Absolute Value

Going against conventional marketing wisdom, Absolute Value reveals what really influences customers today and offers a new framework—the Influence Mix, a totally new way of thinking about consumer decision making and marketing, and about developing more effective business strategies. How people buy things has changed profoundly—yet the fundamental thinking about consumer decision-making and marketing has not. Most marketers still believe that they can shape consumers’ perception and drive their behavior. In this provocative book, Stanford professor Itamar Simonson and bestselling author Emanuel Rosen show why current mantras are losing their relevance. When consumers base their decisions on reviews from other users, easily accessed expert opinions, price comparison apps, and other emerging technologies, everything changes. Absolute Value answers the pressing questions of how to influence customers in this new age. Simonson and Rosen point out the old-school marketing concepts that need to change and explain how a company should design its communication strategy, market research program, and segmentation strategy in the new environment. Filled with deep analysis, case studies, and cutting-edge research, this forward-looking book provides a totally new way of thinking about marketing.

Mike tries so hard to please his father, but the only language his dad seems to speak is calculus. And for a boy with a math learning disability, nothing could be more difficult. When his dad sends him to live with distant relatives in rural Pennsylvania for the summer to work on an engineering project, Mike figures this is his big chance to buckle down and prove himself. But when he gets there, nothing is what he thought it would be. The project has nothing at all to do with engineering, and he finds himself working alongside his wacky eighty-something- year-old aunt, a homeless man, and a punk rock girl as part of a town-wide project to adopt a boy from Romania. Mike may not learn anything about engineering, but what he does learn is far more valuable.

This is an open textbook covering a two-quarter pre-calculus sequence including trigonometry. The first portion of the book is an investigation of functions, exploring the graphical behavior of, interpretation of, and solutions to problems involving linear, polynomial, rational, exponential, and logarithmic functions. The second portion of the book introduces trigonometry, introduced through an integrated circle/triangle approach. Identities are introduced in the first chapter, and revisited throughout. Likewise, solving is introduced in the second chapter and revisited more extensively in the third chapter. An emphasis is placed on modeling and interpretation, as well as the important characteristics needed in calculus.

Noah, Lily, and Simon have been a trio forever. But as they enter high school, their relationships shift and their world starts to fall apart. Privately, each is dealing with a family crisis—divorce, abuse, and a parent's illness. Yet, as they try to escape the pain and reach out for the connections they once counted on, they slip—like soap in a shower. Noah's got it bad for Lily, but he knows too well that Lily sees only Simon. Simon is indifferent, suddenly inscrutable to friends. All stand alone in their heartache and grief.

This lively, problem-oriented text, first published in 2004, is designed to coach readers toward mastery of the most fundamental mathematical inequalities. With the Cauchy-Schwarz inequality as the initial guide, the reader is led through a sequence of fascinating problems whose solutions are presented as they might have been discovered - either by one of history's famous mathematicians or by the reader. The problems emphasize beauty and surprise, but along the way readers will find systematic coverage of the geometry of squares, convexity, the ladder of power means, majorization, Schur convexity, exponential sums, and the inequalities of Hölder, Hilbert, and Hardy. The text is accessible to anyone who knows calculus and who cares about solving problems. It is well suited to self-study, directed study, or as a supplement to courses in analysis, probability, and combinatorics.

People tend to rank values of all kinds linearly from good to bad, but there is little reason to think that this is reasonable or correct. This book argues, to the contrary, that values are often partially ordered and hence frequently incomparable. Proceeding logically from a small set of axioms, John Nolt examines the great variety of partially ordered value structures, exposing fallacies that arise from overlooking them. He reveals various ways in which incomparability is obscured: using linear indices to summarize partially ordered data, relying on an inadequately defined concept of parity, or conflating incomparability with vagueness. Incomparability can enrich and clarify a range of topics including the paradoxes of Derek Parfit, rational decision theory, and the infinite values of theology. Finally, Nolt shows how to generalize many of the concepts introduced earlier, explores the intricate depths of certain noteworthy partially ordered value structures, and argues for the finitude of value. Incomparable Values will be of interest to scholars and advanced students working in ethics, value theory, rational decision theory, and logic.

This is an introduction to diophantine geometry at the advanced graduate level. The book contains a proof of the Mordell conjecture which will make it quite attractive to graduate students and professional mathematicians. In each part of the book, the reader will find numerous exercises.