English Literature

by William J. Long

2019 · Good Press

In "English Literature," William J. Long delivers a comprehensive exploration of the evolution of English literary traditions from their origins to contemporary works. Long seamlessly weaves together analysis and narrative, showcasing his expertise through vivid prose and meticulous attention to historical context. The book not only chronicles notable authors and movements but enriches the reader'Äôs understanding of the cultural and sociopolitical dynamics that have shaped English literature, making it an essential resource for both students and enthusiasts alike. William J. Long was a prominent American author, educator, and lecturer well-regarded for his deep understanding of literature and its impact on society. His own experiences as a teacher and scholar inform his insightful commentary on literary trends and their significance. Long's passion for literature and his broad knowledge base led him to synthesize various literary texts into this singular, accessible volume that invites readers to appreciate the intricacies of the English literary canon. "English Literature" is highly recommended for those seeking a foundational yet profound understanding of literary development across the centuries. Long's engaging style and clear scholarship make this work not only enlightening but also a pleasure to read, appealing to scholars, students, and casual readers alike.

Foundations of Genetic Programming

by William B. Langdon, Riccardo Poli

2013 · Springer Science & Business Media

Genetic programming (GP), one of the most advanced forms of evolutionary computation, has been highly successful as a technique for getting computers to automatically solve problems without having to tell them explicitly how. Since its inceptions more than ten years ago, GP has been used to solve practical problems in a variety of application fields. Along with this ad-hoc engineering approaches interest increased in how and why GP works. This book provides a coherent consolidation of recent work on the theoretical foundations of GP. A concise introduction to GP and genetic algorithms (GA) is followed by a discussion of fitness landscapes and other theoretical approaches to natural and artificial evolution. Having surveyed early approaches to GP theory it presents new exact schema analysis, showing that it applies to GP as well as to the simpler GAs. New results on the potentially infinite number of possible programs are followed by two chapters applying these new techniques.

Virtual Sociocultural Convergence

by William Sims Bainbridge

2016 · Springer

This book explores the remarkable sociocultural convergence in multiplayer online games and other virtual worlds, through the unification of computer science, social science, and the humanities. The emergence of online media provides not only new methods for collecting social science data, but also contexts for developing theory and conducting education in the arts as well as technology. Notably, role-playing games and virtual worlds naturally demonstrate many classical concepts about human behaviour, in ways that encourage innovative thinking. The inspiration derives from the internationally shared values developed in a fifteen-year series of conferences on science and technology convergence. The primary methodology is focused on sending avatars, representing classical social theorists or schools of thought, into online gameworlds that harmonize with, or challenge, their fundamental ideas, including technological determinism, urban sociology, group formation, freedom versus control, class stratification, linguistic variation, functional equivalence across cultures, behavioural psychology, civilization collapse, and ethnic pluralism. Researchers and students in the social and behavioural sciences will benefit from the many diverse examples of how both qualitative and quantitative science of culture and society can be performed in online communities of many kinds, even as artists and gamers learn styles and skills they may apply in their own work and play.

The Calculus of Complex Functions

by William Johnston

2022 · American Mathematical Society

The book introduces complex analysis as a natural extension of the calculus of real-valued functions. The mechanism for doing so is the extension theorem, which states that any real analytic function extends to an analytic function defined in a region of the complex plane. The connection to real functions and calculus is then natural. The introduction to analytic functions feels intuitive and their fundamental properties are covered quickly. As a result, the book allows a surprisingly large coverage of the classical analysis topics of analytic and meromorphic functions, harmonic functions, contour integrals and series representations, conformal maps, and the Dirichlet problem. It also introduces several more advanced notions, including the Riemann hypothesis and operator theory, in a manner accessible to undergraduates. The last chapter describes bounded linear operators on Hilbert and Banach spaces, including the spectral theory of compact operators, in a way that also provides an excellent review of important topics in linear algebra and provides a pathway to undergraduate research topics in analysis. The book allows flexible use in a single semester, full-year, or capstone course in complex analysis. Prerequisites can range from only multivariate calculus to a transition course or to linear algebra or real analysis. There are over one thousand exercises of a variety of types and levels. Every chapter contains an essay describing a part of the history of the subject and at least one connected collection of exercises that together comprise a project-level exploration.