Information theory and inference, taught together in this exciting textbook, lie at the heart of many important areas of modern technology - communication, signal processing, data mining, machine learning, pattern recognition, computational neuroscience, bioinformatics and cryptography. The book introduces theory in tandem with applications. Information theory is taught alongside practical communication systems such as arithmetic coding for data compression and sparse-graph codes for error-correction. Inference techniques, including message-passing algorithms, Monte Carlo methods and variational approximations, are developed alongside applications to clustering, convolutional codes, independent component analysis, and neural networks. Uniquely, the book covers state-of-the-art error-correcting codes, including low-density-parity-check codes, turbo codes, and digital fountain codes - the twenty-first-century standards for satellite communications, disk drives, and data broadcast. Richly illustrated, filled with worked examples and over 400 exercises, some with detailed solutions, the book is ideal for self-learning, and for undergraduate or graduate courses. It also provides an unparalleled entry point for professionals in areas as diverse as computational biology, financial engineering and machine learning.

World War II created much havoc for many people both in Europe and in the United States. From Concentration Camp Dachau to Cuba and the United States, Memoir of a 2G tells the story of what Patricia's parents went through during these times and how these events affected her upbringing. A 2G is a designated moniker given to a person whose parents were in the Holocaust. While growing up, very little if any information and experiences were talked about by her parents about what they had endured. Most everything was a blur for her. Questions were not answered, silence was the norm. Through Patricia's attempt to find out appropriate truths, and while working on her family genealogy, she was able to get some finality. Memoir of a 2G illustrates examples of what a child and as a young adult endured growing up in that type of family environment. In Memoir of a 2G, you will find this is a story that follows Patricia through the many experiences she endured. Patricia has come full circle in her understanding of how in spite of prejudice, survival, secrecy and perfectionism, she was able to create a rich life. Her challenging life events brought about both sorrow and joy. This story will give examples of how she was vulnerable and in some instances how she did not have the nerve to speak up in fear of the obvious and not so obvious consequences and reprisals.

Knots are familiar objects. Yet the mathematical theory of knots quickly leads to deep results in topology and geometry. This work offers an introduction to this theory, starting with our understanding of knots. It presents the applications of knot theory to modern chemistry, biology and physics.

The mouth-wateringly irresistible tale of a boy's insatiable hunger! Henry loves books... but not like you and I. He loves to EAT books! This exciting new story follows the trials and tribulations of a boy with a voracious appetite for books. Henry discovers his unusual taste by mistake one day, and is soon swept up in his new-found passion - gorging on every delicious book in sight! And better still, he realises that the more books he eats, the smarter he gets. Henry dreams of becoming the Incredible Book Eating Boy - the smartest boy in the world! But a book-eating diet isn't the healthiest of habits, as Henry soon finds out...

The instant New York Times bestseller. From Microsoft's president and one of the tech industry's broadest thinkers, a frank and thoughtful reckoning with how to balance enormous promise and existential risk as the digitization of everything accelerates. “A colorful and insightful insiders’ view of how technology is both empowering and threatening us. From privacy to cyberattacks, this timely book is a useful guide for how to navigate the digital future.” —Walter Isaacson Microsoft President Brad Smith operates by a simple core belief: When your technology changes the world, you bear a responsibility to help address the world you have helped create. This might seem uncontroversial, but it flies in the face of a tech sector long obsessed with rapid growth and sometimes on disruption as an end in itself. While sweeping digital transformation holds great promise, we have reached an inflection point. The world has turned information technology into both a powerful tool and a formidable weapon, and new approaches are needed to manage an era defined by even more powerful inventions like artificial intelligence. Companies that create technology must accept greater responsibility for the future, and governments will need to regulate technology by moving faster and catching up with the pace of innovation. In Tools and Weapons, Brad Smith and Carol Ann Browne bring us a captivating narrative from the cockpit of one of the world's largest and most powerful tech companies as it finds itself in the middle of some of the thorniest emerging issues of our time. These are challenges that come with no preexisting playbook, including privacy, cybercrime and cyberwar, social media, the moral conundrums of artificial intelligence, big tech's relationship to inequality, and the challenges for democracy, far and near. While in no way a self-glorifying "Microsoft memoir," the book pulls back the curtain remarkably wide onto some of the company's most crucial recent decision points as it strives to protect the hopes technology offers against the very real threats it also presents. There are huge ramifications for communities and countries, and Brad Smith provides a thoughtful and urgent contribution to that effort.

Learn how to use, deploy, and maintain Apache Spark with this comprehensive guide, written by the creators of the open-source cluster-computing framework. With an emphasis on improvements and new features in Spark 2.0, authors Bill Chambers and Matei Zaharia break down Spark topics into distinct sections, each with unique goals. Youâ??ll explore the basic operations and common functions of Sparkâ??s structured APIs, as well as Structured Streaming, a new high-level API for building end-to-end streaming applications. Developers and system administrators will learn the fundamentals of monitoring, tuning, and debugging Spark, and explore machine learning techniques and scenarios for employing MLlib, Sparkâ??s scalable machine-learning library. Get a gentle overview of big data and Spark Learn about DataFrames, SQL, and Datasetsâ??Sparkâ??s core APIsâ??through worked examples Dive into Sparkâ??s low-level APIs, RDDs, and execution of SQL and DataFrames Understand how Spark runs on a cluster Debug, monitor, and tune Spark clusters and applications Learn the power of Structured Streaming, Sparkâ??s stream-processing engine Learn how you can apply MLlib to a variety of problems, including classification or recommendation