from manufacturers around the world ... Read more

Reviews (2)

Instrument Engineers Handbook Vol1
Excellent book. I second Mr. Hills comments, although I have recently purchased the books based upon comments Mr.Liptak has made in the control mailing list. It is a very good investment. The book is easy to read/understand, covers the full spectrum of instrumentation,give relative costs and companies manufacturing the items. It is a good first book to turn to, and will save me much research time. I wish I would have known about it earlier.

Excellent book for the advanced field technician.
I have used this book for years and it has never failed to provide the information necessary to troubleshoot and repair problems with measurement systems. Liptak does a wonderful job presenting measurement theory and the principles of operation of various measurement strategies. The most helpful information Liptak includes is the discussion of the limitation of various measurement devices. If you are responsible for the maintenance of a wide variety of instruments and you desire to know how those instruments work, this book is worth every penny. ... Read more

Book Description

For those who need to know statistics but shy away from math, this book teaches how to extract truth and draw valid conclusions from numerical data, using logic and the philosophy of statistics rather than complex formulae. Lucid discussion of averages and scatter, investigation design, more. Problems with solutions.
... Read more

Reviews (2)

Simple, clear, and hard-working
Maybe you're just getting started as a stats user, maybe you're only an occasional user who doesn't want to relearn the whole field just to get quick answers. In either case, this book might be one of the best around.

The first half of the book is background: a little probability, a little bit about sampling and experimental design, a little about the most basic and common statistics (means, quartiles, etc).

The second half of the book offers a number of basic parametric and non-parametric significance tests. Langley describes each one, when it is applicable, and how to perform the calculations. He doesn't stray far into the slick computing tricks of the pre-calculator days, so the structure of each calculation stays reasonably clear.

The only real weakness in this book is its lack of index. That is especially incovenient because the tables, a staple of most stats books, are interleaved with the text. The table of contents is descriptive, but doesn't replace an index. The other problem, and not really a flaw in the book, is that it's easy to outgrow this text. Even moderately heavy stats users need a bit more theory and background, to allow meaningful adaptation to new conditions. The author has chosen an audience, though, and has addressed that audience and its needs very well. If your skills are beyond those of the intended reader, that's not a fault of the book.

Basic, clear, and reasonably broad - it's everything that an ordinary, casual stat user could want.

If you only own one statistics book...
If you only own one statistics book, this should be it!In than 20 years of working with laypeople, engineering and biology undergraduates and grad. students and medical students, this has proven to be the most reliable,intelligible and accessible single volume on how to treat experimental andobservational data in a sound, statistically valid, way. Of particularvalue is a table in the back (Guide to Significance Tests) which takes a"leaf identification" approach to selection of the mostappropriate test.Many good examples and problems with solutions makesthis an excellent self study text.

Jonathan Black, Professor Emeritus,Clemson University. ... Read more

Reviews (2)

Clinical Chemistry Excellence
We have this book in our clinical chemistry department and refer to it constantly, it is comprehensive and contains all of the data and explanation needed for the scientist on the bench the clinician looking up the biochemal basis of a disorder, and the pathologist making a descision on clinical data.

The best!
If you are a clinical chemist or medical technologist, this is the bible. Dont look for much fluff here, just the hard hitting facts. If you want a simpler overview of clinical chemistry,go elsewhere. However, if you want the complete reference, it is here. ... Read more

Reviews (3)

An Engineer's Opinion...
I'm an electrical and electronics engineer, working for a governmental R&D Institution. I also study on Science and Technology Policy Studies for an M.S. degree. I found the book quite useful, especially in its aspect of analyzing the scientist and engineer in his own time, his own context, his own psychology... It is a well organized, fluent, clear book. It may not be a complete guide or a definitive study, but it is a good point to start. Recommended...

Trivial where not incorrect
Latour again demonstrates trivial insights and egregious errors. He simply does not know his subject (allegedly science) well enough - he makes conceptual and factual blunders. I am glad this book is still in print because it is a useful aid in teaching humanity students about science - but not in the way Latour had envisioned! By understanding his misinterpretations, we can learn how laypeople get confused.

Brilliant view on scientific truth as a network of strength
Latour today can be regarded as one of the leading philosophers of science and technology. After his first work with Steve Woolgar, "Laboratory life", this is his second major work in which he generalises on various topics that he only touched in a very preliminary way in the above work. Latour adopts a very original way of following scientists in their struggle to "produce" scientific truth. He studies them as if they were a tribe (Latour is originally an ethnographer).

His conclusion is that scientific truth and the designing of succesful technological artefacts is not so much a "unveiling of some hidden truth behind things" or a logical construction, but a very heterogeneous project in which money, resources, statements, objects, people and numerous other things are linked in such a way that a strong chain is formed. Something is true if the chains is strong enough to withstand "trials of strength". Latour does away with metaphysical ideas of "The Truth" but insist in stead that truth is very much a stage in a process of negotiation between human and non-human actors. The idea that truth is the result of a logical process in which an abstract "reality" is discovered is, according to Latour, a story that is told afterwards to defend the theory itself and not something that is inherent in the forming of the theory itself.

In a very easy-to-read way Latour guides his readers through the work of science and technology "in the making". A must for any student in science and technology as well as for any scholar in social sciences and philosophy. ... Read more

Reviews (2)

The man was a complete loon, but in a good way.
The previous review is amazingly perceptive into Bill Burke's personality and thinking. He was not the most discplined writer or lecturer, (I had no less than 4 courses from him) but his insight and intuition could be amazing. I would recommend this book as a companion to something more traditional. If you are interested in General Relativity, which is what the book was suppose to be a precursor for, get Schutz or Misner, Thorne and Wheeler, or Wald.

Also, if you do want this book, get the errata from Burke's webpage,...is quite helpful.

I would also hearitly recommend Burke's best book: Geometry, Spacetime and Cosmology which is out of print. It is much physical and the examples are clearer. He taught english majors and theater students general relativity with that book.

It's a lot of work but I like it.
I'm not a physicist or mathematician but I play one on TV. So I am more qualified to review a book on differntial geometry than either of the above professionals. This book is a very good introduction to all the hairy squibbles that theoretical physicists are writing down these days. In particular if you are perplexed by the grand unification gang then this book will help you understand the jargon. However, having only had physics when advanced vector calculus was enough to get by, it is a bit hard going due to the frequent errors and glosses the author makes. Burke gives a very hip and entertaining introduction to some of the most beautiful ideas in physics. It is enjoyable to read if you like sinking your teeth into something more rewarding than Ann Rice. I gave it a six rating because the errors and glosses are so annoying. I suspect Burke's puckishness is responsible; the book has no actual problem sets but he does work out problems that don't always work out. So the reader really has to work at understanding by correcting the possibly(?) intentional errors. Very sly of him. I am on my second reading and suspect that several readings down the line I will probably get the message. The book deserves loving attention. ... Read more