Alex Townsend

Imagine every photo on your phone, every movie you stream, and every secure credit card transaction you make online. Big Math (i.e., linear algebra) is operating under the hood for each of these everyday miracles. It is: - The mathematical machinery that compresses images so they can be quickly uploaded to Instagram. - The secret sauce behind Netflix to recommend your next favorite show. - The sentinel that encrypts your data to keep it safe from prying eyes. - The force behind Google's search algorithm allowing you to sift through the vastness of the internet with a few keystrokes. The brainpower enabling the AI revolution, from self-driving cars to large language models like ChatGPT. Big math provides the concepts and algorithms needed in today's digital world. Yet Big Math isn't limited to practical applications. It promotes a broader, multi-dimensional thinking style critical for solving problems in all walks of life. It teaches us to see and manipulate relationships in a cloud of numbers, understand structures and patterns, and simplify complex problems into manageable pieces. This skill set is invaluable for scientists, engineers, programmers, entrepreneurs, financial quants, and anyone who deals with the colossal amounts of data that define our information-saturated age. BIG MATH is the first book to introduce linear algebra to a non-technical audience - exploring what it is, who created it, and why it matters.

The novels of Samuel Richardson are the essential topic of this book. Its main aim is to use Bakhtin's definition of polyphony as a way into Richardson's work and, in turn, to provide a basis from which to revise Bakhtin. After tracing the development of psychological realism in the eighteenth-century novel and the growing potential for autonomy in the fictional character in general, the book goes on to examine the potential for polyphony which first emerges in "Pamela "and reaches its height in "Clarissa." Between editions of this momentous novel, Richardson felt compelled to make frantic attempts to control the reader's interpretation of the text. Lovelace - the villain of "Clarissa" - acquires a degree of autonomy that bears startlingly vivid testimony to the plurality of human identity itself. "Sir Charles Grandison," Richardson's last novel, is a vivid retreat from the powerful effect of Lovelace.