Book Description

A perennial bestseller, the 30th edition of CRC Standard Mathematical Tables and Formulae was the first "modern" edition of the handbook - adapted to be useful in the era of personal computers and powerful handheld devices. Now this version will quickly establish itself as the "user-friendly" edition. With a detailed table of contents and an extensive index listing over 6,000 entries, the 31st edition of this hugely successful handbook makes information even easier to locate.New in the 31st edition:Game theory and voting powerHeuristic search techniquesQuadratic fieldsReliabilityRisk analysis and decision rulesA table of solutions to Pell's equationA table of irreducible polynomials in2[x]An interpretation of powers of 10A collection of "proofs without words"Representations of groups of small orderCounting principlesTesselations and tilings…and much more!An indispensable, up-to-date resource, CRC Standard Mathematical Tables and Formulae, 31st Edition makes it effortless to find the equations, tables, and formulae you need most often. ... Read more

Reviews (6)

Best reference you could have
I am a graduate student in engineering, I did my undergraduate in physics and mathematics. This is by far the number one book that I would suggest to anyone in any science or math. I find the most useful sections are the table of integrals, derivatives, trig identities, geometric formulae, physical constants, and unit conversions (all lists are quite complete). I have a number of other references, including this book's big brother, the CRC Handbook of Chemistry and Physics, but I find this one easier to use for most applications. I actually have a much older edition that my dad gave me when he was studying engineering, but I've looked through the new one, and it looks as good as the old. I'm actually buying a second copy to have at the lab.

Good Reference for the abstract based mathmatican
The reference covers many topics covered in higher mathmatics. Extensive list of definitions, theorems, formulas for many topics in mathematics - algebra, discrete, analysis, geometry, continous mathematics, many classifications for functions, and statistics. Some of the higher advanced topics include graph theory, abstract mathematics and differential geometry. The material presented is geared towards the serious mathematican than an undergraduate student or basic math user (why 4 star rating). For an undergraduate student, buy Handbook of Mathematics and Computational Science. If you are still interested in exploring mathematics, buy the book!!

Zwillinger's CRC Standard Math Tables & Formulae
Zwillinger is an incomparable genius at organizing data, information, theory. See my review of his Handbook of Differential Equations, which is the best thing in its field and which the reader should also purchase regardless of whether currently into differential equations. The other reviewers have done a gone job noting details of this book. Here I would like to answer why tables and formulas are needed in a day when hand computers are everywhere. The answer is that we have to learn to think in terms of tables and formulas to keep at the top of our fields (for example, how many of you know that general relativity is based on sets of tables called tensors?). Computers today are stil mostly not for thinking but for doing long calculations which involve repetition rather than innovative thinking. Make your hobby tables, formulas, equations, inequalities, and you might pass Life 101.

Great reference
Clearer, newly typeset, and better-indexed than previous editions. Still has the comprehensive integral tables and a good trig reference section. The D.E. reference is still a little obscure. Good series section, good statistics. A nifty, if hardly "standard" topology/ knot section. All in all, keeps most of the good stuff, reorganizes, and resets old versions - due to the ambition of the new sections and scope of the reorganzation, a little bit disorganized. But it'll certainly be taken care of in the next edition by CRC, which consisently produces high-quality handbooks.

Far superior to previous editions
The 30th edition is better organized than any previous editions. The print is much clearer and the scope of the reference has been greatly increased. If you own a previous edition of this text and depend on it as I do, the 30th is a must! ... Read more

Reviews (4)

Comprehensive Invalvuable Reference for Statistical Research
This outstanding textbook is a "One Stop Shop" for the majority of essential topics for researchers with a statistical background. Exhaustive. Personnel without an anaylitical/technical background may find it hard to use. As a reference for someone doing a Phd, it is a book you'll refer to again and again.

The Definitive Reference on Statistics for Researchers
This is an essential book for anyone doing advanced postgraduate research (especially PhD level). It is quite heavy reading but is a definitive reference on the use, interpretation and reporting of statistics, including lots of little known information about effect size, sample sizes, statistical power not covered in standard texts.

Best of all, it exposes lots of common misconceptions and mistakes committed in most published research - after reading this book, you will be amazed how often these mistakes are made even in papers published in top journals. You can be pretty sure that if you satisfy the (very rigorous) requirements of this book, that your thesis will get past any examiner!

A statistics book written FOR researchers BY researchers (rather than statisticians)

Broad, comprehensive introduction
This is a very wide-ranging work, covering elements of psychometrics as well as statistics to the level of structural equation models. The book has a nice introductory tone, and should be easily grasped by most graduate students. Some of the information on CFA and SEM is now a bit dated. I smiled when I read the other reviewer's comments about Pedhazur's notable cynicism; I share his cynical view, having seen a multitude of published papers that were just garbage because the analyses were not thoughtful. Pedhazur's cynicism should be seen as a warning, and not taken beyond that, in my opinion.

Comprehensive and exhaustive, yet regularly incomprehensible
As a Ph.D. student in Psychology, I had the opportunity to use this book as my primary text for the Fall 1998 semester. The book is replete with research design principles, and illustrates its teachings through examples from past sociobehavioral studies. Unfortunately Mr. Pedhazur has become very cynical about resarch integrity, and a negative tone pervades many of his discussions. Moreover, his writing rambles and frequently becomes difficult to follow. I did not enjoy learning about sociobehavioral research from this book (and know of no one in my class who did). I give it 2 stars only for the book's broad-ranging scope and coverage. ... Read more

Book Description

This book presents an introduction to the classical theories of continuum mechanics; in particular, to the theories of ideal, compressible, and viscous fluids, and to the linear and nonlinear theories of elasticity. These theories are important, not only because they are applicable to a majority of the problems in continuum mechanics arising in practice, but because they form a solid base upon which one can readily construct more complex theories of material behavior. Further, although attention is limited to the classical theories, the treatment is modern with a major emphasis on foundations and structure ... Read more

Reviews (8)

Kalyana Babu
When I took a class on Solid mechanics, during the first few lectures the instructor (who himself is quite well-known) was literally chanting "Gurtin". When I read a couple of chapters myself, I understood why my professor likes this book.

Gurtin is internationally known for his contributions to Continuum mechanics. This is a very good book. The style is very good. Many journal papers on continuum mechanics and finite elements, cite this book.

Any one who want to get a thorough introduction to continuum mechanics should have this book. This book is also highly recommended to those who are interested in nonlinear finite elements.

The only problem with book is that it is little expensive (around $115).

no title
This book is compact, yet explains the generalizations of linear tranfsormations in a thorough, concise way. This makes it a nice "transition" text from vector analysis and introductory tensor courses into more advanced expositions on tensors. I can't vouch for Malvern, and this probably isn't the forum to "correct" other reviewers. All in all this is one of the better math books out there.

An excellent classic in Continuum Mechanics
I have read this book from cover to cover and have done all the exercises in it and cannot find a better book to recommend to other scientists wishing to learn continuum mechanics! I believe the book contains enough details, though one definitely has to complete the exercises after each chapter to get an understanding of how brilliant is the author's approach to the subject. It is a concise, yet at the same time a very complete introduction into the topics in Continuum mechanics. Every student studying mechanics should be proud to own this classic!

A short classic by a giant in the field
This is a classic book in continuum mechanics, for many reasons including those given by the reviewer from Leipzig (it also provides a unique and rigorous treatment of certain mathematical concepts that are not presented well in undergraduate level mathematics texts). The reviewer from England does not understand that in the study of continuum mechanics there is a place for a book like Malvern's (which is indeed an excellent book), and a place for this book.

Fair but incomplete
After reading this book, I have to say that the book by Gurtin is nicely written --- from the context of typesetting. But the content is really not detail enough. It is more suitable for people who are very familar with continuum mechanics already and want to write their equations in a nice and 'sexy' way ! ... Read more

Book Description

Practical Business Math Procedures, 7e continues to provide complete coverage of practical business applications of math, organized in a logical and teachable format, with unique and motivating pedagogy, and a market leading supplements package.Carefully written and developed to provide both procedural details in a step-by-step format, and superb motivation via Wall Street Journal and Kiplinger Personal Finance Magazine articles, colorful format, photos, and scrapbook projects, this text is a winner! This edition continues the “24-HOUR STUDENT HOTLINE” that has received over 50,000 student calls. Jeff Slater is a teacher and author of several leading titles in math and accounting, and his dedicated work on PBMP has made it the most reliable, trustworthy, and widely used text. ... Read more

Reviews (2)

Practical Business Math Procedures/Teacher's Edition
I'd like to know if this book is teacher's edition?

teachers edition
I need a teachers edition ... Read more

Book Description

This best-selling text by John Taylor, now released in its second edition, introduces the study of uncertainties to lower division science students. Assuming no prior knowledge, the author introduces error analysis through the use of familiar examples ranging from carpentry to well-known historic experiments. Pertinent worked examples, simple exercises throughout the text, and numerous chapter-ending problems combine to make the book ideal for use in physics, chemistry, and engineering lab courses.The first edition of this book has been translated into six languages. ... Read more

Reviews (11)

Easy-To-Read Text on Error Analysis
Many undergraduate students in sciences and engineering must have encountered this experience: You conduct an experiment and collect the relevant data. You are asked to fit your data into a straight line by performing one or multiple linear regression. You are also to present any uncertainty and error in your data as well as calculation. You panic and scratch your head and don't know what's the appropriate procedure to carry out these analysis.

Here comes John Taylor's "An Introduction to Error Analysis", which introduces the study of uncertainties to students. The book assumes no prior knowledge and uses a plethora of pertinent examples (drawn from chemistry, physics, and engineering) to illustrate topics like propagation of uncertainties, random uncertainties, rejection of data, least-squares fitting, and distribution.

This book will save hours of studying and researching on error analysis method. It is very well-written and reader-friendly that lower division students will find it useful.

A gentle introduction to data and error analysis
Taylor's book is simply amazing.

In little more than three hundred pages it manages to explain in a crystal clear manner concepts such as the propagation of errors (starting from simple cases and moving to the general treatment), the meaning of the standard deviation of the population, of the sample and of the mean, the maximum likelihood principle, hypothesis test and confidence levels, the chi squared test and the meaning of correlation.
True, this is not a textbook on mathematical statistic, so you won't find elaborate proofs here: much is left to the reader's intuition. But as the saying goes, 'is not a bug, it's a feature!'. This text makes you understand what all those books on statistics and probability are about (or at least some of their most important applications) and it does it so well that you will reach the end of each chapter asking yourself "oh, that was it?".

Part of the book is devoted to application of error analysis and you will find chapters on weighted means, on the rejection of data, plus linear and nonlinear regression. The exercises are intriguing and all in all this is a very well written book.

Even if you plan to study the matter deeper, on tougher textbooks, please consider preparing yourself to the tougher mathematical stuff by reading this wonderful book. You won't regret it. And possibly, you will come back to it from time to time.

A little off the top, please...
But how much is 'a little'?

I first encountered this book when I was a physics and astronomy major in college, a major that changed over time to include mathematics proper, then political science, then other humanities such as religious studies, history and philosophy. Strange as it may seem, this text has been one of the few constants that has been helpful in almost every field. For physics and any of the natural sciences, the content of this book is highly necessary - be in chemistry, physics, astronomy, geology, or biology, all sciences depend upon observation and analysis, both of which are far from perfect. The task of ever-increasing observational and analytical precision is both an art and a science in and of itself, and one of the tasks of any scientist is to discover where errors might lie.

Interestingly, this also occurs in political science and sociology, economics and history, and even philosophy (logic can incorporate ideas from error analysis, as can epistemology). Error analysis is primarily a statistical tool, and those who have had statistics will find this very familiar. The first part of the book is very simple - Taylor assumes no background, so gives an introduction to the simple reading of charts, graphs, scales and other such things, with plenty of examples. He talks about estimating, significant figures, fractional uncertainties, and how uncertainties can accumulate. How can 2 + 2 = 5? Well, if you round to the highest or lowest whole number, 2.49 and 2.49 will both be rounded down to 2 (under many normal rounding procedures), yet if the underlying calculation or data include the 'real' information, 2.49 + 2.49 in fact equals 4.98, very close to 5. If you think that's confusing, you ain't seen nothing yet...

Taylor's first part concludes by looking at the basics of simple statistical analysis - standard deviations, normal distributions, justification of the mean as best estimate, and a brief introduction to the concept of confidence. Part two gets into more detailed analysis, including least-squares fitting, correlation coefficients, binomial distributions, Poission distributions, and the chi-squared test. The mathematics requirement goes up as the chapters progress - the early chapters only require an elementary knowledge of algeba; as the text continues, knowledge of differentiation, integration and exponential functions are necessary. A first-year course in calculus should be sufficient for easy understanding here; it is possible to get through the material without this background, but it will be more difficult.

This text is designed to be a self-study for the students; it can be introduced in lectures prior to lab work, but can also be used easily for the independent reader to understand. This book is really intended for the physical scientist - most of the examples come from problems in optics or mechanics (physics problems). Useful, helpful, and a good introduction to error analysis.

Read and understand.

Excellent desktop reference
As a professional engineer with a recurring need to crunch large amounts of statistical data, I find that this book is the perfect quick guide to things that forget and don't use that often. If has easy to follow language, and the best part about it is that I don't need to reread the whole thing to get a good explanation of a topic in the last chapter.

I had to knock it down a star because it is a touch out of date. The math is fine, but I wish that there was a companion that explained how to do some of the more uncommon operations using common spreadsheeting or data analysis software. Sometimes, figuring out how to get MS Excel to do what Taylor recommends that I do can be more cumbersome than anything else.

If nothing else, it has a great picture on the cover.

A Classic
I can't believe I'm the first person to review this. Everyone I work with loves this book, it's a classic. ... Read more

Book Description

Written by two of the best-known researchers in mathematical finance, this book presents techniques of practical importance as well as advanced methods for research. Contingent claim pricing and optimal consumption/investment in both complete and incomplete markets are discussed, as well as Brownian motion in financial markets and constrained consumption and investment. This book treats these topics in a unified manner and is of practical importance to practitioners in mathematical finance, especially for pricing exotic options. ... Read more

Reviews (3)

NOT a stand-alone book
Very rigorous and methematically precise, but how can this text not even mention Ito's lemma? Well, because it isn't really a "sequel to Brownian Motion and Stochastic Calculus by the same authors" but more like the second half of that book. Unless you have their BM&SC or another similar reference by your side you won't get very far . . . and this fact is not at all apparent from reading the editorial description or jacket review.

For a self-containted text with both the basic math background AND the finance I recommend either Lamberton and Lapeyre (fairly complete but with some technical proofs referred to BM&SC) or Joshi (lots of applications, less mathy). Neither of these will be as comprehensive or rigorous as the 2-volume Karatzas and Shreve but both are good introductions to the subject.

One of the best
The application of highly sophisticated mathematical techniques to finance is now commonplace and is considered also of great practical importance. Mathematical modeling in finance is now very entrenched in investment houses and trading firms and this will only increase in years to come. This book is an excellent overview of mathematical finance and is written for mathematicians who have no background in finance. The book could be read easily by anyone with background in stochastic processes at the level of the author's earlier book "Brownian Motion and Stochastic Calculus". Since it is written for mathematicians, it follows a "definition-theorem-proof" format. However the authors do interject a lot of explanation into the dialog, especially that concerning finance.

Chapter 1 is an overview of a Brownian motion model of financial markets. Financial assets are considered to have prices evolving continuously in time and driven by Brownian motion. They do however g!ive references for models that assume discontinuous asset prices. The authors define a financial market rigorously in terms of (progressively) measurable processes for the risk-free rate, mean rate of return, dividend rate, and volatility. The after a discussion of portfolio, gains, income, and wealth processes, the authors define a notion of a viable market, namely one where there are no arbitrage opportunities. They then define standard and complete financial model and characterize their properties in terms of martingales.

Chapter 2 is a treatment of options pricing theory, with the assumption of a complete standard, financial market. These contingent claims are given a brief historical introduction at the beginning of the chapter. European contigent claims are treated first, followed by a discussion of forward and futures contracts. The Black-Scholes option pricing formula is then derived. American contingent claims are then discussed and defined as an income proc!ess and a settlement process. With the assumption that the discount payoff process is bounded from below and continuous, the value of the American contingent claim is given in terms of the Snell envelope of the payoff process. The discussion illustrates the difficulties in valuing American claims, based as they are on an arbitrary exercise time.

Chapter 3 is a study of a "small" single investor who begins with an initial endowment and invests in a standard complete market. The discussion reads more like one from a book on utility theory and portfolio analysis. Indeed, the Legendre transform of the utility function appears when attempting to mazimize utility from consumption plus expected utility from terminal wealth. The (nonlinear) Hamilton-Jacobi-Bellman equation appears in thes considerations as expected.

In chapter 4, the equilibrium problem is considered. In such a model, security prices are determined by the law of supply and demand. There are a finite !number of agents with utility functions and there are endowment processes. The endowments can be traded via a financial market of stocks and money market funds. The goal of the chapter is to find the equilibrium condition where endowments are consumed and the net supply of securities is zero. The authors give a rigorous proof of the existence and uniqueness of equilibrium. In addition, they give interesting examples of equilibrium markets that can be computed explicitly.

The next chapter is much more involved and studies how to do arbitrage pricing in incomplete markets. Portfolio constraints force the market to be incomplete, and the authors show how buyers and sellers in such a market can calculate the hedging price of a claim in terms of "dual" processes in a family of auxiliary markets. Since this is a constrained optimization problem, one would naturally think Lagrange multipliers would appear, and this is indeed the case, with the dual processes being the analog!ue of Lagrange multipliers. The usual unconstrained problem then is the result of this. Their approach here is extended in the last chapter of the book where the problem of optimal consumption and investment in a constrained financial market is considered. This is specialized to a deterministic case and the dual to the constrained problem satisfies a linear Hamilton-Jacobi-Bellman equation. This duality between the Lagrangian and Hamiltonian points of view is not surprising to the astute reader (and particularly the physicist reader).

Fantastic for finace researchers!
The book is challenging. But if you want to do real good work in finance. You must read it. ... Read more

Book Description

This volume reports on a large variety of mathematical simulations, covering all production steps of special glass manufacturing: melting, fining, mixing, homogenizing, hot and cold forming, thermal treatment, post-processing. Modern, commercially available software packages have been used and - whenever necessary - modified to satisfy the special requirements and situations in liquid or solid glasses, or the boundary conditions of forming processes. The mathematical approach often helps in understanding the overall and sometimes hidden features of processes and thus is a highly efficient tool for optimization efforts. Complementing and partly replacing experimental investigations, mathematical simulation makes possible considerable savings in time and money. Several of the results reported here are unique and published for the first time. The CD-ROM shows 27 simulations of different aspects such as surprising details of the pressing and casting process. ... Read more

Book Description

Alfred Tarski, one of the greatest logicians of all time, is widely thought of as "the man who defined truth."His mathematical work on the concepts of truth and logical consequence are cornerstones of modern logic, influencing developments in philosophy, linguistics and computer science. Tarski was a charismatic teacher and zealous promoter of his view of logic as the foundation of all rational thought, as well as a bon-vivant and a womanizer, who played the "great man" to the hilt. Born in Warsaw in 1901 to Jewish parents, he changed his name and converted to Catholicism, but was never able to obtain a professorship in his home country.A fortuitous trip to the United States at the outbreak of World War 1 saved his life and turned his career around, even though it separated him from his family for years. By the war's end, Tarski was established as a professor of mathematics at the University of California, Berkeley, where he started a department in logic and methodology that attracted students and distinguished researchers from all over the world. From the cafes of Warsaw and Vienna to the mountains and deserts of California, this first full- length biography places Tarski in the social, intellectual and historical context of his times.It presents a vivid picture of a personally and professionally passionate man, interlaced with an account of his major scientific achievements. Anita Burdman Feferman is an author and biographer who has written on noted figures such as Jean van Heijenoort and Georg Kreisel. Solomon Feferman is a professor of Mathematics and Philosophy at Stanford University.Both authors were closely acquainted with Tarski and in a unique position to write about his life. ... Read more

Amazon.com

A 1996 revision of a timeless classic originally published in 1941. Highly recommended for any serious student, teacher or scholar of mathematics. ... Read more

Reviews (19)

A classic that will challenge and inspire.. A MUST HAVE!!
This book will give you a superb introduction to basic mathematics culminating in the CALCULUS. The topics and manner of presentations are excellent. I have the 1978 edition that I still use to much benefit. Things such as numbers, matrices, algebra and trig are introduced in rapid but detailed segments. If you have been away from mathematics for a while you will soon get drawn into the text and the exercises. If you are into math today this will serve as an excellent review and perhaps give you a gem or two. However, if you have been put off by math in the past you may want to approach with caution. For even though the pace is within speed limits the text does expect a good effort to reap the rewards. I recommend this book for anyone interested in the theory behind mathematics. A real jewel for your library and personal enjoyment. Just superb!

theoretically very good
This is an interesting and wide ranging book. In the main it presents, develops and explains it's ideas very well, although I did not always find it, as one reviewer, a mister Albert Einstein described it, "easily understandable". I have two minor complaints about this book:

1) Print quality
For no apparent reason the text size varies occasionally, and in places the printing is slightly blurred, so that sometimes the subscripts and superscripts on formulae are illegible. Perhaps they skimped on typesetting costs by photoreproducing formulae from the original printing?

2) Incompleteness
If you bought this book because the front cover says "...representation of the fundamental concepts and methods of the whole field of mathematics" (another A.E. quote) you may be disappointed to find this is not the case. Trigonometry, for example, is not discussed, except where it crops up in other topics such as applying calculus to trig functions.

Pretty good
For the most part I love this book. It is informative, and relatively simple to understand. This book is an "elementary approach to ideas and methods" for the whole field of mathmatics. In fact, this book is one of the reasons I changed my major to mathmatics.

However, there are two main problems with this book. First the quality of the print varies. Occasionally, whole sets of subscripts are blurred, which makes understanding the equation of the moment difficult, if not impossible.

Second, the order of steps for solving or understanding a problem are in an unexpected order, which is confusing. Often, I find that a difficult passage doesn't deal with difficult concepts, its just that the concepts are explained in an unusual way.

Aside from those problems, this is an extraordinary introduction to mathmatics.

Not an 'easy' read
This is a demanding book. One cannot read it listening to Bach. [a clash of complexities]. The construction of he book is 'old style' [which is every seeming possible variation is mentioned] which has fallen into disfavor as confusing,

That written it is very complete and I really enjoyed many parts of this book.

Extraordinary Book. Belongs on Your Bookshelf.
Courant's 500-page text is not entirely suitable for the layman. Its target audience includes those who enjoy reading and studying mathematics and have a good background through precalculus or higher. "What is Mathematics?" is a mathematics book, not a book about mathematics.

"What is Mathematics?" is not a new book. It was first published in 1941. New editions appeared in 1943, 1945, and 1947. My soft cover fourth edition by Oxford University Press is in its 12 printing.

The authors indicate that it is no means necessary to "plow through it page by page, chapter by chapter". I fully agree. I have skipped around, jumping to chapters of particular interest, but I have now read nearly every chapter.

I initially skipped to page 165 and delved directly into projective geometry (chapter IV), proceeded to topology (chapter V), and then jumped backwards to the beginning to explore the theory of numbers. After moving to geometry, I finally returned to the later chapters on functions and limits, maxima and minima, and the calculus.

Courant engages the reader in discussions on mathematical concepts rather than focusing on applications and problem solving. "What is Mathematics?" is a great textbook for students that have completed a year or more of calculus and wish to pull all of their mathematical learning together before moving on to more advanced studies. I suspect that it would even be welcomed by students that have completed an undergraduate degree in mathematics.

I cannot resist quoting Albert Einstein's comment on What is Mathematics? - "A lucid representation of the fundamental concepts and methods of the whole field of mathematics...Easily understandable."

Richard Courant was a highly respected mathematician. He taught in Germany and in Cambridge and was director of the Institute of Mathematical Sciences at New York University (now renamed the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences). Courant has authored other widely acclaimed mathematical texts including Methods of Mathematical Physics (co-authored with David Hilbert) and his popular Differential and Integral Calculus. ... Read more

Book Description

• 2 full-length practice tests
• Diagnostic quizzes for each topic tested
• Detailed answer explanations
• Powerful strategies to help you score higher
• Focused review of important rules and formulas
• Practice questions in each chapter, covering all tested material, from Algebra and Geometry through Trigonometry, Statistics, and Probability
• Chapter summaries to help you find what you need quickly
• The most up-to-date information on the test

Level 1 Level 2

Content

2 years algebra 2 years algebra
1 year geometry 1 year geometry
1 year trigonometry or precalculus

Difficulty

Less advanced mathMore difficult questions even on the basic topics

Scoring

A score of: Requires a raw score of:
800 50 out of 5043-44 out of 50
500 19-21 out of 50 10-12 out of 50

Reputation

Colleges know how much more a Level 2 score means

Kaplan Test Prep and Admissions has helped more than 3 million students achieve their educational and career goals. With 185 centers and over 1,200 classroom locations throughout the U.S. and abroad, Kaplan provides a full range of services, including test-prep courses, admissions consulting, programs for international students, professional licensing preparation, and more.

For more information, contact us at 1-800-KAP-TEST or visit kaptest.com. ... Read more

Reviews (2)

Errors Errors Errors
I insist that Math books should be totally free of errors. This book has way too many!

Good
I am a seventh grader looking for some out of school math, so I bought this book along with the barron's one.Knowing that barron's was harder than the real thing, and because I had not learned half the material on the test, I used this book first.It tought me the basics in a well organized matter, although at some times it did not explain very well.The most annoying part of this book was the number of errors.There were about 5 just in the first chapter including 2(-8)=16 and a refrence to the wrong answer choice.This book will teach you the foundations very well but if you want an 800 buy another book as well (the sparknotes book is online and you can get there 3 practice tests by simply loging on as a different person every time, for you first practice test is free). ... Read more

Reviews (3)

Wish I had this when I was young
I discovered this book in a homeschooling catalog (FunBooks.com). The good review in there enticed me to buy it for my then 6 year old, who is a voracious but difficult to please reader. He devoured it, loved it, and insisted that I read it too!

The fascinating topics include decimals, magic squares, Fibonacci sequence, tangrams, the abacus, and much more. Some of the stories seem a little silly to me, but then that is probably the appeal for kids. :)

This is one of those books that you must own rather than borrow from the library because it covers such a range of topics that your child (and you!) will want and need to refer back to it every so often. In fact, I will likely buy all the other books involving Penrose the Cat if they are as educational and fun as this book is.

math winner!
Amusing, entertaining. Math should be exciting and not boring textbook drills! Get creative, get exploring!

A Great Book
I read this book and really loved it! It puts mathematical concepts into a very useable form. It is a great book to use with kids and start discussions regarding mathematics. ... Read more

Book Description

This new approach to mathematics --- the utilization of advanced computing technology in mathematical research --- is often called experimental mathematics. The computer provides the mathematician with a "laboratory" in which she can perform experiments --- analyzing examples, testing out new ideas, or searching for patterns.

This book presents the rationale and historical context of experimental mathematics, and includes a series of examples that best portray the experimental methodology. For more examples and insights, the book, "Experimentation in Mathematics: Computational Paths to Discovery" is a highly recommended companion. . ... Read more

Reviews (2)

A thoroughly detailed work
The collaborative work of Jonathan Borwein and David Bailey, Mathematics By Experiment: Plausible Reasoning In The 21st Century provides a complex and informative text for advanced mathematics students which offs an historical context and rationale behind experimental mathematics, as well as how modern technology enables the analysis of new examples and the discovery of patterns in a previously unimaginable "laboratory" of raw processing power. A thoroughly detailed work, Mathematics By Experiment offers a veritable wealth of meticulously presented examples which are most especially recommended for graduate-level mathematics studies.

A Mathematical Paradigm Shift
"Mathematics by Experiment" is a ground-breaking book about a new way of doing math that generated so much excitement it was reviewed in "Scientific American" six months before it got into print. The authors are long-time collaborators David Bailey, chief technologist in the Computational Research Department of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, and Jonathan Borwein, professor of science at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, B.C.

They write that applied mathematicians and many scientists and engineers were quick to embrace computer technology, while pure mathematicians -- whose field gave rise to computers in the first place, through the work of beautiful minds like Alan Turing's -- were slower to see the possibilities. Two decades ago, when Bailey and Borwein started collaborating, "there appeared to be a widespread view in the field that 'real mathematicians don't compute.'"

Their book is testament to a paradigm shift in the making. Hardware has "skyrocketed in power and plummeted in cost," and powerful mathematical software has come on the market. Just as important, "a new generation of mathematicians is eagerly becoming skilled at using these tools" -- people comfortable with the notion that "the computer provides the mathematician with a 'laboratory' in which he or she can perform experiments: analyzing examples, testing out new ideas, or searching for patterns."

In this virtual laboratory Bailey and Borwein, with other colleagues, were among the first to discover a number of remarkable new algorithms, among them an extraordinary, simple formula for finding any hexadecimal or binary digit of pi without knowing any of the preceding digits. Further research led to proof that a wide class of fundamental constants are mathematically "normal" -- probably including pi, alhough that remains to be proved.

Their section on "proof versus truth" is an example of the gems even a mathematical tyro can find among these equations. Bailey and Borwein don't claim computers can supply rigorous proofs. Rather, the computer is a way to discover truths -- and avenues for approaching formal proofs. But often, the authors add, "computations constitute very strong evidence..., at least as compelling as some of the more complex formal proofs in the literature."

Drawing on their own work and that of others, Bailey and Borwein not only explain experimental mathematics in a lively, surprisingly accessible fashion but give many engaging examples of the "new paradigm" in action. ... Read more

Book Description

Reviews (15)

By far the best INTRODUCTORY text on the subject
As the title implies, this book is not intended to mathematicians, although it could finely serve as additional text for them, too. On the other hand it is excellent as an itroductory overview of the types of PDE's met and the methods used for their solution. There are references to more advanced texts for the interested, excercises in each chapter and, most importantly, nice, qualitative remarks on the properties of mathematical tools (like Fourier and Laplace transform) which help the reader to comprehend them.

An outstanding intuitive introduction to PDEs
This book is an excellent introduction to PDEs with an emphasis on how to understand the equation and interpret the solution.

Very Good
Unbeatable as far as breadth. Covers a lot of ground, conceptually it's extremely well organized, and the explanations are very easy to follow. This text is ideal for self-study.

The two major shortcomings are (1) slight lack of depth and (2) the exercises, which are far too few and far too simple.

Fine enough
I think this book is pretty good, and amazing for the price. I haven't read other books, but I'm sure something more thorough might be better if your lecturer wasn't thorough or effective.

The best PDE book out there!
The strength of this book is its organization. It is all you need to understand and use PDEs. Dont waste your money on other books. This is the best intro there is... ... Read more

Book Description

"Math into LaTeX" is for the mathematician, physicist, engineer, scientist, or technical typist who needs to quickly learn how to write and typeset articles and books containing mathematical formulas, and requires a thorough reference book on all aspects of LaTeX and the AMS packages, the enhancements to LaTeX by the American Mathematical Society.

Features a section devoted to book publishing and typesetting as well as an introduction to web development from LaTeX. Presents a detailed discussion of all aspects of LaTeX and the AMS packages and includes a formula gallery, sample files, and templates, as well as useful appendices containing symbol tables and covering special topics, such as the use of PostScript fonts and where to find TeXware.

Key features of Math into LaTeX: * A simple, example-based, visual approach * A quick introduction (Part I) allowing readers to type their first articles in only a few hours * Sample articles to demonstrate the basic structure of LaTeX and AMS articles Useful appendices containing mathematical and text symbol tables and information on how to convert to standard LaTeX from older versions of LaTeX and AMS-LaTeX

New features of the Third Edition include: * Coverage of AMS packages, version 2.0 * A new chapter on writing books in LaTeX * A new part, Math and the Web, covers where to find useful LaTeX-related information on the Internet and how to publish LaTeX documents on the Web ... Read more

Reviews (9)

Samples are just what I need
Sometimes when I tex I just need some examples where I can see the outcome and the tex commands that produced them. This book has plenty such things, and therefore very helpful in that respect. When it comes to computer related stuff, I guess I learn best by looking at what's been done and modifying them to produce what I want. If you're that way too, this book would be very helpful.

It also has some helpful suggestions for texing so that trouble shooting would be easier later on.

An excellent introduction to typesetting math in LaTeX
Math into LaTeX provides and excellent introduction to typesetting math in LaTeX for technical documents, web pages and books.

The book provides a short introduction to the overall use of LaTeX. This section is not the most exhaustive text on the topic, but provides all the fundamental information for a user start preparing a LaTeX document, assuming the user has LaTeX installed and has some basic knowledge of creating LaTeX documents.

The book's core provides numerous useful details and examples of how to typeset math, both simple and complex, using either LaTeX commands or AMS-LaTeX commands. This is the most important aspect of the book and is supported with many important examples using both LaTeX and AMS-LaTeX document classes with supporting example articles to be found in the appendix.

Valuable chapters include how to write books in LaTeX with details of how to handle large bibliographies and indices. Additionally, the complex issue of how to format math for web based publications is also presented in some detail.

Lastly, the structure of the book is very clear and formatted ideally, providing the reader with an excellent example of how to typeset and structure a book using LaTeX.

Middle-of-the-road book, covering most LaTeX math needs
Math Into LaTeX is a book with diffuse purpose -- a little bit of introduction for those trying to get into using LaTeX for their mathematical type-setting needs, a little bit of wide coverage on commands needed for many math articles, and plenty of pointing to other references on the Internet and in books. In many ways, it's too diffuse to be useful on a day-to-day basis; even though there's a Quick Finder, a mini-index at the front of the book, the choices don't seem appropriate for what comes up most often in my hair-pulling sessions with a recalcitrant LaTeX (such as fixing the margin at the top of the page).

The first section, titled A Short Course, is a simple 63-page guide, walking one through the creation of a LaTeX file, from a 22-line simple note, to adding individual math terms, to producing large formulas, to dealing with the inevitable error messages, even through running the LaTeX program. However, it's not really explained how to deal with the dvi file that comes out of the program -- a vague description that a video driver is used to view a dvi file is given in this short course, but the real information is to be found scattered throughout the book. This is a failing shared with =many= TeX and LaTeX books; one gets in lots of trouble for all that is =not= written down.

A quick overview of the remaining sections: in Text and Math one finds the meat of the book -- how to organize text regions, whether in paragraphs or lists; dealing with fonts; how to organize formulas and symbols; how to align equations and their different parts. I use this section as a reference almost constantly in typing up math articles. Section III, Document Structure, does a quick look at the overall skeleton of a LaTeX document, and in particular looks at AMS articles. Customization covers some of the more used customizing options, like changing spacing and counters of list items. The Long Documents section looks at three things: making bibliographies, making indexes, and pulling separate files together for one large document (like books). The last section, Math and the Web, talks about various conversions one can use to put up a version of LaTeX documents on the Internet, and how to deal with some PDF issues, but it's rather a spare section. The appendices, of course, have the standard charts for math symbols and European Accents, lists of fonts, and dealing with conversions. Check out the Bibliography - if you get a hold of some of the other LaTeX tomes, you will see that it's hard to find a better one than this one (though that doesn't mean a better one can't be written).

That said, this has turned out to be one of the most useful LaTeX books I have ever used (the absolutely most useful was a very short book printed by SIAM, and is for people who don't need help with the bare bones). I own three LaTeX books right now (this one, The Latex Companion, and The Latex Graphics Companion). Of the three, this one is the most useful in my day-to-day writing of mathematics in LaTeX. The problem with the Companion books is that they are useful for the esoteric topics they cover, which would be hard to figure out on one's own, but they really don't address nuts & bolts issues like Math Into LaTeX does. If you can only have one LaTeX book, you should get this one; if you have three LaTex books, you should still get it, for there are few other LaTeX books which make things so understandable and covers so many useful topics.

not detailed enough
This book is far from being complete. The author avoids to give many details and often refers to another books, such as "The LaTeX Companion" instead. I had to consult other sources very often. Almost everything is explained through examples. It's good for the first encounter with LaTeX, but there is no place left for detailed description of commands. Also, there is a plenty of tutorials for the beginners available for download from the Internet for free.

How to make mathematics look nice
I assume that you would not be looking at this book's entry in the catalogue if you did not know already that TeX is the best available tool for typesetting manuscripts involving a lot of mathematical formulae. This book presents LaTeX2e, the current "industry standard", which combines LaTeX with AMS-TeX.

The first objective of the book is to get a complete novice started in the shortest amount of time. This is done in Part 1, which contains all one needs to typeset a simple mathematical text. Part 2 gives a very detailed description of typesetting text and mathematics, pointing out the differences between LaTeX-derived commands and AMS-TeX codes. This is done very carefully and clearly. The structure of all sections is basically the same: overview of the contents, definitions of the commands covered, their scope, examples, typical errors (together with error commands generated by LaTeX when something goes wrong), more advanced topics. This part covers pretty much any scenario you are likely to encounter typesetting a mathematical document.

Part 3 goes into details of LaTeX document structure, including a synopsis of various document classes and how best to use them. Part 4 explains how to customize LaTeX, Part 5 treats long documents and BiBTeX, the bibliographic database. Final part, Part 6, treats LaTeX and the Web, mainly by poiting out various Web sites that can help you if you are serious about posting your work on the Web.

The book is very good at what it sets out to explain. There are, however, certain topics the author decided to leave out. There is no description of the picture environment, which although not exactly user friedly, is useful from time to time. The slide environment for producing transparencies is not described either, and I think this could have been included without too much trouble. To me this is a slightly more serious drawback than the first omission.

I give the book five stars for the following reason. This is a book that teaches you how to produce beautiful scientific manuscripts rather than how to rewrite LaTeX. The book itself is a very nice looking document, and so serves as a very good example of what is possible to achieve with LaTeX, if you follow the author's advice. ... Read more

Book Description

In the middle of the last century, Norbert Wiener-ex-child prodigy and brilliant MIT mathematician -founded the science of cybernetics, igniting the information-age explosion of computers, automation, and global telecommunications. Wiener was the first to articulate the modern notion of "feedback," and his ideas informed the work of computer pioneer John von Neumann, information theorist Claude Shannon, and anthropologists Gregory Bateson and Margaret Mead. His best-selling book, Cybernetics, catapulted him into the public spotlight, as did his chilling visions of the future and his ardent social activism. So what happened? Why is his work virtually unknown today? And what, in fact, is Wiener's legacy? In this remarkable book, award-winning journalists Conway and Siegelman set out to rescue Wiener's genius from obscurity and to explore the many ways in which his groundbreaking ideas continue to shape our lives. Based on a wealth of primary sources (including some newly declassified WW II and Cold War-era documents) and exclusive interviews with Wiener's family and closest colleagues, the book reveals an extraordinarily complex figure, whose high-pressure childhood, manic depression, and troubled relationships had a profound effect on his scientific work. No one interested in the intersection of technology and culture will want to miss this epic story of one of the twentieth century's most brilliant and colorful figures. ... Read more

Reviews (5)

Norbert Wiener - MIT's "dark hero"

DARK HERO OF THE INFORMATION AGE

Having been a Tech student during many of the years covered by "Dark hero of the Information Age" - undergraduate in physics from 1948 to 1953, graduate student in electrical engineering from 1957 to 1961, and postdoc in the Research Laboratory of Electronics (RLE) from 1961 to 1962 - I found this book fascinating to read. Norbert Wiener's portly figure waddling about the campus, popping peanuts from his jacket pocket into his open mouth, rapt in conversation, or staring blankly into middle distance was familiar to all as is well described by authors Flo Conway and Jim Siegelman. Although aware of the "communist threat" supposed to stem from some MIT faculty members in those years, it was both interesting and chilling to read that the FBI had investigated even Wiener - interesting because his FBI dossier was a boon to his biographers, chilling to learn that our benighted federal agents had found this kindly, bumbling man a threat to the republic.

Based on many interviews with surviving friends and family members and on Wiener's own autobiographies, the authors provide a highly-readable account of his unusual childhood as a prodigy, force-fed on a diet of germanic poetry and mathematics by his obsessed father - a Harvard professor of modern languages who arrived as a penniless immigrant to the US from Russia at the age of 19. Obtaining a doctorate from Harvard at the age of 18, Norbert Wiener eventually obtained an academic position in the MIT mathematics department, where he taught and conducted research for 45 years until his death in 1964.

Wiener is widely known as the "father of cybernetics" which he famously defined as the science of "control and communication in the animal and the machine". In its heyday, cybernetics was of great interest to anthropologists Margaret Mead and Gregory Bateson, neuroscientist Warren McCulloch, and mathematical physicist John Neumann, among others, and Wiener's popular books on the subject brought the implications of the emerging information age to the attention of the general public. In a depressing story that is particularly well told, the authors reveal how the machinations of Wiener's "emotionally-deaf" wife prevented him from interacting with an exciting cadre of cyberneticians that was brought to RLE in the early 1950s, with the aim of making MIT preeminent in the interdisciplinary area between electronics and biology.

Less well presented is the authors' evaluation of Wiener's fundamental contributions to these areas. Although his 1926 papers on Fourier transform theory may have cleared up some fine mathematical points, these papers and Wiener's subsequent writings on the subject go unnoticed by those electrical engineers who teach and study the subject at MIT. To negative feedback theory, Wiener made no fundamental contributions at all - the essential idea sprang from the brow of Harold S. Black, a young engineer at the Bell Telephone Laboratories (BTL) in 1927 and was fully worked out by BTL applied mathematicians, including Henrik Bode, whose famous book "Network Analysis and Feedback Amplifier Design" we all studied. In neuroscience, Wiener seemed unaware of the truly important analysis of nerve-impulse propagation published in 1952 by Alan Hodgkin and Andrew Huxley, and of the basic theory of biological pattern formation proposed by Alan Turing in the same year. Wiener's contribution was to see the importance of feedback control systems in biology and the social sciences and to make his cautionary views known to the general public.

Despite these minor lapses, Dark Hero is highly recommended for all who would understand the birthing of the information age.

Alwyn Scott
http://personal.riverusers.com/~rover/

The original Cybernaut
Charming biography of the founder of cybernetics. Norbert Weiner had a curiously unique life, as a child prodigy and then mathematician at the birth of the new information sciences. The so-called Von Neuman computer is really the Weiner-Von Neuman computer, and the book describes the eclectic birth of modern computation (Weiner was himself a considerable 'computer' in the old-fashioned sense of the term)in the tribulations of warfare research in the second world war. Weiner had a unique concern for the implications of technology, and his _Human Use of Human Beings_ is a classic of its type. The birth of Cybernetics and Information theory projected its own future, but events moved in a slightly different direction. However, as we look back the significance of this period, and of Weiner's work, is resurfacing once again, and we can see the labored birth of our digital generation in the prophecies of such as Weiner.

A Most Valuable Literary Contribution
DARK HERO OF THE INFORMATION AGE opens the doors to full understanding of the roots of our present information technology era. But beyond that, it presents, in Novel form, the fascinating and often difficult life of the Dark Hero, Norbert Wiener, who almost singlehandedly made it all possible.

The book is easy reading. The words flow and carry one along on Norbert's magnificent trip from boyhood genius to adult contributor of scientific truth: those truths and insights that have changed our world for the larger good.

One does not need an Engineering or Scientific degree tounderstand it. All can easily follow and appreciate this most interesting biography about a Boy Genius who did not flame out in adulthood, as have so many others with equal talent.

I highly recommend this book for all readers.

A testimony to a true hero of science and humanity
Having read "Dark Hero Of The Information Age" I am now somewhat taken aback when I look around and can recognise the hand and mind of Norbert Wiener throughout much of contemporary life. Be it in learning, language, communication or use of technology Wiener's scientific vision and development of cybernetics has had significant influence over the way human beings interact with each other and with technology.

But, as the authors make the point so clearly, his vision and thinking cannot be separated from his humanity. In their book Conway and Siegelman take the reader on an intimate journey into the complex life of an extraordinary person, complete with his personal struggles and failings as well as his triumphs. It's a journey that reveals just how human Wiener really was and the degree to which his scientific genius was underpinned by his innate sense of ethics and morality.

Today, those who bring new science into the world are sometimes criticised as 'soulless' individuals who only focus on assumed benefits, without regard for unrealised consequences. But Norbert Weiner, several decades ahead of his time, is revealed as a scientist whose motivations were tempered with concern for the protection of people, from both the perspective of social cohesion and that at the level of individual well-being. His legacy, apart from all his unique mathematical and scientific contributions, is that the advance of science is not at the cost of human dignity, and is the challenge that he has left squarely in front of today's scientists and of the community at large.

He lived his life acrosscontinents in the northern hemisphere. I was saddened to learn that we in Australia missed a rare opportunity to cross paths with his genius, when an academic appointment he pursued here earlier in his career did not come to fruition. Despite this, we have no doubt indirectly benefited from his wisdom in the many and varied aspects of human endeavour to which he contributed.

The authors bring into the 21st Century a fascinating and relevant story of a 'dark hero' - but also that of someone whose life should illuminate our path ahead, if humanity is to pursue scientific progress without bringing harm to itself.

Great reading for both scientist & layman
After reading the "Dark Hero" I find it a fascinating book that should appeal broadly to both academics & general readers who seek to understand the role of communication technology in society. The authors have put together a creative "tour de force" by drawing upon the memories, records & multiple interpretations of events leading up to & following the birth of Cybernetics. I believe that Wiener himself would be pleased with Conway & Siegleman's contribution to the understanding of how we may all may work toward creating " a world that embraces as its goal & highest good the human use of human beings'. ... Read more

Book Description

The engaging Martin-Gay workbook series presents a user-friendly approach to the concepts of basic math and algebra, giving readers ample opportunity to practice skills and see how those skills relate to both their lives and the real world. The goals of the workbooks are to build confidence, increase motivation, and encourage mastery of basic skills and concepts. Martin-Gay enhances readers' perception of math by exposing them to real-life situations through graphs and applications and ensures that readers have an organized, integrated learning system at their fingertips. The integrated learning resources program features book-specific supplements including Martin-Gay's acclaimed tutorial videotapes, CD videos, and MathPro 5.This book covers topics such as multiplying and dividing fractions, decimals, ratios and proportion, percent, geometry, statistics and probability, as well as an introduction to algebra. For anyone who wishing to brush up on their basic mathematical skills. ... Read more

Book Description

This liberal arts math textbook places an emphasis on problem-solving, step-by-step instruction, and well thought-out pedagogy in every chapter. Smith's approach helps math-anxious students build confidence, develop critical-thinking skills, and communicate about mathematics. ... Read more

Book Description

Primary Grade Challenge Math offers material that goes beyond calculation skills for those children who enter the primary grades already knowing basic concepts. This curriculum allows parents and teacher