Mathematics Audiobooks | Science & Technology

Entanglement: The Greatest Mystery in Physics

Can two particles become inextricably linked, so that a change in one is instantly reflected in its counterpart, even if a universe separates them? Albert Einstein's work suggested it was possible, but it was too bizarre, and too contrary to how we then understood space and time, for him to prove.No one could.Until now. Entanglementtells the astounding story of the scientists who set out to complete Einstein's work.With accesible language and a highly entertaining tone, Amir Aczel shows us a world where the improbable-from unbreakable codes to teleportation-becomes possible.

Amir D. Aczel (Author), Henry Levya, Henry Leyva (Narrator)

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Jacked: The Outlaw Story of Grand Theft Auto

Inside the making of the multibillion-dollar Grand Theft Auto videogame empire. Grand Theft Auto is one of the biggest and most controversial videogame franchises of all time. Since its first release in 1997, GTA has pioneered the use of everything from 3D graphics to the voices of top Hollywood actors and repeatedly transformed the world of gaming. Despite its incredible innovations in the $75 billion game industry, it has also been a lightning rod of debate, spawning accusations of ethnic and sexual discrimination, glamorizing violence, and inciting real-life crimes. Jacked tells the turbulent and mostly unknown story of GTA's wildly ambitious creators, Rockstar Games, the invention and evolution of the franchise, and the cultural and political backlash it has provoked. Written by David Kushner, author of Masters of Doom and a top journalist on gaming, this book is drawn from over ten years of interviews and research, including firsthand knowledge of Grand Theft Auto's creators and detractors. It explains how British prep school brothers Sam and Dan Houser took their dream of fame, fortune, and the glamor of American pop culture and transformed it into a worldwide videogame blockbuster. It also offers inside details on key episodes in the development of the series, including the financial turmoil of Rockstar games, the infamous "Hot Coffee" sex minigame incident, and more. Whether you love Grand Theft Auto or hate it-or just want to understand the defining entertainment product of a generation-you'll want to read Jacked and get the real story behind this boundary-pushing game. "A vigorous and often surprising narrative."-Wall Street Journal on Kushner's Levittown

David Kushner (Author), Adam Verner (Narrator)

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Atomic Adventures: Secret Islands, Forgotten N-Rays, and Isotopic Murder-A Journey into the Wild Wor

Whether you are a scientist or a poet, pro-nuclear energy or staunch opponent, conspiracy theorist or pragmatist, James Mahaffey's books have served to open up the world of nuclear science like never before. With clear explanations of some of the most complex scientific endeavors in history, Mahaffey's new book looks back at the atom's wild, secretive past and then toward its potentially bright future. Mahaffey unearths lost reactors on far flung Pacific islands and trees that were exposed to active fission that changed gender or bloomed in the dead of winter. He explains why we have nuclear submarines but not nuclear aircraft and why cold fusion doesn't exist. And who knew that radiation counting was once a fashionable trend? Though parts of the nuclear history might seem like a fiction mash-up where cowboys somehow got a hold of a reactor, Mahaffey's vivid prose holds the reader in thrall of the infectious energy of scientific curiosity and ingenuity that may one day hold the key to solving our energy crisis or sending us to Mars. **Contact Customer Service for Additional Material**

James Mahaffey (Author), Keith Sellon-Wright (Narrator)

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Scale: The Universal Laws of Growth, Innovation, Sustainability, and the Pace of Life, in Organisms,

Visionary physicist Geoffrey West is a pioneer in the field of complexity science, the science of emergent systems and networks. The term “complexity” can be misleading, however, because what makes West’s discoveries so beautiful is that he has found an underlying simplicity that unites the seemingly complex and diverse phenomena of living systems, including our bodies, our cities and our businesses. Fascinated by aging and mortality, West applied the rigor of a physicist to the biological question of why we live as long as we do and no longer. The result was astonishing, and changed science: West found that despite the riotous diversity in mammals, they are all, to a large degree, scaled versions of each other. If you know the size of a mammal, you can use scaling laws to learn everything from how much food it eats per day, what its heart-rate is, how long it will take to mature, its lifespan, and so on. Furthermore, the efficiency of the mammal’s circulatory systems scales up precisely based on weight: if you compare a mouse, a human and an elephant on a logarithmic graph, you find with every doubling of average weight, a species gets 25% more efficient—and lives 25% longer. Fundamentally, he has proven, the issue has to do with the fractal geometry of the networks that supply energy and remove waste from the organism’s body. West’s work has been game-changing for biologists, but then he made the even bolder move of exploring his work’s applicability. Cities, too, are constellations of networks and laws of scalability relate with eerie precision to them. Recently, West has applied his revolutionary work to the business world. This investigation has led to powerful insights into why some companies thrive while others fail. The implications of these discoveries are far-reaching, and are just beginning to be explored. Scale is a thrilling scientific adventure story about the elemental natural laws that bind us together in simple but profound ways. Through the brilliant mind of Geoffrey West, we can envision how cities, companies and biological life alike are dancing to the same simple, powerful tune.

Geoffrey West (Author), Bruce Mann (Narrator)

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The Perfect Bet: How Science and Math Are Taking the Luck Out of Gambling

Bringing together ideas from mathematics, psychology, economics and physics, The Perfect Bet traces the origins of successful betting methods. From the simple to the intricate, and the audacious to the absurd, Adam Kucharski reveals the long and tangled history between betting and science, and explains why gambling continues to generate insights into luck and decision-making today. Covering exploits and ideas from across the globe, he meets the teams behind hedge funds that capitalize on inaccurate sports betting odds, and explains how PhD-level pundits are using methods originally developed for the U. S. nuclear program to predict sports results. Kucharski reveals why winning at chess depends on luck-but victory in checkers does not-and why poker is one of the ultimate challenges for artificial intelligence. He also explores the difficulties of mimicking human behavior, and explains what caused one hedge fund's rogue algorithm to lose them $400,000 per second in the summer of 2012.

Adam Kucharski (Author), Jonathan Yen (Narrator)

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Journey to the Edge of Reason: The Life of Kurt Gödel

The first major biography of the logician and mathematician whose incompleteness theorems helped launch a modern scientific revolution. Nearly a hundred years after its publication, Kurt Gödel's famous proof that every mathematical system must contain propositions that are true-yet never provable-continues to unsettle mathematics, philosophy, and computer science. Yet unlike Einstein, with whom he formed a warm and abiding friendship, Gödel has long escaped all but the most casual scrutiny of his life. An intimate portrait of the scientific and intellectual circles in prewar Vienna and a vivid re-creation of the early days of Princeton's Institute for Advanced Study, Journey to the Edge of Reason is the first biography to fully draw upon Gödel's voluminous letters and writings-including a never-before-transcribed shorthand diary of his most intimate thoughts-to explore his profound intellectual friendships, his moving relationship with his mother, his troubled yet devoted marriage, and the debilitating bouts of paranoia that ultimately took his life. It illuminates the mind-bending implications of Gödel's revolutionary ideas for philosophy, mathematics, artificial intelligence, and man's place in the cosmos.

Stephen Budiansky (Author), Bob Souer (Narrator)

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The Primacy of Doubt: From Quantum Physics to Climate Change, How the Science of Uncertainty Can Hel

Why does your weather app say “there’s a 10 percent chance of rain” instead of “it will be sunny”? In large part, this is due to the insight of award-winning physicist Tim Palmer, who pioneered the introduction of uncertainty into weather and climate prediction. Now, he wants to apply it to how we study everything else. In The Primacy of Doubt, Palmer gives us a revolutionary vision of mathematical uncertainty that provides new insights into a range of practical problems and some of the deepest questions in science and philosophy. He draws connections that are in equal parts unexpected and fascinating: how ensemble forecasts can predict unpredictability, how the brain uses noise for creative thinking, how the geometry of chaos forces us to rewrite the laws of quantum mechanics, and in so doing reconciles determinism, free will, and moral responsibility. A tour de force from a brilliant mind, The Primacy of Doubt shows that the fundamental law of the universe might just be to expect the unexpected.

Tim Palmer (Author), Tim Palmer (Narrator)

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Lost in Math: How Beauty Leads Physics Astray

A contrarian argues that modern physicists' obsession with beauty has given us wonderful math but bad science Whether pondering black holes or predicting discoveries at CERN, physicists believe the best theories are beautiful, natural, and elegant, and this standard separates popular theories from disposable ones. This is why, Sabine Hossenfelder argues, we have not seen a major breakthrough in the foundations of physics for more than four decades. The belief in beauty has become so dogmatic that it now conflicts with scientific objectivity: observation has been unable to confirm mindboggling theories, like supersymmetry or grand unification, invented by physicists based on aesthetic criteria. Worse, these 'too good to not be true' theories are actually untestable and they have left the field in a cul-de-sac. To escape, physicists must rethink their methods. Only by embracing reality as it is can science discover the truth.

Sabine Hossenfelder (Author), Laura Jennings (Narrator)

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Love and Math: The Heart of Hidden Reality

What if you had to take an art class in which you were only taught how to paint a fence? What if you were never shown the paintings of van Gogh and Picasso, weren't even told they existed? Alas, this is how math is taught, and so for most of us it becomes the intellectual equivalent of watching paint dry. In Love and Math, renowned mathematician Edward Frenkel reveals a side of math we've never seen, suffused with all the beauty and elegance of a work of art. In this heartfelt and passionate book, Frenkel shows that mathematics, far from occupying a specialist niche, goes to the heart of all matter, uniting us across cultures, time, and space. Love and Math tells two intertwined stories: of the wonders of mathematics and of one young man's journey learning and living it. Having braved a discriminatory educational system to become one of the twenty-first century's leading mathematicians, Frenkel now works on one of the biggest ideas to come out of math in the last 50 years: the Langlands Program. Considered by many to be a Grand Unified Theory of mathematics, the Langlands Program enables researchers to translate findings from one field to another so that they can solve problems, such as Fermat's last theorem, that had seemed intractable before. At its core, Love and Math is a story about accessing a new way of thinking, which can enrich our lives and empower us to better understand the world and our place in it. It is an invitation to discover the magic hidden universe of mathematics.

Edward Frankel (Author), Tony Craine (Narrator)

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Freakonomics Rev Ed: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything

Which is more dangerous: a gun or a swimming pool? What do schoolteachers and sumo wrestlers have in common? How much do parents really matter? These may not sound like typical questions for an economist to ask. But Steven D. Levitt is not a typical economist. He studies the riddles of everyday life, from cheating and crime to parenting and sports, and reaches conclusions that turn conventional wisdom on its head. Freakonomics is a groundbreaking collaboration between Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner, an award-winning author and journalist. They set out to explore the inner workings of a crack gang, the truth about real estate agents, the secrets of the Ku Klux Klan, and much more. Through forceful storytelling and wry insight, they show that economics is, at root, the study of incentives, how people get what they want or need, especially when other people want or need the same thing.

Stephen J. Dubner, Steven D. Levitt (Author), Stephen J. Dubner (Narrator)

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Calculating the Cosmos

In Calculating the Cosmos, Ian Stewart presents an exhilarating guide to the cosmos, from our solar system to the entire universe. He describes the architecture of space and time, dark matter and dark energy, how galaxies form, why stars implode, how everything began, and how it's all going to end. He considers parallel universes, the fine-tuning of the cosmos for life, what forms extraterrestrial life might take, and the likelihood of life on Earth being snuffed out by an asteroid. Beginning with the Babylonian integration of mathematics into the study of astronomy and cosmology, Stewart traces the evolution of our understanding of the cosmos: How Kepler's laws of planetary motion led Newton to formulate his theory of gravity. How, two centuries later, tiny irregularities in the motion of Mars inspired Einstein to devise his general theory of relativity. How, 80 years ago, the discovery that the universe is expanding led to the development of the Big Bang theory of its origins. How single-point origin and expansion led cosmologists to theorize new components of the universe, such as inflation, dark matter, and dark energy. But does inflation explain the structure of today's universe? Does dark matter actually exist? Could a scientific revolution that will challenge the long-held scientific orthodoxy and once again transform our understanding of the universe be on the way? In an exciting and engaging style, Calculating the Cosmos is a mathematical quest through the intricate realms of astronomy and cosmology. PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying reference material will be available in your Library section along with the audio. ©2016 Massachusetts Institute of Technology (P)2016 Gildan Media LLC. **Please Contact Customer Service For Additional Documents**

Ian Stewart (Author), Dana Hickox (Narrator)

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How To Lie With Statistics

Now available in audio for the first time! Darrell Huff's celebrated classic "How to Lie With Statistics" is a straight-forward and engaging guide to understanding the manipulation and misrepresentation of information that could be lurking behind every graph, chart, and infographic. Originally published in 1954, it remains as relevant and necessary as ever in our digital world where information is king-and as easy to distort and manipulate as it is to access. A pre-cursor to modern popular science books like Steven D. Levitt's "Freakonomics" and Malcolm Gladwell's "Outliers", Huff runs the gamut of every popularly used type of statistic, probes such things as the sample study, the tabulation method, the interview technique, or the way the results are derived from the figures, and points up the countless number of dodges which are used to full rather than to inform. Critically acclaimed by media outlets like The New York Times and the Wall Street Journal and recommended by Bill Gates as a perfect beach read, "How to Lie With Statistics" stands as the go-to book for understanding the use of statistics by teachers and leaders everywhere. "A hilarious exploration of mathematical mendacity.... Every time you pick it up, what happens? Bang goes another illusion!" - The New York Times "In one short take after another, Huff picks apart the ways in which marketers use statistics, charts, graphics and other ways of presenting numbers to baffle and trick the public. The chapter "How to Talk Back to a Statistic" is a brilliant step-by-step guide to figuring out how someone is trying to deceive you with data." - Wall Street Journal "A great introduction to the use of statistics, and a great refresher for anyone who's already well versed in it." - Bill Gates "Mr. Huff's lively, human-interest treatment of the dry-as-bones subject of statistics is a timely tonic...This book needed to be written, and makes its points in an entertaining, highly readable manner."- Management Review "Illustrator and author pool their considerable talents to provide light lively reading and cartoon far which will entertain, really inform, and take the wind out of many an overblown statistical sail." - Library Journal "A pleasantly subversive little book, guaranteed to undermine your faith in the almighty statistic." - Atlantic

Darrell Huff (Author), Bryan DePuy (Narrator)

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Mathematics Audiobooks in Science & Technology