Search results for ""Author Stephen Boyd""

In autumn 1397, Viscount Ramon de Perellós left the papal palace in Avignon to travel to St Patrick's Purgatory, famous throughout Europe as a gateway to the next world. There, he spent twenty-four hours in an underground cavern, where he claimed to have travelled through the nine fields of Purgatory, accompanied by demons, before entering the Earthly Paradise and catching a glimpse of Heaven.

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Convex optimization problems arise frequently in many different fields. This book provides a comprehensive introduction to the subject, and shows in detail how such problems can be solved numerically with great efficiency. The book begins with the basic elements of convex sets and functions, and then describes various classes of convex optimization problems. Duality and approximation techniques are then covered, as are statistical estimation techniques. Various geometrical problems are then presented, and there is detailed discussion of unconstrained and constrained minimization problems, and interior-point methods. The focus of the book is on recognizing convex optimization problems and then finding the most appropriate technique for solving them. It contains many worked examples and homework exercises and will appeal to students, researchers and practitioners in fields such as engineering, computer science, mathematics, statistics, finance and economics.

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This groundbreaking textbook combines straightforward explanations with a wealth of practical examples to offer an innovative approach to teaching linear algebra. Requiring no prior knowledge of the subject, it covers the aspects of linear algebra - vectors, matrices, and least squares - that are needed for engineering applications, discussing examples across data science, machine learning and artificial intelligence, signal and image processing, tomography, navigation, control, and finance. The numerous practical exercises throughout allow students to test their understanding and translate their knowledge into solving real-world problems, with lecture slides, additional computational exercises in Julia and MATLAB®, and data sets accompanying the book online. Suitable for both one-semester and one-quarter courses, as well as self-study, this self-contained text provides beginning students with the foundation they need to progress to more advanced study.

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Timorous: adj, 1) shy, not bold 2) easily frightened. Economics: n, social science concerned with the production and consumption of goods and services. What is the best way to run a country? How long should a person be obliged to work every day? What will the economy look like after Brexit? In this new take on the Scottish economy, experts Trebeck, Boyd and Kerevan address how our economy can serve us, as opposed to the people serving the economy. They believe that current economic policies are not aligned with what we as people need in these times of rampant inequality and inequitable distribution, advocating an increased focus on the quality of Scotland’s economy. Using Scotland as an example for the economic workings of any country, Tackling Timorous Economics shows a better way of how economics could work for us.

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Translated by P. A. Motteux With an Introduction and Notes by Stephen Boyd, University College, Cork Cervantes’ tale of the deranged gentleman who turns knight-errant, tilts at windmills and battles with sheep in the service of the lady of his dreams, Dulcinea del Toboso, has fascinated generations of readers, and inspired other creative artists such as Flaubert, Picasso and Richard Strauss. The tall, thin knight and his short, fat squire, Sancho Panza, have found their way into films, cartoons and even computer games. Supposedly intended as a parody of the most popular escapist fiction of the day, the ‘books of chivalry’, this precursor of the modern novel broadened and deepened into a sophisticated, comic account of the contradictions of human nature. On his ‘heroic’ journey Don Quixote meets characters of every class and condition, from the prostitute Maritornes, who is commended for her Christian charity, to the Knight of the Green Coat, who seems to embody some of the constraints of virtue. Cervantes’ greatest work can be enjoyed on many levels, all suffused with a subtle irony that reaches out to encompass the reader, and does not leave the author outside its circle. Peter Motteux’s fine eighteenth-century translation, acknowledged as one of the best, brilliantly succeeds in communicating the spirit of the original Spanish.

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