From the editors of the popular Making Mathematics with Needlework, this book presents projects that highlight the relationship between types of needlework and mathematics. Chapters start with accessible overviews presenting the interplay between mathematical concepts and craft expressions. Following sections explain the mathematics in more detail,

Presenting the most recent developments in research and strategy, this text applies these theories and illustrates their implementation in business cases.

Designed for crafters, puzzle lovers, and pattern designers alike, Crafting Conundrums: Puzzles and Patterns for the Bead Crochet Artist provides methods, challenges, and patterns that offer a springboard for creative exploration. All are illustrated with beautiful color diagrams and photographs. Experienced bead crochet crafters looking for a project may choose to skip ahead to the pattern pages and begin crocheting from an abundance of unique, mathematically inspired designs. Those wishing to design their own patterns will find many useful tools, template patterns, and a new methodology for understanding how to do so even without using math. Puzzle lovers without previous knowledge of bead crochet will also find ample inspiration for learning the craft. The first part of the book describes the basic requirements and constraints of a bead crochet pattern and explains what makes designing in this medium so tricky. The authors present their new design framework and offer insight on how best to approach design choices and issues unique to bead crochet. The second part presents a series of bead crochet design challenges informed by colorful bits of mathematics, including topology, graph theory, knot theory, tessellations, and wallpaper groups. Each chapter in this section begins with a design puzzle accompanied by an introduction to the mathematical idea that inspired it. The authors then discuss what made the challenge difficult, present some of their solutions, and describe the thinking and ideas behind their approach. The final part contains nearly 100 original bead crochet patterns, including solutions to all the design challenges. This part also provides a tutorial on the fundamentals of bead crochet technique. Behind the deceptively simple and uniform arrangement of beads is a subtle geometry that produces compelling design challenges and fascinating mathematical structures. In color throughout, Crafting Conundrums gives both math enthusiasts and crafters an innovative approach to creating bead crochet patterns while addressing a variety of mathematically inspired design questions. Supplementary materials, including demo videos, are available on the book’s CRC Press web page.

Despite using them every day, most software engineers know little about how programming languages are designed and implemented. For many, their only experience with that corner of computer science was a terrifying "compilers" class that they suffered through in undergrad and tried to blot from their memory as soon as they had scribbled their last NFA to DFA conversion on the final exam. That fearsome reputation belies a field that is rich with useful techniques and not so difficult as some of its practitioners might have you believe. A better understanding of how programming languages are built will make you a stronger software engineer and teach you concepts and data structures you'll use the rest of your coding days. You might even have fun. This book teaches you everything you need to know to implement a full-featured, efficient scripting language. You'll learn both high-level concepts around parsing and semantics and gritty details like bytecode representation and garbage collection. Your brain will light up with new ideas, and your hands will get dirty and calloused. Starting from main(), you will build a language that features rich syntax, dynamic typing, garbage collection, lexical scope, first-class functions, closures, classes, and inheritance. All packed into a few thousand lines of clean, fast code that you thoroughly understand because you wrote each one yourself.

What is craft? How is it different from fine art or design? In A Theory of Craft, Howard Risatti examines these issues by comparing handmade ceramics, glass, metalwork, weaving, and furniture to painting, sculpture, photography, and machine-made design from Bauhaus to the Memphis Group. He describes craft's unique qualities as functionality combined with an ability to express human values that transcend temporal, spatial, and social boundaries. Modern design today has taken over from craft the making of functional objects of daily use by employing machines to do work once done by hand. Understanding the aesthetic and social implications of this transformation forces us to see craft as well as design and fine art in a new perspective, Risatti argues. Without a way of understanding and valuing craft on its own terms, the field languishes aesthetically, being judged by fine art criteria that automatically deny art status to craft objects. Craft must articulate a role for itself in contemporary society, says Risatti; otherwise it will be absorbed by fine art or design and its singular approach to understanding the world will be lost. A Theory of Craft is a signal contribution to establishing a craft theory that recognizes, defines, and celebrates the unique blend of function and human aesthetic values embodied in the craft object.

This is an accessible, concise introduction to phenomenological research in education and social sciences. Mark Vagle outlines the key principles for conducting this research from leading contemporary practitioners, such as van Manen, Giorgi, and Dahlberg. He builds on their work by introducing his post-intentional phenomenology, which incorporates elements of post-structural thinking into traditional methods. Vagle provides readers with methodological tools to build their own phenomenological study, addressing such issues as data gathering, validity, and writing. Replete with exercises for students, case studies, resources for further research, and examples of completed phenomenological studies, this brief book affords the instructor an easy entrée into introducing phenomenology into courses on qualitative research, social theory, or educational research.

Drawing on speeches, newspapers, magazines, and other public discourse, Condit and Lucaites survey the shifting meaning of equality from 1760 to the present as a process of interaction and negotiation among different social groups in American politics and culture.