Theodore M. Porter

Karl Pearson:
The Scientific Life in a Statistical Age

Paper | 2005 | ISBN: 0-691-12635-6
Cloth | 2004 | ISBN: 0-691-11445-5
352 pp. | 6 x 9 | 18 halftones.

Karl Pearson, founder of modern statistics, came to this field by way of passionate early studies of philosophy and cultural history as well as ether physics and graphical geometry. His faith in science grew out of a deeply moral quest, reflected also in his socialism and his efforts to find a new basis for relations between men and women. This biography recounts Pearson's extraordinary intellectual adventure and sheds new light on the inner life of science.

Theodore Porter's intensely personal portrait of Pearson extends from religious crisis and sexual tensions to metaphysical and even mathematical anxieties. Pearson sought to reconcile reason with enthusiasm and to achieve the impersonal perspective of science without sacrificing complex individuality. Even as he longed to experience nature directly and intimately, he identified science with renunciation and positivistic detachment. Porter finds a turning point in Pearson's career, where his humanistic interests gave way to statistical ones, in his Grammar of Science (1892), in which he attempted to establish scientific method as the moral educational basis for a refashioned culture.

In this original and engaging book, a leading historian of modern science investigates the interior experience of one man's scientific life while placing it in a rich tapestry of social, political, and intellectual movements.

Theodore Porter is Professor of History at UCLA and author of The Rise of Statistical Thinking and Trust in Numbers (both Princeton)

Table of Contents:

Preface and Acknowledgments vii
CHAPTER ONE Introduction: An Improbable Personage 1
CHAPTER TWO Lehrjahre of a Poetic Wrangler 13
CHAPTER THREE Apostle of Renunciation: A New Werther 43
CHAPTER FOUR Pearson's Progress: A Nineteenth-Century Passion Play 69
CHAPTER FIVE Cultural Historian in a Political Age 91
CHAPTER SIX Intellectual Love and the Woman Question 125
CHAPTER SEVEN Ether Squirts and the Inaccessibility of Nature 178
CHAPTER EIGHT Scientific Education and Graphical Statistics 215
CHAPTER NINE The Statistical Reformation 249
CHAPTER TEN Epilogue: Composing a Life 297
Bibliography 315
Index 329

David G. Luenberger

Information Science

Cloth | April 2006 | ISBN: 0-691-12418-3
448 pp. | 8 x 10 | 210 line illus. 6 halftones.

From cell phones to Web portals, advances in information and communications technology have thrust society into an information age that is far-reaching, fast-moving, increasingly complex, and yet essential to modern life. Now, renowned scholar and author David Luenberger has produced Information Science, a text that distills and explains the most important concepts and insights at the core of this ongoing revolution. The book represents the material used in a widely acclaimed course offered at Stanford University.

Drawing concepts from each of the constituent subfields that collectively comprise information science, Luenberger builds his book around the five "E's" of information: Entropy, Economics, Encryption, Extraction, and Emission. Each area directly impacts modern information products, services, and technology--everything from word processors to digital cash, database systems to decision making, marketing strategy to spread spectrum communication.

To study these principles is to learn how English text, music, and pictures can be compressed, how it is possible to construct a digital signature that cannot simply be copied, how beautiful photographs can be sent from distant planets with a tiny battery, how communication networks expand, and how producers of information products can make a profit under difficult market conditions.

The book contains vivid examples, illustrations, exercises, and points of historic interest, all of which bring to life the analytic methods presented:

Presents a unified approach to the field of information science
Emphasizes basic principles
Includes a wide range of examples and applications
Helps students develop important new skills
Suggests exercises with solutions in an instructor's manual

David G. Luenberger is Professor in the Department of Management Science and Engineering at Stanford University.

Henry Petroski

Success through Failure:
The Paradox of Design

Cloth | April 2006 | ISBN: 0-691-12225-3
240 pp. | 5 x 8 | 11 halftones. 4 line illus.

Design pervades our lives. Everything from drafting a PowerPoint presentation to planning a state-of-the-art bridge embodies this universal human activity. But what makes a great design? In this compelling and wide-ranging look at the essence of invention, distinguished engineer and author Henry Petroski argues that, time and again, we have built success on the back of failure--not through easy imitation of success.

Success through Failure shows us that making something better--by carefully anticipating and thus averting failure--is what invention and design are all about. Petroski explores the nature of invention and the character of the inventor through an unprecedented range of both everyday and extraordinary examples--illustrated lectures, child-resistant packaging for drugs, national constitutions, medical devices, the world's tallest skyscrapers, long-span bridges, and more. Stressing throughout that there is no surer road to eventual failure than modeling designs solely on past successes, he sheds new light on spectacular failures, from the destruction of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge in 1940 and the space shuttle disasters of recent decades, to the collapse of the World Trade Center in 2001.

Petroski also looks at the prehistoric and ancient roots of many modern designs. The historical record, especially as embodied in failures, reveals patterns of human social behavior that have implications for large structures like bridges and vast organizations like NASA. Success through Failure--which will fascinate anyone intrigued by design, including engineers, architects, and designers themselves--concludes by speculating on when we can expect the next major bridge failure to occur, and the kind of bridge most likely to be involved.

Henry Petroski is Aleksandar S. Vesic Professor of Civil Engineering and Professor of History at Duke University. He is the author of To Engineer Is Human (Vintage), and was the writer and presenter of the BBC television documentary of the same title. His many other books on engineering and design include The Pencil (Knopf), The Evolution of Useful Things (Vintage), and Small Things Considered (Vintage).

Endorsements:

"Success through Failure is an insightful and accessible foray into design. The book is a page-turner, with an intensity that builds as you read. I found myself waiting for discussions of various topics--from the Tacoma Narrows Bridge to the space shuttle--only to find them before me several pages later. A must-read for any design engineer, or anyone who wants to understand how great designs evolve."--Jonathan Cagan, coauthor of The Design of Things to Come and Creating Breakthrough Products

"This most readable book presents design from an engineer's point of view; its author is one of the masters of this approach. It will enrich engineers' understanding of their profession's heritage and tools, and help nonengineers see everything from slide shows to skyscrapers in new ways."--Edward Tenner, author of Our Own Devices and Why Things Bite Back

Christopher Heil and David F. Walnut

Fundamental Papers in Wavelet Theory

Paper | July 2006 | ISBN: 0-691-12705-0
Cloth | July 2006 | ISBN: 0-691-11453-6
912 pp. | 8 x 10

Foreword by Ingrid Daubechies

This book traces the prehistory and initial development of wavelet theory, a discipline that has had a profound impact on mathematics, physics, and engineering. Interchanges between these fields during the last fifteen years have led to a number of advances in applications such as image compression, turbulence, machine vision, radar, and earthquake prediction.

This book contains the seminal papers that presented the ideas from which wavelet theory evolved, as well as those major papers that developed the theory into its current form. These papers originated in a variety of journals from different disciplines, making it difficult for the researcher to obtain a complete view of wavelet theory and its origins. Additionally, some of the most significant papers have heretofore been available only in French or German.

Heil and Walnut bring together these documents in a book that allows researchers a complete view of wavelet theory's origins and development.

Chris Heil is Professor of Mathematics at the Georgia Institute of Technology. His research interests are in harmonic analysis, especially time-frequency and time-scale methods and their applications. David Walnut is Professor of Mathematics at George Mason University. His research interests are also in harmonic analysis, especially sampling theory, Radon transforms, and tomography. He is the author of Introduction to Wavelet Analysis. Ingrid Daubechies is the author of Ten Lectures on Wavelets, which won the American Mathematical Society's 1994 Leroy P. Steele Prize for exposition.

Endorsements:

"An important and welcome book, containing a striking range of papers. The introduction by John Benedetto is a delight."--Steve Krantz, Washington University

"An excellent book. This is a first-class reference for the history of wavelets. "--Gilbert Strang, Massachusetts Institute of Technology