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Best Physics

Reactions: An Illustrated Exploration of Elements, Molecules, and Change in the Universe
It is then organized by type of reaction including chapters such as "Fantastic Reactions and Where to Find Them," "On the Origin of Light and Color," "The Boring Chapter," in which we learn about reactions such as paint drying, grass growing, and water boiling, and "The Need for Speed," including topics such as weather, ignition, and fire. Nick Mann is the photographer of The Elements: A Visual Exploration of Every Known Atom in the Universe and Molecules: The Elements and the Architecture of Everything .
Reviews
"I enjoy reading it because it demonstrates new ways to look at atoms and molecules."
"Amazing book with great information and facts with a bit of comedy."
"Theodore Gray explains how elements interact with one another, the basics of chemical reactions, and looks at some ordinary and not so ordinary reactions."
"For someone who is just beginning into chemistry, understanding reactions is helpful, while reading about them...lets just say he makes it fun and engaging."
"Anyone with a chemistry class in their distant past will thoroughly enjoy the full page molecule illustrations our textbooks were lacking and greatly appreciate the clarity they provide when teaching their youngsters about the magic of reactions."
"My 12-year-old loves adding this to her collection by this author!"
"Excellent book which has good reactons on chemistry, therefore. it has good demand."
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The Art of Electronics
In addition to new or enhanced coverage of many topics, the third edition includes 90 oscilloscope screenshots illustrating the behavior of working circuits, dozens of graphs giving highly useful measured data of the sort that is often buried or omitted in datasheets but which you need when designing circuits, and 80 tables (listing some 1650 active components), enabling intelligent choice of circuit components by listing essential characteristics (both specified and measured) of available parts. Chapter 5 details every circuit artifact that I've encountered in the past thirty years in a through, pragmatic, and straightforward way. My only 'twinge' is that [it] disclosed and explained (in glorious graphical detail and with real part numbers) many topics that I thought were my personal trade secrets ... The way ... [it] present[s] the data allows the reader to get terrific perspective on a lot of landscape in a single view. "Horowitz and Hill's third edition beautifully upgrades their earlier work, with substantial updates to detail, and without compromise to style, content, or technical quality. Delivered in folksy Horowitz and Hill style, it is rich with the kind of nitty-gritty information that's invaluable to circuit designers and manufacturers, much of which is absent (or difficult to find) elsewhere. The information that is now available in the book is absolutely fantastic, both the quality and the quantity, and you should get [it] as soon as you can ..." Wise Warthog blog. It starts from the very basics of voltage, current and resistance without getting heavily dependent on physics theory or mathematics, and proceeds to cover a huge variety of interesting topics. For electronic engineering students, [this book] ... will help you develop the intuitive understanding, which will make it easier to put the maths in context, and it will be invaluable when you do practical work for design projects. The Art of Electronics brilliantly conveys its authors' enthusiasm and experience of practical engineering and is an inspiring read. There is an abundance of warning, based on real-world experience, of the many traps that lie in wait for the practitioner of the electronic art ...
Reviews
"As a quick aid for the owners of the previous edition, here's the list of chapters along with a *very rough* indication of their changes with respect to TAoE2 (= means "roughly equivalent", the numbers tell which chapter treated the same material in the previous edition, with a and b to signify chapter splitting; a "+" means a different or greatly revisited chapter). Chapter Title Differences wrt 2nd Ed. ---------------------------------------------------------------. ONE: Foundations (=). TWO: Bipolar Transistors (=). THREE: Field-Effect Transistors (=). FOUR: Operational Amplifiers (=). FIVE: Precision Circuits (7a+). SIX: Filters (5a+). SEVEN: Oscillators and Timers (5b+). EIGHT: Low-Noise Techniques (7b+). NINE: Voltage Regulation and Power Conversion (6+). TEN: Digital Logic (8). ELEVEN: Programmable Logic Devices (+). TWELVE: Logic Interfacing (9a+). THIRTEEN: Digital meets Analog (9b+). FOURTEEN: Computers, Controllers, and Data Links (10+). FIFTEEN: Microcontrollers (+). The first four basic chapters have retained their pedagogical structure. Something has been changed, something has been moved to other more specific chapters (for example, Comparators have moved from the Op Amp chapter to the Logic Interfacing chapter). Oh, well, in the meantime there are other, more specialized tables in the applicative chapters and then, I still have the second edition... The "old" 5th chapter ("Active filters and oscillators") has been split into the two distinct and enhanced chapters six: "Filters" and seven: "Oscillators and timers". Likewise, the "old" 7th chapter ("Precision circuits and low-noise techniques" has doubled up into chapter five: "Precision circuits" and chapter eight :"Low-noise Techniques". The old chapter 6 is now the ninth chapter "Voltage regulation and power conversion". While the "fundamentals chapter" on Digital Logic has remained essentially the same, the old chapter 9 of the 2nd edition, "Digital meets Analog", has now been split into chapter twelve "Logic interfacing" and the greatly enhanced chapter thirteen - still named "Digital meets Analog" - that touches all kind of ADCs you can dream of (oh, yes, it still contains sections on PLLs and random noise generators). The treatment of the digital part of The Art of Electronics is now no longer focused on microprocessors, but has widened to embrace PLDs and microcontrollers, each of which earn a dedicated chapter. Gone is the Microprocessor chapter on the venerable 68008 (and its elegant instruction set), and a new conclusive chapter on microcontrollers highlights the increasingly important role of these devices "at the heart of today's [] electronics products" (to quote note 1 of chapter fifteen, in turn quoting Maxim's application note 3967). It appears the final chapters of the second edition that did not make it into this massive 1100 pages (excluding the appendices) tome, will remain frozen in their 1989 timeframe. While few might miss the old twelfth chapter ("Electronic construction techniques"), I bet there could be a market for what were chapter 13 ("High-frequency and high-speed techniques"), chapter 14 ("Low-power design") and chapter 15 ("Measurements and signal processing"). In conclusion, this third edition of The Art of Electronics is definitely worth buying even if you already have the second edition (but a reader who managed to read this far already knew that from the start)."
"I don't fault them for considering it as the gold standard in books on electronics. It contains a wealth of practical information, in charts, tables, and graphs, no other books come close. Omitting the circuit construction is also a loss because prototyping and making the circuit board are an essential art that separates practitioners from theorists. I wish it had fewer annoying trivial errors (how can you not catch a flipped diode on Fig 1.78?)."
"The authors' conversational style never wavers from its intended audience - the technically-minded enthusiast, hobbyist, or engineer confused by other, more in-depth, but "math heavy" texts that do not provide the rapid insight that "H & H" does. Considering how much effort the authors put into writing such an informative book, and how useful it was to me, I felt compelled to return the counterfeit item and am now engaged in finding the genuine article. The "other seller" who sold it to me quickly refunded the purchase amount and apologized for the inconvenience."
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We Have No Idea: A Guide to the Unknown Universe
Armed with their popular infographics, cartoons, and unusually entertaining and lucid explanations of science, they give us the best answers currently available for a lot of questions that are still perplexing scientists, including: * Why does the universe have a speed limit? This fully illustrated introduction to the biggest mysteries in physics also helpfully demystifies many complicated things we do know about, from quarks and neutrinos to gravitational waves and exploding black holes. Cham and Whiteson distil the essence of the little we know—and the lots we have no idea about. “This witty book reveals the humbling vastness of our ignorance about the universe, along with charming insights into what we actually do understand.”. —Carlo Rovelli, author of Seven Brief Lessons on Physics and Reality Is Not What It Seems “[A] lucid and irreverent survey of the many unsolved mysteries of our universe... Cham and Whiteson mesh comics, lighthearted infographics, and lively explanations to painlessly introduce curious readers to complex concepts in easily digestible chapters. “You couldn’t ask for better guides to the mind-bending mysteries of cutting-edge physics than Jorge Cham and Daniel Whiteson. Jorge Cham and Daniel Whiteson will guide you through the biggest mysteries of the cosmos, smiling all the way.”. —Sean Carroll, author of The Big Picture: On the Origins of Life, Meaning, and the Universe Itself “A delightful combination of comedy and cosmology that is as charming as it is informative.”. —Zach Weinersmith, creator of Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal. You'd think that'd be plenty, but Cham and Whiteson also provide the most credible and up-to-date scientific explanations as to what some of the answers to these huge (and hugely important) questions might possibly be, PLUS puns.”. —Ryan North, author of Romeo and/or Juliet and To Be or Not To Be.
Reviews
"Each chapter cleverly addresses a key cosmological question, such as whether or not there are higher than three dimensions, what are the missing pieces of the universe's material, and why gravitation is so much weaker than the other forces."
"This book is laced with nonsense. There's little in this book I didn't already know, but now I know it better."
"Last night, anticipating the arrival of the book, I ordered a second copy for my friend, who always talks about "black holes" (which I learned is not a good term to describe it - yes, in this book). When I research something in this book, I find myself getting more curious by the minute, and it takes me a long time to get back to the book. So don't worry, if you think this book is anything like a regular text book! Ok, back to the book, and to the profound discoveries that I did not know human kind had made AND BEYOND THAT to the concepts and information that humans have yet to figure out, which as it turns out (spoiler alert) is still about 95% of the universe."
"After a while I stopped reading the footnotes."
"Nice book even if you are into more advanced science."
"Great gift."
"Great story good information."
"Gets at the essence of science: wonder, mystery, asking questions."
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Best Particle Physics

Introduction to Elementary Particles
The first chapter provides a detailed historical introduction to the subject, while subsequent chapters offer a quantitative presentation of the Standard Model. The first chapter provides a detailed historical introduction to the subject, while subsequent chapters offer a quantitative presentation of the Standard Model. - Revised edition of a well-established text on elementary particle physics. - With a number of worked examples and many end-of-chapter problems. - Helps the student to master the Feynman rules. - Solution manual available for instructors.
Reviews
"Displays the key equations showing their form but does not dwell on the math."
"Best starter book for field theory."
"I friggin love this book."
"Every physics student should read this book before they take the physics GRE, or even just for fun."
"If you've read and understood undergrad mechanics, e&m (Griffiths), and quantum mechanics (Griffiths), then you're ready for this book and you'll know what to expect from Griffiths."
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Best Science for Kids

If I Understood You, Would I Have This Look on My Face?: My Adventures in the Art and Science of Relating and Communicating
He guides us through his discoveries, showing how communication can be improved through learning to relate to the other person: listening with our eyes, looking for clues in another’s face, using the power of a compelling story, avoiding jargon, and reading another person so well that you become “in sync” with them, and know what they are thinking and feeling—especially when you’re talking about the hard stuff. Exploring empathy-boosting games and exercises, If I Understood You is a funny, thought-provoking guide that can be used by all of us, in every aspect of our lives—with our friends, lovers, and families, with our doctors, in business settings, and beyond. And that is who will find his book invaluable: everyone.” —Deborah Tannen, #1 New York Times bestselling author of You’re the Only One I Can Tell and You Just Don’t Understand. “Alda’s curiosity, intelligence and desire to wipe out baffled and bewildered faces make a compelling case for clarity, communication and, always, empathy.” —Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Aided by his warm, conversational style, Alda’s message shows that the lessons also apply to the rest of us—and at a time when we could really use it.” — Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Alda developed this compelling conversation technique to help scientists distill down complex scientific principles for a general audience.” — Entrepreneur Magazine. “A distinguished actor and communication expert shows how to avoid ‘the snags of misunderstanding’ that plague verbal interactions between human beings. “In this charming, witty, and thought-provoking book, full of rich anecdotes, Alan Alda describes some of the tools of communication that he teaches in his work with the Alan Alda Center for Communicating Science and shows how everyone—from lovers to politicians to scientists—can benefit from being better communicators.” —Lawrence M. Krauss, author of The Greatest Story Ever Told .
Reviews
"Alan Alda's book has the one idea, that we have to relate to each other in order to communicate, and then he embroiders on that theme for the rest of the book, but it is so entertaining and chatty, that I enjoyed it well after buying into the big idea."
"He also focuses on improving communication through listening with our eyes, using a story to make a point, eliminating confusing jargon, and paying close attention to what the other’s person’s face is telling us. After I finished it, I immediately emailed my daughter’s teachers suggesting they use it to support a creative combined math and science class that she took last year."
"Very useful for me and I am practicing its suggestion and pay attention (listen intensively) to what speaker says, body language and facial expression."
"Got a few pages to go."
"Alan Alda's words are worth reading and paying attention to."
"I only wish there was a little more "take away" from the book."
"Make it easier for these types of people to understand me so I can be the better and bigger person whichI already am."
"Alan follows his own advice of telling stories, and the result is a book that reads fast and smoothly. Precisely because Alan tells stories (mostly about all the "fascinating" projects he's been involved in to improve how scientists communicate) but never brings it all together into a clear, memorable framework -- like, say, the four steps of Marshall Rosenberg's Nonviolent Communication. If you take an improv class, it may improve your skill to communicate complex information to a lay audience, at least for a while. In the comments, I would love it if people would suggest books that contain actual practical advice about how to communicate better."
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Best Mechanics

Mechanical Engineering Reference Manual for the PE Exam, 13th Ed
The extensive index contains thousands of terms, most indexed in a variety of ways, in anticipation of how you’ll search for them. Dynamics and Vibrations: Kinematics; Kinetics; Power Transmission Systems; Vibrating Systems Materials: Engineering Materials Properties and Testing; Thermal Treatment of Metals Fluids: Fluid Properties; Fluid Statics; Fluid Flow Parameters; Fluid Dynamics; Hydraulic Machines Power Cycles: Vapor, Combustion, and Nuclear Power Cycles; Refrigeration and Gas Compression Cycles HVAC: Psychrometrics; Fans, Ductwork, and Ventilation; Heating and Cooling Loads; Air Conditioning Systems Heat Transfer: Natural Convection; Evaporation; Condensation; Forced Convection; Radiation Machine Design: Basic and Advanced Machine Design; Pressure Vessels Thermodynamics: Inorganic Chemistry; Fuels and Combustion; Properties of Substances Control Systems: Modeling and Analysis of Engineering Systems Plant Engineering: Manufacturing Processes; Instrumentation and Measurements; Materials Handling and Processing; Fire Protection Systems; Environmental Pollutants and Remediation; Hazardous Material Storage and Disposal Fundamentals: Math Review; Probability; Statics; Engineering Economic Analysis Law and Ethics: Engineering Law; Ethics. What’s New in This Edition 36 chapters with new material, and 46 chapters with revisions to existing material 300 new equations, and 128 updated equations 27 new tables, and 31 updated tables 7 new examples, and 34 updated examples 10 new appendices, and 27 updated appendices 35 new figures, and 28 updated figures 1,094 new index entries, and 108 updated index entires. Michael R. Lindeburg, PE, is one of the best-known authors of engineering textbooks and references.
Reviews
"I just recently passed the mechanical PE exam (fluids discipline), and I thought I would share the studying strategy that seemed to work for me. The very first thing you should do is purchase this book, the Mechanical Engineering Reference Manual (MERM), even if you do not plan to take the PE for several years. At this pace, in about 3 months you will have read the entire book (around 1500 pages) and at least attempted every single practice problem. At this point you will be in full panic mode, because you won’t feel comfortable with any of the practice problems because as I said, they are much harder than what is on the exam. When you have finished the book, it should be right about the time that you have to choose your specific mechanical discipline for the exam. You will start to feel a lot more comfortable at this point because the questions are much easier than what you’ve seen so far. Update in response to some questions: On test day, you will see people walk into the exam with dozens of books. I went into the exam with only the following materials and it was more than enough: Mechanical Engineering Reference Manual. Practice Problems for the Mechanical Engineering Reference Manual. NCEES Sample Questions and Solutions (Thermal and Fluids Systems). NCEES Sample Questions and Solutions (Mechanical Systems and Materials). NCEES Sample Questions and Solutions (HVAC and Refrigeration). A 1" Three Ring Binder of helpful equations, saturation tables, and conversion factors that I accumulated during the study process. I hope this has helped, and most importantly, good luck!"
"If you master this book, it is the only one you'll need (IMHO) to pass the Mechanical Engineering PE test."
"I borrowed someone's copy of the NCEES practice exam and between these materials and that exam, it's all the prep I did. You will see people with a ridiculous amount of materials on exam day, I took this book and my ASHRAE books (I took the HVAC depth exam) and it was everything I needed."
"Used this book (and ONLY this book + a unit conversion book) for the October 2014 Mechanical PE exam and passed."
"Passed my exam and everyone at work loves this book as a general guide to anything."
"I highly recommend this book."
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Best Electronics

Practical Electronics for Inventors, Fourth Edition
Resistors, capacitors, inductors, and transformers Diodes, transistors, and integrated circuits Optoelectronics, solar cells, and phototransistors Sensors, GPS modules, and touch screens Op amps, regulators, and power supplies Digital electronics, LCD displays, and logic gates Microcontrollers and prototyping platforms Combinational and sequential programmable logic DC motors, RC servos, and stepper motors Microphones, audio amps, and speakers Modular electronics and prototypes. He is an inventor/hobbyist in electronics, an area he grew to appreciate through his experience at the University’s Department of Nuclear Engineering and Engineering Physics and the Department of Plasma Physics.
Reviews
"It's a shame too, since I thought the index was well laid out, liked the hot links within the text that take you to other referenced sections of the book and know that the content of the paper edition is probably outstanding. I've also added a couple of images from the physical and the kindle edition of the book to illustrate the issue that I'm talking about."
"I teach an introductory class in electronics at a small university. However, there were some notable gaps in the Second Edition that I typically teach in an electronics class; specifically, I teach a section on transducers and microcontrollers. I've been using the Arduino for class the last couple of years because most scientists would use a microcontroller to design a piece of equipment instead of discrete gates and logic chips. The chapters are designed to be somewhat modular; for instance, I can teach the basics of analog electronics and transistors and then move to microcontrollers without necessarily having to spend a lot of time time on discrete logic chips."
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Best Probability & Statistics

An Introduction to Statistical Learning: with Applications in R (Springer Texts in Statistics)
An Introduction to Statistical Learning provides an accessible overview of the field of statistical learning, an essential toolset for making sense of the vast and complex data sets that have emerged in fields ranging from biology to finance to marketing to astrophysics in the past twenty years. “Written by four experts of the field, this book offers an excellent entry to statistical learning to a broad audience, including those without strong background in mathematics. … the book also demonstrates how to apply these methods using various R packages by providing detailed worked examples using interesting real data applications.” (Klaus Nordhausen, International Statistical Review, Vol. “The book is structured in ten chapters covering tools for modeling and mining of complex real life data sets. … The style is suitable for undergraduates and researchers … and the understanding of concepts is facilitated by the exercises, both practical and theoretical, which accompany every chapter.” (Irina Ioana Mohorianu, zbMATH, Vol. "The book excels in providing the theoretical and mathematical basis for machine learning, and now at long last, a practical view with the inclusion of R programming examples.
Reviews
"This is a wonderful book written by luminaries in the field."
"The book provides the right amount of theory and practice, unlike the earlier (venerable and, by now, stable) text authored (partly) by the last two authors of this one (Elements of Statistical Learning), which was/is a little heavy on the theoretical side (at least for practitioners without a strong mathematical background). It is, however, an excellent introduction to Learning due to the ability of the authors to strike a perfect balance between theory and practice. ISL is an excellent choice for a two-semester advanced undergraduate (or early graduate) course, practitioners trained in classical statistics who want to enter the Learning space, and seasoned Machine Learners. ____________________________________________. UPDATE (12/17/2013): Two of the authors (Hastie & Tibshirani) are offering a 10-week free online course (StatLearning: Statistical Learning) based on this book found at Stanford University's Web site (Starting Jan. 21, 2014)."
"Overall: I did not like both the content and quality of the book. The book is very heavy for the size, because the paper is thick and glossy."
"To read through the chapters, it's much more enjoyable than reading other math/stat books, since the ideas behind each model or algorithms are very clear even intuitive, a lot of well-made plots make the understanding even easier. Not saying the methods within this book is wrong, but without deep understanding of some theories or rigorous assumpions of the methods, pure blind trying different algorithms to find lowest MSE may not be suitable for some cases. If you want to check more beautiful scenes, you need more work, more tickets, more tools to take an adventure within this park for quite a while."
"Better to just buy an actual statistics book and learn the formulas so you understand what you are doing."
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Best Cosmology

The Illustrated Brief History of Time, Updated and Expanded Edition
In addition, to heighten understanding of complex concepts that readers may have found difficult to grasp despite the clarity and wit of Professor Hawking's writing, this edition is enhanced throughout with more than 240 full-color illustrations, including satellite images, photographs made made possible by spectacular technological advance such as the Hubble Space Telescope, and computer generated images of three and four-dimensional realities. "Hawking has succeeded in writing two intertwined books, one a highly readable and popular account of the role of time in physics, the other an in-depth review—What makes all this so interesting is Hawking's ability to convoy the essential physics in words alone. "In his first work of popular science, Stephen Hawking proves himself to be a master of vivid clarity—It's difficult to think of anyone else living who could have put these mathematically formidable subjects more clearly. "The famous theoretical physicist best known for his inquiries into the nature of black holes—turns out to be as skilled a popular writer as he is a mathematician—The result is probably the best single book on astrophysics for the common reader.
Reviews
"Having read and understood all of the words in this book, I just do not have a firm grasp on much of what Mr. Hawking presents."
"Having this available on Audible is very welcome!"
"An illuminating peek into the minds of Hawking, Einstein and other physicists on their attempts to explain the universe with mathematics and the laws of physics."
"a wonderful read and the book is exactly as shown."
"Read this book and compare the real science with the so called Intelligent Design Theory ..."
"Surprisingly accessible for the amateur/layman cosmologist."
"It is a study of the beginning of the universe and goes into the scientific background of chemical makeup of matter and how they evolved from the Big Bang and how it might end withe the Big Crunch."
"The man is a genius .. what can I say .."
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Best SAT Subject Test Guides

The Official SAT Study Guide Second Edition
- 10 official SAT practice tests, including 3 new recent exams. - detailed descriptions of math, critical reading, and writing sections of the SAT. - targeted practice questions for each SAT question type. - practice essay questions, along with sample essays and annotations. - a review of math concepts tested in the exam. - test-taking approaches and suggestions that underscore important points. - free online score reports. - exclusive access to online answers and explanations at collegeboard.com. - $10 discount on The Official SAT Online Course to all book owners. The College Board , a not-for-profit membership association, connects students to college success and opportunity through major programs and services in college admissions, guidance, assessment, financial aid, enrollment, and teaching and learning.
Reviews
"Many people do not realize that the United States is one of the very few countries in the world that depend on multiple choice tests to assess its students."
"The thought of taking the SATs made me really nervous, I took the SAT 4 years ago and scored below average, 520s on math and reading and a 480 on writing with a 8 out of 12 on the essay. My scores came back and I got 620s on math and reading and a 580 on my writing with a 8 out of 12 on the essay. I would say that the essay portion of the test is the toughest to prepare for, but the book provides many many examples of essays that scores from 2 to 12."
"These pages contain a great deal of information that is useful to know about the test but none of it is strategic and it is written as a manual for human boredom. There is useful content--examples of SAT essays, and sample problems, too--but the introduction seems written with literally no population in mind."
"SAT Prep Black Book: The Most Effective SAT Strategies Ever Published. There's a bit of fluff and hyperbole in this book, but if you're willing to wade through it, he does have some unique and legitimate insights into the test, especially with the Critical Reading section."
"Be warned - the practice tests here for math, chemistry and physics are exactly the same as in the prior edition - the 2006 edition."
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Best Mathematical & Statistical Software

An Introduction to Statistical Learning: with Applications in R (Springer Texts in Statistics)
An Introduction to Statistical Learning provides an accessible overview of the field of statistical learning, an essential toolset for making sense of the vast and complex data sets that have emerged in fields ranging from biology to finance to marketing to astrophysics in the past twenty years. “Written by four experts of the field, this book offers an excellent entry to statistical learning to a broad audience, including those without strong background in mathematics. … the book also demonstrates how to apply these methods using various R packages by providing detailed worked examples using interesting real data applications.” (Klaus Nordhausen, International Statistical Review, Vol. “The book is structured in ten chapters covering tools for modeling and mining of complex real life data sets. … The style is suitable for undergraduates and researchers … and the understanding of concepts is facilitated by the exercises, both practical and theoretical, which accompany every chapter.” (Irina Ioana Mohorianu, zbMATH, Vol. "The book excels in providing the theoretical and mathematical basis for machine learning, and now at long last, a practical view with the inclusion of R programming examples.
Reviews
"This is a wonderful book written by luminaries in the field."
"The book provides the right amount of theory and practice, unlike the earlier (venerable and, by now, stable) text authored (partly) by the last two authors of this one (Elements of Statistical Learning), which was/is a little heavy on the theoretical side (at least for practitioners without a strong mathematical background). It is, however, an excellent introduction to Learning due to the ability of the authors to strike a perfect balance between theory and practice. ISL is an excellent choice for a two-semester advanced undergraduate (or early graduate) course, practitioners trained in classical statistics who want to enter the Learning space, and seasoned Machine Learners. ____________________________________________. UPDATE (12/17/2013): Two of the authors (Hastie & Tibshirani) are offering a 10-week free online course (StatLearning: Statistical Learning) based on this book found at Stanford University's Web site (Starting Jan. 21, 2014)."
"Overall: I did not like both the content and quality of the book. The book is very heavy for the size, because the paper is thick and glossy."
"To read through the chapters, it's much more enjoyable than reading other math/stat books, since the ideas behind each model or algorithms are very clear even intuitive, a lot of well-made plots make the understanding even easier. Not saying the methods within this book is wrong, but without deep understanding of some theories or rigorous assumpions of the methods, pure blind trying different algorithms to find lowest MSE may not be suitable for some cases. If you want to check more beautiful scenes, you need more work, more tickets, more tools to take an adventure within this park for quite a while."
"Better to just buy an actual statistics book and learn the formulas so you understand what you are doing."
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Best Strength of Materials Engineering

Strength of Materials (Dover Books on Physics)
Perhaps the chief reason for this is that in addition to all the customary elementary material on the subject (i.e., clear instructions to the fundamentals of tension, torsion, bending, compound stresses, deflection of beams, etc.). This material is presented in starred sections (which may be omitted on a first reading without interrupting the flow of the presentation) and includes a full treatment of the Mohr circle and its application to the determination of moments of inertia and strains as well as stresses; a lucid elementary presentation of the theory of the center of shear; and one of the few elementary presentations of the theory of the center of shear; and one of the few elementary discussions of the "Myosotis" method of calculating beam deflections, a method which often possesses considerable advantages over the more usual methods involving moment-area or the differential equation of bending. J. P. Den Hartog: The Reprint Engineer J. P. Den Hartog (1901–1989), who taught for most of his career at MIT, was one of the founders of the Dover reprint program in engineering.
Reviews
"Very informative and useful!"
"Den Hartog is an excellent review of the fundamentals of the strength of materials."
"Informative and easy to follow."
"Very good book, excellent price, and excellent seller."
"This is a classic engineering text."
"Exactly what I was looking for, worked very well for me."
"I have been using this book for years doing structural analysis on aircraft."
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Best Electrical & Electronic Circuits

The Art of Electronics
In addition to new or enhanced coverage of many topics, the third edition includes 90 oscilloscope screenshots illustrating the behavior of working circuits, dozens of graphs giving highly useful measured data of the sort that is often buried or omitted in datasheets but which you need when designing circuits, and 80 tables (listing some 1650 active components), enabling intelligent choice of circuit components by listing essential characteristics (both specified and measured) of available parts. Chapter 5 details every circuit artifact that I've encountered in the past thirty years in a through, pragmatic, and straightforward way. My only 'twinge' is that [it] disclosed and explained (in glorious graphical detail and with real part numbers) many topics that I thought were my personal trade secrets ... The way ... [it] present[s] the data allows the reader to get terrific perspective on a lot of landscape in a single view. "Horowitz and Hill's third edition beautifully upgrades their earlier work, with substantial updates to detail, and without compromise to style, content, or technical quality. Delivered in folksy Horowitz and Hill style, it is rich with the kind of nitty-gritty information that's invaluable to circuit designers and manufacturers, much of which is absent (or difficult to find) elsewhere. The information that is now available in the book is absolutely fantastic, both the quality and the quantity, and you should get [it] as soon as you can ..." Wise Warthog blog. It starts from the very basics of voltage, current and resistance without getting heavily dependent on physics theory or mathematics, and proceeds to cover a huge variety of interesting topics. For electronic engineering students, [this book] ... will help you develop the intuitive understanding, which will make it easier to put the maths in context, and it will be invaluable when you do practical work for design projects. The Art of Electronics brilliantly conveys its authors' enthusiasm and experience of practical engineering and is an inspiring read. There is an abundance of warning, based on real-world experience, of the many traps that lie in wait for the practitioner of the electronic art ...
Reviews
"As a quick aid for the owners of the previous edition, here's the list of chapters along with a *very rough* indication of their changes with respect to TAoE2 (= means "roughly equivalent", the numbers tell which chapter treated the same material in the previous edition, with a and b to signify chapter splitting; a "+" means a different or greatly revisited chapter). Chapter Title Differences wrt 2nd Ed. ---------------------------------------------------------------. ONE: Foundations (=). TWO: Bipolar Transistors (=). THREE: Field-Effect Transistors (=). FOUR: Operational Amplifiers (=). FIVE: Precision Circuits (7a+). SIX: Filters (5a+). SEVEN: Oscillators and Timers (5b+). EIGHT: Low-Noise Techniques (7b+). NINE: Voltage Regulation and Power Conversion (6+). TEN: Digital Logic (8). ELEVEN: Programmable Logic Devices (+). TWELVE: Logic Interfacing (9a+). THIRTEEN: Digital meets Analog (9b+). FOURTEEN: Computers, Controllers, and Data Links (10+). FIFTEEN: Microcontrollers (+). The first four basic chapters have retained their pedagogical structure. Something has been changed, something has been moved to other more specific chapters (for example, Comparators have moved from the Op Amp chapter to the Logic Interfacing chapter). Oh, well, in the meantime there are other, more specialized tables in the applicative chapters and then, I still have the second edition... The "old" 5th chapter ("Active filters and oscillators") has been split into the two distinct and enhanced chapters six: "Filters" and seven: "Oscillators and timers". Likewise, the "old" 7th chapter ("Precision circuits and low-noise techniques" has doubled up into chapter five: "Precision circuits" and chapter eight :"Low-noise Techniques". The old chapter 6 is now the ninth chapter "Voltage regulation and power conversion". While the "fundamentals chapter" on Digital Logic has remained essentially the same, the old chapter 9 of the 2nd edition, "Digital meets Analog", has now been split into chapter twelve "Logic interfacing" and the greatly enhanced chapter thirteen - still named "Digital meets Analog" - that touches all kind of ADCs you can dream of (oh, yes, it still contains sections on PLLs and random noise generators). The treatment of the digital part of The Art of Electronics is now no longer focused on microprocessors, but has widened to embrace PLDs and microcontrollers, each of which earn a dedicated chapter. Gone is the Microprocessor chapter on the venerable 68008 (and its elegant instruction set), and a new conclusive chapter on microcontrollers highlights the increasingly important role of these devices "at the heart of today's [] electronics products" (to quote note 1 of chapter fifteen, in turn quoting Maxim's application note 3967). It appears the final chapters of the second edition that did not make it into this massive 1100 pages (excluding the appendices) tome, will remain frozen in their 1989 timeframe. While few might miss the old twelfth chapter ("Electronic construction techniques"), I bet there could be a market for what were chapter 13 ("High-frequency and high-speed techniques"), chapter 14 ("Low-power design") and chapter 15 ("Measurements and signal processing"). In conclusion, this third edition of The Art of Electronics is definitely worth buying even if you already have the second edition (but a reader who managed to read this far already knew that from the start)."
"I don't fault them for considering it as the gold standard in books on electronics. It contains a wealth of practical information, in charts, tables, and graphs, no other books come close. Omitting the circuit construction is also a loss because prototyping and making the circuit board are an essential art that separates practitioners from theorists. I wish it had fewer annoying trivial errors (how can you not catch a flipped diode on Fig 1.78?)."
"The authors' conversational style never wavers from its intended audience - the technically-minded enthusiast, hobbyist, or engineer confused by other, more in-depth, but "math heavy" texts that do not provide the rapid insight that "H & H" does. Considering how much effort the authors put into writing such an informative book, and how useful it was to me, I felt compelled to return the counterfeit item and am now engaged in finding the genuine article. The "other seller" who sold it to me quickly refunded the purchase amount and apologized for the inconvenience."
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