When properly applied, randomness can be a powerful tool in programming, science, and art. This highly practical but geekily fun introduction to randomness shows you how to put chaos to work, illustrating its ability to power everything from the simulation of Darwinian evolution, to product placement in a grocery store, to hiding information in plain sight, and even how to generate art and music. By encouraging you to engage in 'what if' speculation, you'll build intuition about when and how to use randomness to get things done. Each chapter describes how randomness plays into the given topic area, then proceeds to demonstrate its problem-solving role with hands-on experiments to work through using Python code. By the end of the book, you'll see why randomness belongs in every programmer's toolbox. Explore the mathematical background of randomness; Use randomness for encrypting messages, creating models, and implementing swarm-intelligence or machine-learning algorithms; Discover how

This is a book about numbers and how those numbers are represented in and operated on by computers. It is crucial that developers understand this area because the numerical operations allowed by computers, and the limitations of those operations, especially in the area of floating point math, affect virtually everything people try to do with computers. This book aims to fill this gap by exploring, in sufficient but not overwhelming detail, just what it is that computers do with numbers. Divided into two parts, the first deals with standard representations of integers and floating point numbers, while the second examines several other number representations. Details are explained thoroughly, with clarity and specificity. Each chapter ends with a summary, recommendations, carefully selected references, and exercises to review the key points. Topics covered include interval arithmetic, fixed-point numbers, big integers and rational arithmetic. This new edition has three new chapters: Pitfalls of Floating-Point Numbers (and How to Avoid Them), Arbitrary Precision Floating Point, and Other Number Systems. This book is for anyone who develops software including software engineers, scientists, computer science students, engineering students and anyone who programs for fun.

This is a book about numbers and how those numbers are represented in and operated on by computers. It is crucial that developers understand this area because the numerical operations allowed by computers, and the limitations of those operations, especially in the area of floating point math, affect virtually everything people try to do with computers. This book aims to fill this gap by exploring, in sufficient but not overwhelming detail, just what it is that computers do with numbers. Divided into two parts, the first deals with standard representations of integers and floating point numbers, while the second details several other number representations. Each chapter ends with exercises to review the key points. Topics covered include interval arithmetic, fixed-point numbers, floating point numbers, big integers and rational arithmetic. This book is for anyone who develops software including software engineerings, scientists, computer science students, engineering students and anyone who programs for fun.

This is a book about numbers and how those numbers are represented in and operated on by computers. It is crucial that developers understand this area because the numerical operations allowed by computers, and the limitations of those operations, especially in the area of floating point math, affect virtually everything people try to do with computers. This book aims to fill this gap by exploring, in sufficient but not overwhelming detail, just what it is that computers do with numbers. Divided into two parts, the first deals with standard representations of integers and floating point numbers, while the second examines several other number representations. Details are explained thoroughly, with clarity and specificity. Each chapter ends with a summary, recommendations, carefully selected references, and exercises to review the key points. Topics covered include interval arithmetic, fixed-point numbers, big integers and rational arithmetic. This new edition has three new chapters: Pitfalls of Floating-Point Numbers (and How to Avoid Them), Arbitrary Precision Floating Point, and Other Number Systems. This book is for anyone who develops software including software engineers, scientists, computer science students, engineering students and anyone who programs for fun.

Explore the wonderful, wild, and often weird world of esoteric programming languages. Beginning with the history and theory of programming languages, addressing concepts like Turing machines and Turing completeness. Then a tour of three 'atypical' programming languages, real languages that are unusual and require out of the box thinking. Then, five chapters on existing esoteric languages (esolangs). Finally, the remaining chapters detail the development and use of two entirely new programming languages.

This book covers pseudorandom number generation algorithms, evaluation techniques, and offers practical advice and code examples. Random Numbers and Computers is an essential introduction or refresher on pseudorandom numbers in computer science. The first comprehensive book on the topic, readers are provided with a practical introduction to the techniques of pseudorandom number generation, including how the algorithms work and how to test the output to decide if it is suitable for a particular purpose. Practical applications are demonstrated with hands-on presentation and descriptions that readers can apply directly to their own work. Examples are in C and Python and given with an emphasis on understanding the algorithms to the point of practical application. The examples are meant to be implemented, experimented with and improved/adapted by the reader.