The WEIRDest People in the World

The WEIRDest People in the World
Author: Joseph Henrich
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Total Pages: 420
Release: 2020-09-08
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 0374710457

A New York Times Notable Book of 2020 A Bloomberg Best Non-Fiction Book of 2020 A Behavioral Scientist Notable Book of 2020 A Human Behavior & Evolution Society Must-Read Popular Evolution Book of 2020 A bold, epic account of how the co-evolution of psychology and culture created the peculiar Western mind that has profoundly shaped the modern world. Perhaps you are WEIRD: raised in a society that is Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic. If so, you’re rather psychologically peculiar. Unlike much of the world today, and most people who have ever lived, WEIRD people are highly individualistic, self-obsessed, control-oriented, nonconformist, and analytical. They focus on themselves—their attributes, accomplishments, and aspirations—over their relationships and social roles. How did WEIRD populations become so psychologically distinct? What role did these psychological differences play in the industrial revolution and the global expansion of Europe during the last few centuries? In The WEIRDest People in the World, Joseph Henrich draws on cutting-edge research in anthropology, psychology, economics, and evolutionary biology to explore these questions and more. He illuminates the origins and evolution of family structures, marriage, and religion, and the profound impact these cultural transformations had on human psychology. Mapping these shifts through ancient history and late antiquity, Henrich reveals that the most fundamental institutions of kinship and marriage changed dramatically under pressure from the Roman Catholic Church. It was these changes that gave rise to the WEIRD psychology that would coevolve with impersonal markets, occupational specialization, and free competition—laying the foundation for the modern world. Provocative and engaging in both its broad scope and its surprising details, The WEIRDest People in the World explores how culture, institutions, and psychology shape one another, and explains what this means for both our most personal sense of who we are as individuals and also the large-scale social, political, and economic forces that drive human history. Includes black-and-white illustrations.

Hedge Fund Activism

Hedge Fund Activism
Author: Alon Brav
Publisher: Now Publishers Inc
Total Pages: 76
Release: 2010
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1601983387

Hedge Fund Activism begins with a brief outline of the research literature and describes datasets on hedge fund activism.

Learning from Catastrophes

Learning from Catastrophes
Author: Howard Kunreuther
Publisher: Pearson Prentice Hall
Total Pages: 351
Release: 2009-11-16
Genre:
ISBN: 0137067240

Events ranging from Hurricane Katrina to the global economic crisis have taught businesspeople an unforgettable lesson: if you don’t plan for “extreme risk,” you endanger your organization’s very survival. But how can you plan for events that go far beyond anything that occurs in normal day-to-day business? In Learning from Catastrophes, two renowned experts present the first comprehensive strategic framework for assessing, responding to, and managing extreme risk. Howard Kunreuther and Michael Useem build on their own breakthrough work on mitigating natural disasters, extending it to the challenges faced by real-world enterprises. Along with the contributions of leading experts in risk management, heuristics, and disaster recovery, they identify the behavioral biases and faulty heuristics that mislead decision makers about the likelihood of catastrophe. They go on to identify the hidden links associated with extreme risks, and present techniques for systematically building greater resilience into the organization. The global best-seller The Black Swan told executives that “once in a lifetime” events are far more common and dangerous than they ever realized. Learning from Catastropheshows them exactly what to do about it.

UNESCO science report

UNESCO science report
Author: UNESCO
Publisher: UNESCO Publishing
Total Pages: 818
Release: 2015-11-09
Genre: Education
ISBN: 9231001299

There are fewer grounds today than in the past to deplore a North‑South divide in research and innovation. This is one of the key findings of the UNESCO Science Report: towards 2030. A large number of countries are now incorporating science, technology and innovation in their national development agenda, in order to make their economies less reliant on raw materials and more rooted in knowledge. Most research and development (R&D) is taking place in high-income countries, but innovation of some kind is now occurring across the full spectrum of income levels according to the first survey of manufacturing companies in 65 countries conducted by the UNESCO Institute for Statistics and summarized in this report. For many lower-income countries, sustainable development has become an integral part of their national development plans for the next 10–20 years. Among higher-income countries, a firm commitment to sustainable development is often coupled with the desire to maintain competitiveness in global markets that are increasingly leaning towards ‘green’ technologies. The quest for clean energy and greater energy efficiency now figures among the research priorities of numerous countries. Written by more than 50 experts who are each covering the country or region from which they hail, the UNESCO Science Report: towards 2030 provides more country-level information than ever before. The trends and developments in science, technology and innovation policy and governance between 2009 and mid-2015 described here provide essential baseline information on the concerns and priorities of countries that could orient the implementation and drive the assessment of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development in the years to come.

A Mathematical Gift, III

A Mathematical Gift, III
Author: Koji Shiga
Publisher: American Mathematical Society
Total Pages: 148
Release: 2005-07-18
Genre: Mathematics
ISBN: 9780821832844

This book brings the beauty and fun of mathematics to the classroom. It offers serious mathematics in a lively, reader-friendly style. Included are exercises and many figures illustrating the main concepts. The first chapter talks about the theory of manifolds. It includes discussion of smoothness, differentiability, and analyticity, the idea of local coordinates and coordinate transformation, and a detailed explanation of the Whitney imbedding theorem (both in weak and in strong form).The second chapter discusses the notion of the area of a figure on the plane and the volume of a solid body in space. It includes the proof of the Bolyai-Gerwien theorem about scissors-congruent polynomials and Dehn's solution of the Third Hilbert Problem. This is the third volume originating from a series of lectures given at Kyoto University (Japan). It is suitable for classroom use for high school mathematics teachers and for undergraduate mathematics courses in the sciences and liberal arts. The first and second volumes are available as Volume 19 and Volume 20 in the AMS series, ""Mathematical World"".

The Topology of 4-Manifolds

The Topology of 4-Manifolds
Author: Robion C. Kirby
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 114
Release: 2006-11-14
Genre: Mathematics
ISBN: 354046171X

This book presents the classical theorems about simply connected smooth 4-manifolds: intersection forms and homotopy type, oriented and spin bordism, the index theorem, Wall's diffeomorphisms and h-cobordism, and Rohlin's theorem. Most of the proofs are new or are returbishings of post proofs; all are geometric and make us of handlebody theory. There is a new proof of Rohlin's theorem using spin structures. There is an introduction to Casson handles and Freedman's work including a chapter of unpublished proofs on exotic R4's. The reader needs an understanding of smooth manifolds and characteristic classes in low dimensions. The book should be useful to beginning researchers in 4-manifolds.

Making Mathematics Come to Life

Making Mathematics Come to Life
Author: Oleg A. Ivanov
Publisher: American Mathematical Soc.
Total Pages: 349
Release: 2009-12-16
Genre: Mathematics
ISBN: 0821848089

``It is difficult to define the genre of the book. It is not a problem book, nor a textbook, nor a `book for reading about mathematics'. It is most of all reminiscent of a good lecture course, from which a thoughtful student comes away with more than was actually spoken about in the lectures.'' --from the Preface by A. S. Merkurjev If you are acquainted with mathematics at least to the extent of a standard high school curriculum and like it enough to want to learn more, and if, in addition, you are prepared to do some serious work, then you should start studying this book. An understanding of the material of the book requires neither a developed ability to reason abstractly nor skill in using the refined techniques of mathematical analysis. In each chapter elementary problems are considered, accompanied by theoretical material directly related to them. There are over 300 problems in the book, most of which are intended to be solved by the reader. In those places in the book where it is natural to introduce concepts outside the high school syllabus, the corresponding definitions are given with examples. And in order to bring out the meaning of such concepts clearly, appropriate (but not too many) theorems are proved concerning them. Unfortunately, what is sometimes studied at school under the name ``mathematics'' resembles real mathematics not any closer than a plucked flower gathering dust in a herbarium or pressed between the pages of a book resembles that same flower in the meadow besprinkled with dewdrops sparkling in the light of the rising sun.

Diffuse Waves in Complex Media

Diffuse Waves in Complex Media
Author: Jean-Pierre Fouque
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Total Pages: 480
Release: 1999
Genre: Science
ISBN:

There is a great deal of current research into wave propagation in random media, in such fields as applied mathematics, acoustics, optics, materials science, atomic physics and geophysics. This book provides accurate theoretical and practical introductions at research level to topics such as: localization of waves, band gap materials, random matrices, dielectric media, laser cooled atoms, wave scattering from rough surfaces, randomly layered media, seismic waves and imaging the earth.

Compendium for Early Career Researchers in Mathematics Education

Compendium for Early Career Researchers in Mathematics Education
Author: Gabriele Kaiser
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 528
Release: 2019-04-26
Genre: Education
ISBN: 3030156362

The purpose of this Open Access compendium, written by experienced researchers in mathematics education, is to serve as a resource for early career researchers in furthering their knowledge of the state of the field and disseminating their research through publishing. To accomplish this, the book is split into four sections: Empirical Methods, Important Mathematics Education Themes, Academic Writing and Academic Publishing, and a section Looking Ahead. The chapters are based on workshops that were presented in the Early Career Researcher Day at the 13th International Congress on Mathematical Education (ICME-13). The combination of presentations on methodological approaches and theoretical perspectives shaping the field in mathematics education research, as well as the strong emphasis on academic writing and publishing, offered strong insight into the theoretical and empirical bases of research in mathematics education for early career researchers in this field. Based on these presentations, the book provides a state-of-the-art overview of important theories from mathematics education and the broad variety of empirical approaches currently widely used in mathematics education research. This compendium supports early career researchers in selecting adequate theoretical approaches and adopting the most appropriate methodological approaches for their own research. Furthermore, it helps early career researchers in mathematics education to avoid common pitfalls and problems while writing up their research and it provides them with an overview of the most important journals for research in mathematics education, helping them to select the right venue for publishing and disseminating their work.