Download or read book Math in Society written by David Lippman and published by . This book was released on 2012-09-07 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Math in Society is a survey of contemporary mathematical topics, appropriate for a college-level topics course for liberal arts major, or as a general quantitative reasoning course.This book is an open textbook; it can be read free online at http://www.opentextbookstore.com/mathinsociety/. Editable versions of the chapters are available as well.

Download or read book The Mathematics of Politics Second Edition written by E. Arthur Robinson and published by CRC Press. This book was released on 2016-11-18 with total page 452 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It is because mathematics is often misunderstood, it is commonly believed it has nothing to say about politics. The high school experience with mathematics, for so many the lasting impression of the subject, suggests that mathematics is the study of numbers, operations, formulas, and manipulations of symbols. Those believing this is the extent of mathematics might conclude mathematics has no relevance to politics. This book counters this impression. The second edition of this popular book focuses on mathematical reasoning about politics. In the search for ideal ways to make certain kinds of decisions, a lot of wasted effort can be averted if mathematics can determine that finding such an ideal is actually impossible in the first place. In the first three parts of this book, we address the following three political questions: (1) Is there a good way to choose winners of elections? (2) Is there a good way to apportion congressional seats? (3) Is there a good way to make decisions in situations of conflict and uncertainty? In the fourth and final part of this book, we examine the Electoral College system that is used in the United States to select a president. There we bring together ideas that are introduced in each of the three earlier parts of the book.

Download or read book Multicriterion Decision in Management written by Jean-Charles Pomerol and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-12-06 with total page 405 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Multicriterion Decision in Management: Principles and Practice is the first multicriterion analysis book devoted exclusively to discrete multicriterion decision making. Typically, multicriterion analysis is used in two distinct frameworks: Firstly, there is multiple criteria linear programming, which is an extension of the results of linear programming and its associated algorithms. Secondly, there is discrete multicriterion decision making, which is concerned with choices among a finite number of possible alternatives such as projects, investments, decisions, etc. This is the focus of this book. The book concentrates on the basic principles in the domain of discrete multicriterion analysis, and examines each of these principles in terms of their properties and their implications. In multicriterion decision analysis, any optimum in the strict sense of the term does not exist. Rather, multicriterion decision making utilizes tools, methods, and thinking to examine several solutions, each having their advantages and disadvantages, depending on one's point of view. Actually, various methods exist for reaching a good choice in a multicriterion setting and even a complete ranking of the alternatives. The book describes and compares these methods, so-called `aggregation methods', with their advantages and their shortcomings. Clearly, organizations are becoming more complex, and it is becoming harder and harder to disregard complexity of points of view, motivations, and objectives. The day of the single objective (profit, social environment, etc. ) is over and the wishes of all those involved in all their diversity must be taken into account. To do this, a basic knowledge of multicriterion decision analysis is necessary. The objective of this book is to supply that knowledge and enable it to be applied. The book is intended for use by practitioners (managers, consultants), researchers, and students in engineering and business.

Download or read book A Practitioner s Guide to Software Test Design written by Lee Copeland and published by Artech House. This book was released on 2004 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Written by a leading expert in the field, this unique volume contains current test design approaches and focuses only on software test design. Copeland illustrates each test design through detailed examples and step-by-step instructions.

Download or read book Decision Models in Engineering and Management written by Patricia Guarnieri and published by Springer. This book was released on 2015-01-05 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Providing a comprehensive overview of various methods and applications in decision engineering, this book presents chapters written by a range experts in the field. It presents conceptual aspects of decision support applications in various areas including finance, vendor selection, construction, process management, water management and energy, agribusiness , production scheduling and control, and waste management. In addition to this, a special focus is given to methods of multi-criteria decision analysis. Decision making in organizations is a recurrent theme and is essential for business continuity. Managers from various fields including public, private, industrial, trading or service sectors are required to make decisions. Consequently managers need the support of these structured methods in order to engage in effective decision making. This book provides a valuable resource for graduate students, professors and researchers of decision analysis, multi-criteria decision analysis and group decision analysis. It is also intended for production engineers, civil engineers and engineering consultants.

Download or read book Socratic Circles written by Matt Copeland and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2023-10-10 with total page 262 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The benefits and importance of Socratic seminars are widely recognized, but little has been written on how to make them happen successfully in the classroom. In Socratic Circles: Fostering Critical and Creative Thinking in Middle and High School , author Matt Copeland provides real-world examples and straightforward answers to frequent questions. He creates a coaching guide for both the teacher new to Socratic seminars and the experienced teacher seeking to optimize the benefits of this powerful strategy. Socratic Circles also shows teachers who are familiar with literature circles the many ways in which these two practices complement and extend each other. Effectively implemented, Socratic seminars enhance reading comprehension, listening and speaking skills, and build better classroom community and conflict resolution skills. By giving students ownership over the classroom discussion around texts, they become more independent and motivated learners. Ultimately, because there is a direct relationship between the level of participation and the richness of the experience, Socratic seminars teach students to take responsibility for the quality of their own learning. Filled with examples to help readers visualize the application of these concepts in practice, Socratic Circles includes transcripts of student dialogue and work samples of preparation and follow-up activities. The helpful appendices offer ready-to-copy handouts and examples, and suggested selections of text that connect to major literary works. As our classrooms and our schools grow increasingly focused on meeting high standards and differentiating instruction for a wide variety of student needs and learning styles, Socratic seminars offer an essential classroom tool for meeting these goals.Socratic Circles is a complete and practical guide to Socratic seminars for the busy classroom teacher.

Download or read book Metaheuristics written by El-Ghazali Talbi and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2009-05-27 with total page 625 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A unified view of metaheuristics This book provides a complete background on metaheuristics and shows readers how to design and implement efficient algorithms to solve complex optimization problems across a diverse range of applications, from networking and bioinformatics to engineering design, routing, and scheduling. It presents the main design questions for all families of metaheuristics and clearly illustrates how to implement the algorithms under a software framework to reuse both the design and code. Throughout the book, the key search components of metaheuristics are considered as a toolbox for: Designing efficient metaheuristics (e.g. local search, tabu search, simulated annealing, evolutionary algorithms, particle swarm optimization, scatter search, ant colonies, bee colonies, artificial immune systems) for optimization problems Designing efficient metaheuristics for multi-objective optimization problems Designing hybrid, parallel, and distributed metaheuristics Implementing metaheuristics on sequential and parallel machines Using many case studies and treating design and implementation independently, this book gives readers the skills necessary to solve large-scale optimization problems quickly and efficiently. It is a valuable reference for practicing engineers and researchers from diverse areas dealing with optimization or machine learning; and graduate students in computer science, operations research, control, engineering, business and management, and applied mathematics.

Download or read book Formation and Interactions of Topological Defects written by Anne-Christine Davis and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-12-06 with total page 400 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Topological defects have recently become of great interest in condensed matter physics, particle physics and cosmology. They are the unavoidable remnants of many symmetry breaking phase transitions. Topological defects can play an important role in describing the properties of many condensed matter systems (e.g. superfluids and superconduc tors); they can catalyze many unusual effects in particle physics models and they may be responsible for seeding the density perturbations in the early Universe which de velop into galaxies and the large-scale structure of the Universe. Topological defects are also of great interest in mathematics as nontrivial solutions of nonlinear differential equations stabilized by topological effects. The purpose of the Advanced Study Institute "Formation and Interactions of Topo logical Defects" was to bring together students and practitioners in condensed matter physics, particle physics and cosmology, to give a detailed exposition of the role of topo logical defects in these fields; to explore similarities and differences in the approaches; and to provide a common basis for discussion and future collaborative research on common problems.

Download or read book Multiple Attribute Decision Making written by Ching-Lai Hwang and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-12-06 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This mono graph is intended for an advanced undergraduate or graduate course as weIl as for the researchers who want a compilation of developments in this rapidly growing field of operations research. This is a sequel to our previous work entitled "Multiple Objective Decision Making--Methods and Applications: A State-of-the-Art Survey," (No. 164 of the Lecture Notes). The literature on methods and applications of Multiple Attribute Decision Making (MADM) has been reviewed and classified systematically. This study provides readers with a capsule look into the existing methods, their char acteristics, and applicability to analysis of MADM problems. The basic MADM concepts are defined and a standard notation is introduced in Part 11. Also introduced are foundations such as models for MADM, trans formation of attributes, fuzzy decision rules, and methods for assessing weight. A system of classifying seventeen major MADM methods is presented. These methods have been proposed by researchers in diversified disciplines; half of them are classical ones, but the other half have appeared recently. The basic concept, the computational procedure, and the characteristics of each of these methods are presented concisely in Part 111. The computational procedure of each method is illustrated by solving a simple numerical example. Part IV of the survey deals with the applications of these MADM methods.

Download or read book A Mathematical Look at Politics written by E. Arthur Robinson Jr. and published by CRC Press. This book was released on 2010-12-09 with total page 472 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What Ralph Nader's spoiler role in the 2000 presidential election tells us about the American political system. Why Montana went to court to switch the 1990 apportionment to Dean's method. How the US tried to use game theory to win the Cold War, and why it didn't work. When students realize that mathematical thinking can address these sorts of pres

Download or read book Basic Geometry of Voting written by Donald G. Saari and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-12-06 with total page 308 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Amazingly, the complexities of voting theory can be explained and resolved with comfortable geometry. A geometry which unifies such seemingly disparate topics as manipulation, monotonicity, and even the apportionment issues of the US Supreme Court. Although directed mainly toward students and others wishing to learn about voting, experts will discover here many previously unpublished results. As an example, a new profile decomposition quickly resolves the age-old controversies of Condorcet and Borda, demonstrates that the rankings of pairwise and other methods differ because they rely on different information, casts serious doubt on the reliability of a Condorcet winner as a standard for the field, makes the famous Arrow's Theorem predictable, and simplifies the construction of examples.

Download or read book Mathematics Motivated by the Social and Behavioral Sciences written by Donald G. Saari and published by SIAM. This book was released on 2018-02-06 with total page 182 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The mathematical challenges coming from the social and behavioral sciences differ significantly from typical applied mathematical concerns. ?Change,? for instance, is ubiquitous, but without knowing the fundamental driving force, standard differential and iterative methods are not appropriate. Although differing forms of aggregation are widely used, a general mathematical assessment of potential pitfalls is missing. These realities provide opportunities to create new mathematical approaches. These themes are described in an introductory, expository, and accessible manner by exploring new ways to handle dynamics and evolutionary game theory, to identify subtleties of decision and voting methods, to recognize unexpected modeling concerns, and to introduce new approaches with which to examine game theory. Applications range from avoiding undesired consequences when designing policy to identifying unanticipated voting (where the ?wrong? person could win), nonparametric statistical, and economic ?supply and demand? properties.

Download or read book Enfleshing Theology written by Michele Saracino and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2018-10-31 with total page 326 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Enfleshing Theology honors and engages the life work of M. Shawn Copeland, whose theology is groundbreaking and prophetic, traversing the fields of Catholic Theology, Black Theology, Womanist Thought, and Semiotics. The book opens with a brief introduction, and then moves to an interview with Copeland, which connects her theology to her life stories. The conversation with Copeland also provides a backdrop to the seventeen essays that follow, extending Copeland’s theological worldview. The contributions are divided according to the following sections: embodiment, discipleship, and politics. The essays in the section entitled "Engaging Embodiment" critically reflect on the importance of embodiment in Christian theology and contemporary culture. Following Copeland’s lead, authors in this section theorize and theologize the body, particularly (but not limited to) Black women’s bodies, as a locus theologicus that reveals, mediates, and shapes the splendor and suffering reality of human existence. The next section, entitled "Engaging Discipleship," focuses on the concrete challenges of following Jesus in today’s world. The essays included in this section reflect on Copeland’s focus on Jesus’ particularity in terms of his solidarity with and for others. Discipleship is about modeling and mentoring, so scholars in this section also comment on Copeland’s contribution to teaching and pedagogy. The last section, entitled "Engaging the Political," interrogates the political implications of the theological. It is noteworthy that there are two trajectories of the political here, one is Copeland’s development of political theology through the lens of Canadian Jesuit theologian, Bernard Lonergan. The other trajectory focuses on the work of theology in contemporary art and politics. These three sections are fluid and overlap with one another. Several of the articles on embodiment speak to questions of solidarity and a few of the essays on discipleship clearly present as political. The ways in which each of the contributions in this volume overlap with each other attests to the complex nature of doing constructive theology today, and even more how Copeland’s work is at the forefront of that multi-layered, polyvalent, intersectional theological work.

Download or read book Scour and Erosion written by John Harris and published by CRC Press. This book was released on 2016-10-14 with total page 1727 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Scour and Erosion includes four keynote lectures from world leading researchers cutting across the themes of scour and erosion, together with 132 peer-reviewed papers from 34 countries, covering the principal themes of: - internal erosion - sediment transport - grain scale to continuum scale - advanced numerical modelling of scour and erosion - terrestrial scour and erosion- river and estuarine erosion including scour around structures, and - management of scour/erosion and sediment, including hazard management and sedimentation in dams and reservoirs. Scour and Erosion is ideal for researchers and industry working at the forefront of scour and erosion, and has applications in both the freshwater and marine environments.

Download or read book Multiperson Decision Making Models Using Fuzzy Sets and Possibility Theory written by J. Kacprzyk and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-12-06 with total page 349 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Decision making is certainly a very crucial component of many human activities. It is, therefore, not surprising that models of decisions play a very important role not only in decision theory but also in areas such as operations Research, Management science, social Psychology etc . . The basic model of a decision in classical normative decision theory has very little in common with real decision making: It portrays a decision as a clear-cut act of choice, performed by one individual decision maker and in which states of nature, possible actions, results and preferences are well and crisply defined. The only compo nent in which uncertainty is permitted is the occurence of the different states of nature, for which probabilistic descriptions are allowed. These probabilities are generally assumed to be known numerically, i. e. as single probabili ties or as probability distribution functions. Extensions of this basic model can primarily be conceived in three directions: 1. Rather than a single decision maker there are several decision makers involved. This has lead to the areas of game theory, team theory and group decision theory. 2. The preference or utility function is not single valued but rather vector valued. This extension is considered in multiattribute utility theory and in multicritieria analysis. 3.

Download or read book Mathematics for Reliability Engineering written by Mangey Ram and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2021-11-22 with total page 253 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Reliability is a fundamental criterium in engineering systems. This book shows innovative concepts and applications of mathematics in solving reliability problems. The contents address in particular the interaction between engineers and mathematicians, as well as the cross-fertilization of science and technology. It bridges the gap between theory and practice to aid in practical problem-solving in various contexts."--Publisher

Download or read book ECAI 2014 written by T. Schaub and published by IOS Press. This book was released on 2014-08 with total page 1264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The role of artificial intelligence (AI) applications in fields as diverse as medicine, economics, linguistics, logical analysis and industry continues to grow in scope and importance. AI has become integral to the effective functioning of much of the technical infrastructure we all now take for granted as part of our daily lives. This book presents the papers from the 21st biennial European Conference on Artificial Intelligence, ECAI 2014, held in Prague, Czech Republic, in August 2014. The ECAI conference remains Europe's principal opportunity for researchers and practitioners of Artificial Intelligence to gather and to discuss the latest trends and challenges in all subfields of AI, as well as to demonstrate innovative applications and uses of advanced AI technology. Included here are the 158 long papers and 94 short papers selected for presentation at the conference. Many of the papers cover the fields of knowledge representation, reasoning and logic as well as agent-based and multi-agent systems, machine learning, and data mining. The proceedings of PAIS 2014 and the PAIS System Demonstrations are also included in this volume, which will be of interest to all those wishing to keep abreast of the latest developments in the field of AI.