Reprint of the original, first published in 1881.

Readers of Innumeracy will be rewarded with scores of astonishing facts, a fistful of powerful ideas, and, most important, a clearer, more quantitative way of looking at their world. Why do even well-educated people understand so little about mathematics? And what are the costs of our innumeracy? John Allen Paulos, in his celebrated bestseller first published in 1988, argues that our inability to deal rationally with very large numbers and the probabilities associated with them results in misinformed governmental policies, confused personal decisions, and an increased susceptibility to pseudoscience of all kinds. Innumeracy lets us know what we're missing, and how we can do something about it. Sprinkling his discussion of numbers and probabilities with quirky stories and anecdotes, Paulos ranges freely over many aspects of modern life, from contested elections to sports stats, from stock scams and newspaper psychics to diet and medical claims, sex discrimination, insurance, lotteries, and drug testing.

This groundbreaking book, written by Metaphysicist and Bestselling Author Dr. Theresa M. Kelly utilizes an extensive list of scientific studies and laws to reveal how the laws of physics do not have to be rewritten to explain how psychic abilities work. The author exposes that psychic abilities are possible due to wirelessly transmitted data and commands weakly emitted through the mind and bodies own natural electromagnetic radiation. She also exposes that psychokinesis is possible by means of coupling and critically tuned frequencies operating in the electromagnetic near-field. The book includes several exercises and techniques enabling the reader to learn how to control and enhance their psychic or psychokinetic abilities including using scientific and safe means of enhancement. With over fourteen years of hands on experience in her field, Dr. Theresa M. Kelly bridges the gap between physics and metaphysics in a manner both easily comprehendible to the layperson, and easily appreciated by professionals.

In How Economics Became a Mathematical Science E. Roy Weintraub traces the history of economics through the prism of the history of mathematics in the twentieth century. As mathematics has evolved, so has the image of mathematics, explains Weintraub, such as ideas about the standards for accepting proof, the meaning of rigor, and the nature of the mathematical enterprise itself. He also shows how economics itself has been shaped by economists’ changing images of mathematics. Whereas others have viewed economics as autonomous, Weintraub presents a different picture, one in which changes in mathematics—both within the body of knowledge that constitutes mathematics and in how it is thought of as a discipline and as a type of knowledge—have been intertwined with the evolution of economic thought. Weintraub begins his account with Cambridge University, the intellectual birthplace of modern economics, and examines specifically Alfred Marshall and the Mathematical Tripos examinations—tests in mathematics that were required of all who wished to study economics at Cambridge. He proceeds to interrogate the idea of a rigorous mathematical economics through the connections between particular mathematical economists and mathematicians in each of the decades of the first half of the twentieth century, and thus describes how the mathematical issues of formalism and axiomatization have shaped economics. Finally, How Economics Became a Mathematical Science reconstructs the career of the economist Sidney Weintraub, whose relationship to mathematics is viewed through his relationships with his mathematician brother, Hal, and his mathematician-economist son, the book’s author.

This volume aims to interest students of modern economic theory in the history of economics. For this purpose, past economic theories are considered from the point of view of current economic theories and translated, if possible and necessary, into mathematical models. It is emphasized that the currently dominating mainstream theory is not the only possible theory, and that there are many past theories which have important significance to the advancement of economic theory in the present situation, or will have it in the near future.After a brief discussion on the history of economics from the point of view of contemporary economic theory, a bird's-eye view of the historical development of economics is given so that readers can see the significance of topics to be discussed in subsequent chapters in a proper historical perspective. These topics are carefully chosen to show not only what great economists in the past contributed to the development of economics, but also what suggestions for solving our own current problems we can obtain by reworking problems they had to face. The book can be used in advanced undergraduate as well as graduate classes on the history of economics. Mathematical techniques used can easily be understood by advanced undergraduates of economics major, since some models constructed originally by contemporary mathematical economists are carefully reformulated without losing the essence, basic calculus and the rudiments of linear algebra being sufficient for understanding.

Social Science Quotations has been prepared to meet an evident, unmet need in the literature of the social sciences. Writings on the lives and theories of individual social scientists abound, but there has been no fully documented collection of memorable quotations from the social sciences as a whole. The frequent use of quotations in scientific as well as literary writings that are mere summaries or paraphrases typically fail to capture the full force of formulations that have made quotations memorable. This book of quotations invites the further reading or rereading of the original texts, beyond the quotations themselves. Sills and Merton draw extensively upon the writings that constitute the historical core of the social sciences and social thought; those works with staying power often described as the "classical texts." Many quotations have been drawn from these classical texts because the quotations contain memorable ideas memorably expressed. Both consequential and memorable, these words have been quoted over the generations, entering into the collective memory of social scientists everywhere and at times diffusing into popular thought and into the vernacular as well. This book is useful to social scientists, anthropologists, economists, historians, political scientists, psychiatrists, psychologists, sociologists and statisticians, and for all who want to learn or verify memorable formulations and phrases concerning social thought and social theories. It is particularly useful for graduate students taking courses that examine the history of their discipline.