Fair Coin

Fair Coin
Author: E.C. Myers
Publisher: Jabberwocky Literary Agency, Inc.
Total Pages: 316
Release: 2016-12-16
Genre: Young Adult Fiction
ISBN: 1625672454

When you have magic on your side, anything is possible. At least that’s what Ephraim Scott thinks when he first discovers the unusual coin that grants his wishes. With it Ephraim overhauls his troubled home life and also his nonexistent love life. He even tries to help his friends with their problems. But every wish comes with a twist. Each flip of the coin gives Ephraim what he wants, but bad things happen too--ripples of dark consequences he doesn’t intend and can’t predict. The more Ephraim tries to fix the situation, the worse it gets. The people closest to him are changing in terrible ways and Ephraim must figure out how to harness the coin’s power before anyone gets hurt...or worse. Fair Coin is the winner of the 2012 Andre Norton Award and was a finalist for both the 2013 British Fantasy Award and the 2013 Compton Crook Award.

Quantum Coin

Quantum Coin
Author: E. C. Myers
Publisher: Prometheus Books
Total Pages: 331
Release: 2012-10-23
Genre: Young Adult Fiction
ISBN: 1616146834

The sequel to the exciting adventure spun across parallel worlds! Ephraim thought his universe-hopping days were over. He's done wishing for magic solutions to his problems; his quantum coin has been powerless for almost a year, and he's settled into a normal life with his girlfriend, Jena. But then an old friend crashes their senior prom: Zoe, Jena's identical twin from a parallel world. Zoe's timing couldn't be worse. It turns out that Ephraim's problems have just begun, and they're much more complicated than his love life. The multiverse is at stake - and it might just be Ephraim's fault. Ephraim, Jena, and Zoe embark on a mission across multiple worlds to learn what's going wrong and how to stop it. They will have to draw on every resource available and trust in alternate versions of themselves and their friends before it's too late for all of them. If Ephraim and his companions can put their many differences aside and learn to work together, they might have a chance to save the multiverse. But ultimately, the solution may depend on how much they're willing to sacrifice for the sake of humanity . . . and each other. From the Hardcover edition.

Advances in Cryptology – CRYPTO 2013

Advances in Cryptology – CRYPTO 2013
Author: Ran Canetti
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 605
Release: 2013-08-15
Genre: Computers
ISBN: 3642400418

The two volume-set, LNCS 8042 and LNCS 8043, constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 33rd Annual International Cryptology Conference, CRYPTO 2013, held in Santa Barbara, CA, USA, in August 2013. The 61 revised full papers presented in LNCS 8042 and LNCS 8043 were carefully reviewed and selected from numerous submissions. Two abstracts of the invited talks are also included in the proceedings. The papers are organized in topical sections on lattices and FHE; foundations of hardness; cryptanalysis; MPC - new directions; leakage resilience; symmetric encryption and PRFs; key exchange; multi linear maps; ideal ciphers; implementation-oriented protocols; number-theoretic hardness; MPC - foundations; codes and secret sharing; signatures and authentication; quantum security; new primitives; and functional encryption.

Epistemology

Epistemology
Author: Ernest Sosa
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
Total Pages: 950
Release: 2008-02-11
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1405169664

New and thoroughly updated, Epistemology: An Anthology continues to represent the most comprehensive and authoritative collection of canonical readings in the theory of knowledge. Concentrates on the central topics of the field, such as skepticism and the Pyrrhonian problematic, the definition of knowledge, and the structure of epistemic justification Offers coverage of more specific topics, such as foundationalism vs coherentism, and virtue epistemology Presents wholly new sections on 'Testimony, Memory, and Perception' and 'The Value of Knowledge' Features modified sections on 'The Structure of Knowledge and Justification', 'The Non-Epistemic in Epistemology', and 'The Nature of the Epistemic' Includes many of the most important contributions made in recent decades by several outstanding authors

The Coin Toss

The Coin Toss
Author: Stefan Hollos
Publisher: Abrazol Publishing
Total Pages: 129
Release: 2012-11-20
Genre: Mathematics
ISBN: 1887187081

The coin toss is really just a metaphor for a random event that has only two possible outcomes. The actual tossing of a real coin is just one way to realize such an event. There are many examples of questions that are equivalent to a coin toss. For example: Will the stock market close up or down tomorrow? Will a die roll come up with an even or odd number? Will we make contact with extraterrestrials within the next ten years? Will a car drive by in the next minute? Will tomorrow be sunny or cloudy? Will my medical test result be negative or positive? Will I enjoy this movie? Will the next joke be funny? Will the Earth's average temperature go up next year?Because a coin toss is equivalent to such a wide variety of questions, the results in this book are widely applicable.Because the coin toss is the simplest random event you can imagine, many questions about coin tossing can be asked and answered in great depth. The simplicity of the coin toss also opens the road to more advanced probability theories dealing with events with an infinite number of possible outcomes.This book is very mathematical. Some knowledge of calculus, discrete math, and generating functions is helpful to get the most out of it. A review of discrete math is provided in the index,

The Art of Causal Conjecture

The Art of Causal Conjecture
Author: Glenn Shafer
Publisher: MIT Press
Total Pages: 554
Release: 1996
Genre: Computers
ISBN: 9780262193689

In The Art of Causal Conjecture, Glenn Shafer lays out a new mathematical and philosophical foundation for probability and uses it to explain concepts of causality used in statistics, artificial intelligence, and philosophy. The various disciplines that use causal reasoning differ in the relative weight they put on security and precision of knowledge as opposed to timeliness of action. The natural and social sciences seek high levels of certainty in the identification of causes and high levels of precision in the measurement of their effects. The practical sciences -- medicine, business, engineering, and artificial intelligence -- must act on causal conjectures based on more limited knowledge. Shafer's understanding of causality contributes to both of these uses of causal reasoning. His language for causal explanation can guide statistical investigation in the natural and social sciences, and it can also be used to formulate assumptions of causal uniformity needed for decision making in the practical sciences. Causal ideas permeate the use of probability and statistics in all branches of industry, commerce, government, and science. The Art of Causal Conjecture shows that causal ideas can be equally important in theory. It does not challenge the maxim that causation cannot be proven from statistics alone, but by bringing causal ideas into the foundations of probability, it allows causal conjectures to be more clearly quantified, debated, and confronted by statistical evidence.

Belief, Evidence, and Uncertainty

Belief, Evidence, and Uncertainty
Author: Prasanta S. Bandyopadhyay
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 180
Release: 2016-03-04
Genre: Science
ISBN: 3319277723

This work breaks new ground by carefully distinguishing the concepts of belief, confirmation, and evidence and then integrating them into a better understanding of personal and scientific epistemologies. It outlines a probabilistic framework in which subjective features of personal knowledge and objective features of public knowledge have their true place. It also discusses the bearings of some statistical theorems on both formal and traditional epistemologies while showing how some of the existing paradoxes in both can be resolved with the help of this framework.This book has two central aims: First, to make precise a distinction between the concepts of confirmation and evidence and to argue that failure to recognize this distinction is the source of certain otherwise intractable epistemological problems. The second goal is to demonstrate to philosophers the fundamental importance of statistical and probabilistic methods, at stake in the uncertain conditions in which for the most part we lead our lives, not simply to inferential practice in science, where they are now standard, but to epistemic inference in other contexts as well. Although the argument is rigorous, it is also accessible. No technical knowledge beyond the rudiments of probability theory, arithmetic, and algebra is presupposed, otherwise unfamiliar terms are always defined and a number of concrete examples are given. At the same time, fresh analyses are offered with a discussion of statistical and epistemic reasoning by philosophers. This book will also be of interest to scientists and statisticians looking for a larger view of their own inferential techniques.The book concludes with a technical appendix which introduces an evidential approach to multi-model inference as an alternative to Bayesian model averaging.

Looking for Math in All the Wrong Places

Looking for Math in All the Wrong Places
Author: Shai Simonson
Publisher: American Mathematical Society
Total Pages: 224
Release: 2022-08-30
Genre: Mathematics
ISBN: 1470470128

The soul of mathematics is the practice of skeptical inquiry: asking how and why things work, experimenting, exploring, and discovering. Estimation, analysis, computation, conjecture, and proof are the mathematical path to uncovering truth and we can use them in nearly every human pursuit. In this thoroughly charming and beguiling book, Shai Simonson applies mathematical tools in a variety of contexts that arise in everyday life to prove his claim that math is, literally, everywhere. Simonson applies his mathematical cast of mind to hiking, birthday parties, carnival games, lock picking, and kite flying. We see unexpected depths and connections when we look in the “wrong” places in the right way. No advanced mathematical knowledge is required to travel with Simonson and share in his investigations. All a reader needs is an open and curious mind, an eagerness to ask questions, and a willingness to think deeply and carefully about seemingly mundane things. There is wonder and joy in quotidian life with Simonson as your guide.

Constitutional Calculus

Constitutional Calculus
Author: Jeff Suzuki
Publisher: JHU Press
Total Pages: 295
Release: 2015-03-01
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1421415968

How math can make a more stable democracy: “A breath of fresh air . . . a reaffirmation that mathematics should be used more often to make general public policy.” —MAA Reviews How should we count the population of the United States? What would happen if we replaced the electoral college with a direct popular vote? What are the consequences of allowing unlimited partisan gerrymandering of congressional districts? Can six-person juries yield verdicts consistent with the needs of justice? Is it racist to stop and frisk minorities at a higher rate than non-minorities? These and other questions have long been the subject of legal and political debate and are routinely decided by lawyers, politicians, judges, and voters, mostly through an appeal to common sense and tradition. But mathematician Jeff Suzuki asserts that common sense is not so common, and traditions developed long ago in what was a mostly rural, mostly agricultural, mostly isolated nation of three million might not apply to a mostly urban, mostly industrial, mostly global nation of three hundred million. In Constitutional Calculus, Suzuki guides us through the U.S. Constitution and American history to show how mathematics reveals our flaws, finds the answers we need, and moves us closer to our ideals. From the first presidential veto to the debate over mandatory drug testing, the NSA’s surveillance program, and the fate of death row inmates, Suzuki draws us into real-world debates and then reveals how math offers a superior compass for decision-making. Relying on iconic cases, including the convictions of the Scottsboro boys, League of United Latin American Citizens v. Perry, and Floyd v. City of New York, Suzuki shows that more math can lead to better justice, greater fairness, and a more stable democracy.