A guide to changing how you think about numbers and mathematics, from the prodigy changing the way the world thinks about math. We all know math is important: we live in the age of big data, our lives are increasingly governed by algorithms, and we're constantly faced with a barrage of statistics about everything from politics to our health. But what might be less obvious is how math factors into your daily life, and what memorizing all of those formulae in school had to do with it. Math prodigy Stefan Buijsman is beginning to change that through his pioneering research into the way we learn math. Plusses and Minuses is based in the countless ways that math is engrained in our daily lives, and shows readers how math can actually be used to make problems easier to solve. Taking readers on a journey around the world to visit societies that have developed without the use of math, and back into history to learn how and why various disciples of mathematics were invented, Buijsman shows the vital importance of math, and how a better understanding of mathematics will give us a better understanding of the world as a whole. Stefan Buijsman has become one of the most sought-after experts in math education after he completed his PhD at age 20. In Plusses and Minuses, he puts his research into practice to help anyone gain a better grasp of mathematics than they have ever had.

Technology has made human lives incomparably better. Civilization as we know it would utterly collapse without it. However, if not properly managed, technology can and will be systematically abused and misuse and thereby become one of the biggest threats to humankind. This open access book applies proactive crisis management to the management of technology organizations to make them more sustainable and socially responsible for the betterment of humankind. It forecasts the unintended consequences of technology and offers methods to counteract it.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER Greg Gutfeld wants to be your new guru, and he hates himself for it. Before Greg Gutfeld was a Fox News star and a New York Times bestselling author, he was a self-help writer for health magazines who had no idea what he was talking about. But now, after years of experience, he finally feels qualified to guide people on the journey of life—call this book punishment for his sins, and a huge reward for you! In The Plus, Greg teaches you how to brainwash yourself into better behavior, retaining the pluses in your life and eliminating the minuses. His approach to self-help is simple, and perfect for cynics; it’s not about positive thinking in the short term, it’s about positive being in the long term. With tough love and more than a little political incorrectness, he delivers sage wisdom such as: -If you aren’t getting happier as you’re getting older, you’re doing it wrong. -Resist the media’s command to expand destructive narratives. -If you’re in the same place you were three years ago, wake up. -Don’t tweet when drinking. Modern life grows emptier and emptier as society becomes increasingly polarized, and even those who don’t subscribe to New Age beliefs are seeking comfort and meaning. In The Plus, Greg shows how skeptics too can advance themselves for the betterment of their lives and the healing of their communities.

Project retrospectives help teams examine what went right and what went wrong on a project. But traditionally, retrospectives (also known as “post-mortems”) are only held at the end of the project—too late to help. You need agile retrospectives that are iterative and incremental. You need to accurately find and fix problems to help the team today. Now Esther and Diana show you the tools, tricks and tips you need to fix the problems you face on a software development project on an on-going basis. You’ll see how to architect retrospectives in general, how to design them specifically for your team and organization, how to run them effectively, how to make the needed changes and how to scale these techniques up. You’ll learn how to deal with problems, and implement solutions effectively throughout the project—not just at the end. This book will help you: Design and run effective retrospectives Learn how to find and fix problems Find and reinforce team strengths Address people issues as well as technological Use tools and recipes proven in the real world With regular tune-ups, your team will hum like a precise, world-class orchestra.

A hilarious reeducation in mathematics-full of joy, jokes, and stick figures-that sheds light on the countless practical and wonderful ways that math structures and shapes our world. In Math With Bad Drawings, Ben Orlin reveals to us what math actually is; its myriad uses, its strange symbols, and the wild leaps of logic and faith that define the usually impenetrable work of the mathematician. Truth and knowledge come in multiple forms: colorful drawings, encouraging jokes, and the stories and insights of an empathetic teacher who believes that math should belong to everyone. Orlin shows us how to think like a mathematician by teaching us a brand-new game of tic-tac-toe, how to understand an economic crises by rolling a pair of dice, and the mathematical headache that ensues when attempting to build a spherical Death Star. Every discussion in the book is illustrated with Orlin's trademark "bad drawings," which convey his message and insights with perfect pitch and clarity. With 24 chapters covering topics from the electoral college to human genetics to the reasons not to trust statistics, Math with Bad Drawings is a life-changing book for the math-estranged and math-enamored alike.

This book offers a collection of 256 guidelines on the art of coding to help you write better Perl code--in fact, the best Perl code you possibly can. The guidelines cover code layout, naming conventions, choice of data and control structures, program decomposition, interface design and implementation, modularity, object orientation, error handling, testing, and debugging. - Publisher

Annotation Government documents--forms, brochures, letters, and policy papers--that are difficult to understand create problems both for the public they're intended to help and for government agencies. In this collection, researchers from five universities in the Netherlands survey recurring problems in government documents and offer possible solutions. The contributors are linguists, document designers, and other communication experts who have studied public documents both empirically and from a design point of view. Though the subject is Dutch documents, the text is in English, and the work may be of interest to those investigating government communication in other nations as well as those who produce similar documents in the private sector. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com).