This text provides a clear introduction to the history of religion in China and to religious practice in China and Taiwan today. Using a descriptive and original approach, Joseph Adler focuses on the four major traditions: Confucianism, Taoism, Buddhism and popular/folk religion. Tracing common themes, such as ancestor worship, sacrifice and divination, Adler highlights the ways in which religion has responded to and influenced political and cultural change in China.

Chinese Religions (Religions of the World)

Adler, Joseph

Religion & Spirituality

Routledge

Baseball Hacks isn't your typical baseball book--it's a book about how to watch, research, and understand baseball. It's an instruction manual for the free baseball databases. It's a cookbook for baseball research. Every part of this book is designed to teach baseball fans how to do something. In short, it's a how-to book--one that will increase your enjoyment and knowledge of the game. So much of the way baseball is played today hinges upon interpreting statistical data. Players are acquired based on their performance in statistical categories that ownership deems most important. Managers make in-game decisions based not on instincts, but on probability - how a particular batter might fare against left-handedpitching, for instance. The goal of this unique book is to show fans all the baseball-related stuff that they can do for free (or close to free). Just as open source projects have made great software freely available, collaborative projects such as Retrosheet and Baseball DataBank have made great data freely available. You can use these data sources to research your favorite players, win your fantasy league, or appreciate the game of baseball even more than you do now. Baseball Hacks shows how easy it is to get data, process it, and use it to truly understand baseball. The book lists a number of sources for current and historical baseball data, and explains how to load it into a database for analysis. It then introduces several powerful statistical tools for understanding data and forecasting results. For the uninitiated baseball fan, author Joseph Adler walks readers through the core statistical categories for hitters (batting average, on-base percentage, etc.), pitchers (earned run average, strikeout-to-walk ratio, etc.), and fielders (putouts, errors, etc.). He then extrapolates upon these numbers to examine more advanced data groups like career averages, team stats, season-by-season comparisons, and more. Whether you're a mathematician, scientist, or season-ticket holder to your favorite team, Baseball Hacks is sure to have something for you. Advance praise for Baseball Hacks: "Baseball Hacks is the best book ever written for understanding and practicing baseball analytics. A must-read for baseball professionals and enthusiasts alike."
-- Ari Kaplan, database consultant to the Montreal Expos, San Diego Padres, and Baltimore Orioles
"The game was born in the 19th century, but the passion for its analysis continues to grow into the 21st. In Baseball Hacks, Joe Adler not only demonstrates thatthe latest data-mining technologies have useful application to the study of baseball statistics, he also teaches the reader how to do the analysis himself, arming the dedicated baseball fan with tools to take his understanding of the game to a higher level."
-- Mark E. Johnson, Ph.D., Founder, SportMetrika, Inc. and Baseball Analyst for the 2004 St. Louis Cardinals

Baseball Hacks

Computers & Technology

Games & Strategy Guides

O'Reilly Media

Why learn R? Because it's rapidly becoming the standard for developing statistical software. R in a Nutshell provides a quick and practical way to learn this increasingly popular open source language and environment. You'll not only learn how to program in R, but also how to find the right user-contributed R packages for statistical modeling, visualization, and bioinformatics.
The author introduces you to the R environment, including the R graphical user interface and console, and takes you through the fundamentals of the object-oriented R language. Then, through a variety of practical examples from medicine, business, and sports, you'll learn how you can use this remarkable tool to solve your own data analysis problems.
<ul>
<li>Understand the basics of the language, including the nature of R objects</li>
<li>Learn how to write R functions and build your own packages</li>
<li>Work with data through visualization, statistical analysis, and other methods</li>
<li>Explore the wealth of packages contributed by the R community</li>
<li>Become familiar with the lattice graphics package for high-level data visualization</li>
<li>Learn about bioinformatics packages provided by Bioconductor </li>
</ul>
"I am excited about this book. R in a Nutshell is a great introduction to R, as well as a comprehensive reference for using R in data analytics and visualization. Adler provides 'real world' examples, practical advice, and scripts, making it accessible to anyone working with data, not just professional statisticians."

R in a Nutshell

Computer Science

Amazon.Com

Guitar for a singing planet: A guide to beginning guitar and folk singing [Jan 15, 1976] Adler, Joseph ... 0840314280

Guitar for a singing planet: A guide to beginning guitar and folk singing

Arts & Photography

Music

Kendall/Hunt

If you’re considering R for statistical computing and data visualization, this book provides a quick and practical guide to just about everything you can do with the open source R language and software environment. You’ll learn how to write R functions and use R packages to help you prepare, visualize, and analyze data. Author Joseph Adler illustrates each process with a wealth of examples from medicine, business, and sports.
Updated for R 2.14 and 2.15, this second edition includes new and expanded chapters on R performance, the ggplot2 data visualization package, and parallel R computing with Hadoop.
<ul>
<li>Get started quickly with an R tutorial and hundreds of examples</li>
<li>Explore R syntax, objects, and other language details</li>
<li>Find thousands of user-contributed R packages online, including Bioconductor</li>
<li>Learn how to use R to prepare data for analysis</li>
<li>Visualize your data with R’s graphics, lattice, and ggplot2 packages</li>
<li>Use R to calculate statistical fests, fit models, and compute probability distributions</li>
<li>Speed up intensive computations by writing parallel R programs for Hadoop</li>
<li>Get a complete desktop reference to R</li>
</ul>

R in a Nutshell: A Desktop Quick Reference