The soul of mathematics is the practice of skeptical inquiry: asking how and why things work, experimenting, exploring, and discovering. Estimation, analysis, computation, conjecture, and proof are the mathematical path to uncovering truth and we can use them in nearly every human pursuit. In this thoroughly charming and beguiling book, Shai Simonson applies mathematical tools in a variety of contexts that arise in everyday life to prove his claim that math is, literally, everywhere. Simonson applies his mathematical cast of mind to hiking, birthday parties, carnival games, lock picking, and kite flying. We see unexpected depths and connections when we look in the “wrong” places in the right way. No advanced mathematical knowledge is required to travel with Simonson and share in his investigations. All a reader needs is an open and curious mind, an eagerness to ask questions, and a willingness to think deeply and carefully about seemingly mundane things. There is wonder and joy in quotidian life with Simonson as your guide.

A brilliant tour of mathematical thought and a guide to becoming a better thinker, How Not to Be Wrong shows that math is not just a long list of rules to be learned and carried out by rote. Math touches everything we do; It's what makes the world make sense. Using the mathematician's methods and hard-won insights-minus the jargon-professor and popular columnist Jordan Ellenberg guides general readers through his ideas with rigor and lively irreverence, infusing everything from election results to baseball to the existence of God and the psychology of slime molds with a heightened sense of clarity and wonder. Armed with the tools of mathematics, we can see the hidden structures beneath the messy and chaotic surface of our daily lives. How Not to Be Wrong shows us how--Publisher's description.

The veteran presidential campaign manager recounts his many adventures, travesties, triumphs, and lessons from more than forty years on the trail. Over his long and legendary career, campaign strategist Rick Ridder has been at the center of everything from presidential death matches to the legalization of marijuana. In this lively memoir, he recounts his life on the trail from the McGovern campaign to more recent candidates and causes. Along the way, he reveals his “twenty-two rules of campaign management”―each one illustrated by entertaining, instructive, and mostly true stories from his own experiences. Rick offers an unsparing, often hilarious self-portrait of the political guru as a young man, criss-crossing the country from one drafty campaign headquarters to the next, making mistakes and pulling rabbits out of hats, wrangling temperamental celebrities, winning some elections and losing others. Through his stories, you’ll meet the state legislature candidate who said he’d win thanks to his reputation as a judge in cat competitions; the US Senate candidate who told the Southern press, “I hate southern accents”; a young Senator Al Gore who campaigned for President in 1988 by eating his way through New York City alongside Mayor Koch; Leonard Nimoy, good-naturedly trekking through rural Wisconsin in Rick’s own Jeep because Rick was too young to rent a more appropriate vehicle; and many other colorful characters.

About the Book Looking for Picasso in All the Wrong Places by retired art dealer, Ivan “Googie” Parks Jr., is a memoir of how a Chicago cowboy became an art dealer! He shares his unique experiences of how his Chicagoland Cowboy upbringing prepared him to solve modern art’s oldest secret! For the first time ever, read the amazing story of a young horseman’s inadvertent discovery that paralleled the answers to Picasso’s unasked questions for the sources of the Master’s unknown mysterious models! Parks reveals Picasso’s own Communistic origins he claims to have discovered being used to compare to the murder scenes from Chicago connected events! He presents a collection of fifty-three photographs from his Cowboy life which he claims accidently helped him explain what the seemingly secret subjects Picasso selected for the unknown gifts for the 1968 “347 Suite Gravures” exhibit were developed from accrual events taken place as Picasso drew the subjects from newspaper accounts as they happened. A young Parks uses his early Chicago cowboy experiences to help illuminate the Equine characters populating the selected sequenced forty-eight serials constructed from Picasso’s artwork into Ivan’s arranged expose! He uses his uniquely devised new linking process for creating a devastating revelation in a new serialization technique which is formulated while finding out Picasso has borrowed serial events from Chicago’s historical past. His findings lead to the beginning of a better understanding of Picasso’s formerly mysterious Cubistic World as he struck a lucky deal to save his Rock n Roll Dude Ranch while selling art in the Merrill Chase Chicagoland Art Gallery chain! Ivan reveals the explicit reasons of how he helped remove the “Erotic Suite” from the “347 Series Gravures” Exhibit while discovering a surprise Chicago connection illustrating two Democratic Presidential Conventions of 1960 and 1968 silently selected by Picasso! You will marvel as he discusses the reasons explaining the heretofore unknown why Picasso gave the “Sculpture Puzzle”, the “Bizarre Etching Exhibit”, and the $100,000 “Commission Check” to the Art Institute of Chicago! Parks also divulges a curious set of parallel dimensions between the “Daley Plaza Sculpture”, the “Guernica Mural”, and a mock-up of a “St. Valentine’s Day Crime Scene Measurement Recreation” which has never been examined or explored publicly before! He also explores the timely similarities in the recreations from the April 4, 1968, murder scene used by Picasso for his own version of the day before and the day of the Memphis Motel “Balcony Crime Scene” about the murder of Dr. Martin L. King Jr. You will marvel at the intricate collection of evidence linking Picasso imagery to Capone Era Chicago Beer Wars events. He further connects other similar historical sneak attack and matching alibi models for the St. Valentine’s murders and aligns them with selected communist conflicts with fascist leaders matching Picasso Eras which Ivan implicates Picasso in stealing Chicago Connections for his seemingly unknown art subjects! You’ll decide if the evidence in Parks’s Crazy Chicago Cowboy Discovery Trail proves his findings or if Parks twisted Picasso’s imagery into his own new Secret Chicago Connections. Either way the events took place just before Picasso drew his seemingly unconnected version of the infamous imagery!

Rediscovering Mathematics is aimed at a general audience and addresses the question of how best to teach and study mathematics. The book attempts to bring the exciting and dynamic world of mathematics to a non-technical audience. With so much focus today on how best to educate the new generation and make mathematics less rote and more interactive, this book is an eye-opening experience for many people who suffered with dull math teachers and curricula. Rediscovering Mathematics is an eclectic collection of mathematical topics and puzzles aimed at talented youngsters and inquisitive adults who want to expand their view of mathematics. By focusing on problem solving, and discouraging rote memorization, the book shows how to learn and teach mathematics through investigation, experimentation, and discovery. Rediscovering Mathematics is also an excellent text for training math teachers at all levels. Topics range in difficulty and cover a wide range of historical periods, with some examples demonstrating how to uncover mathematics in everyday life, including: number theory and its application to secure communication over the Internet, the algebraic and combinatorial work of a medieval mathematician Rabbi, and applications of probability to sports, casinos, and gambling. Rediscovering Mathematics provides a fresh view of mathematics for those who already like the subject, and offers a second chance for those who think they don't.

Technoculture is culture--such is the proposition posited in Technoscience and Cyberculture, arguing that technology's permeation of the cultural landscape has so irrevocably reconstituted this terrain that technology emerges as the dominant discourse in politics, medicine and everyday life. The problems addressed in Technoscience and Cyberculture concern the ways in which technology and science relate to one another and organize, orient and effect the landscape and inhabitants of contemporary culture.

Have you been bruised or wounded by your faith or belief system? This book is not about arguing theology but about providing practical insights and meditations to enhance the Christian journey. Your faith may be going through a transition. It is the hope of the author of this work that Coming Back to Faith will be a sensitive and caring beacon of hope along the way.

Mojo is the moment when we do something that's purposeful, powerful, and positive and the rest of the world recognizes it. This book is about that moment -- and how we can create it in our lives, maintain it, and recapture it when we need it. In his follow-up to the New York Times bestseller What Got You Here Won't Get You There, #1 executive coach Marshall Goldsmith shares the ways in which to get -- and keep -- our Mojo. Our professional and personal Mojo is impacted by four key factors: identity (who do you think you are), achievement (what have you done lately?), reputation (who do other people think you are -- and what have you've done lately?), and acceptance (what can you change -- and when do you need to just "let it go"?). Goldsmith outlines the positive actions leaders must take, with their teams or themselves, to initiate winning streaks and keep them coming. Mojo is: that positive spirit -- towards what we are doing -- now -- that starts from the inside -- and radiates to the outside. Mojo is at its peak when we are experiencing both happiness and meaning in what we are doing and communicating this experience to the world around us. The Mojo Toolkit provides fourteen practical tools to help you achieve both happiness and meaning -- not only in business, but in life.

We are in danger of losing our identities as unique beings created in the image of God. Our culture, not wanting to answer to a higher authority, tries to expel God from the planet but in the process strips off the very image that makes us human. If we officiate at the death of God, we will also be forced to preside over the funeral of man. The good news is that despite the loud voices declaring that we are just evolved animals, the vast majority of us behave as if we are special. Since the characteristics that make humans unique are found nowhere else on the planet, we are compelled to look to the heavens. We have a choice; we can find significance running with the pack or in becoming children of God. We can howl at the moon or offer prayers to our Father, but either way we will end up worshiping our maker. Dr. Strandness explores what it means to be created in the image of God by examining those qualities that are universally recognized as unique to humankind. He makes the case that these characteristics have a heavenly origin and can only be adequately explained by a Biblical understanding of humans as Gods image-bearers.

In John's Gospel Jesus enters as an adult and issues an invitation: "Follow me." Those who accept the call find themselves on the journey of a lifetime. Disciples complain about not knowing the destination; they fret about finding the way. But place and path come together in a person, who identifies himself in a series of sayings distinctive to this gospel. Over time and in community, disciples take on the identity of the one whom they follow. "I AM" becomes "YOU ARE." Called to Follow examines the gospel's argument for discipleship by exploring how an attention to time, vivid encounters, probing questions, matters of identity, and practices sustain the journey and keep fellow travelers on track.