Category: Books

The Exposome – 2nd Edition

Gary W. Miller

 

The Exposome: A New Paradigm for the Environment and Health, Second Edition, is a thoroughly expanded and updated edition of The Exposome: A Primer, the first book dedicated to the topic. This new release outlines the purpose and scope of this emerging field of study, its practical applications, and how it complements a broad range of disciplines. The book contains sections on -omics-based technologies, newer detection methods, managing and integrating exposome data (including maps, models, computation and systems biology), and more. Both students and scientists in toxicology, environmental health, epidemiology and public health will benefit from this rigorous, yet readable, overview.

This updated edition includes a more in-depth examination of the exposome, including full references, further reading and thought questions.

Source: www.elsevier.com

Performing Complexity: Building Foundations for the Practice of Complex Thinking | Ana Teixeira de Melo

In the face of growing challenges, we need modes of thinking that allow us to not only grasp complexity but also perform it. In this book, the author approaches complexity from the standpoint of a relational worldview. The author recasts complex thinking as a mode of coupling between an observer and the world. Further, she explores the process and outcome of that coupling, namely, meaningful information that may have transformative effects and impact the management of change in the ‘real world’. The author presents a new framework for operationalising complex thinking in a set of dimensions and properties through which it may be enacted. This framework may inform the development and coordination of new tools and strategies to support the practice and evaluation of complex thinking across a variety of domains. Intended for a wide interdisciplinary audience of academics, practitioners and policymakers alike, the book is an invitation to pursue inter- and transdisciplinary dialogues and collaborations. 

Source: www.springer.com

Complex Systems and Population Health – Yorghos Apostolopoulos; Michael K. Lemke; Kristen Hassmiller Lich – Oxford University Press

Edited by Yorghos Apostolopoulos, Michael K. Lemke, and Kristen Hassmiller Lich

 

  • The first comprehensive book integrating complex systems theory, methodology and modeling, with current population health practices
  • An instructional primer including learning objectives, take-home messages, and resources for further reading
  • Makes complex systems approachable for university professors, graduate students, policymakers, researchers, and practitioners of population health

Source: global.oup.com

What Is a Complex System?

A clear, concise introduction to the quickly growing field of complexity science that explains its conceptual and mathematical foundations

What is a complex system? Although “complexity science” is used to understand phenomena as diverse as the behavior of honeybees, the economic markets, the human brain, and the climate, there is no agreement about its foundations. In this introduction for students, academics, and general readers, philosopher of science James Ladyman and physicist Karoline Wiesner develop an account of complexity that brings the different concepts and mathematical measures applied to complex systems into a single framework. They introduce the different features of complex systems, discuss different conceptions of complexity, and develop their own account. They explain why complexity science is so important in today’s world.

Source: yalebooks.yale.edu

Statistical Consequences of Fat Tails: Real World Preasymptotics, Epistemology, and Applications, by Nassim Nicholas Taleb

The book investigates the misapplication of conventional statistical techniques to fat tailed distributions and looks for remedies, when possible.
Switching from thin tailed to fat tailed distributions requires more than "changing the color of the dress". Traditional asymptotics deal mainly with either n=1 or n=∞, and the real world is in between, under of the "laws of the medium numbers" –which vary widely across specific distributions. Both the law of large numbers and the generalized central limit mechanisms operate in highly idiosyncratic ways outside the standard Gaussian or Levy-Stable basins of convergence.
A few examples:
+ The sample mean is rarely in line with the population mean, with effect on "naive empiricism", but can be sometimes be estimated via parametric methods.
+ The "empirical distribution" is rarely empirical.
+ Parameter uncertainty has compounding effects on statistical metrics.
+ Dimension reduction (principal components) fails.
+ Inequality estimators (GINI or quantile contributions) are not additive and produce wrong results.
+ Many "biases" found in psychology become entirely rational under more sophisticated probability distributions
+ Most of the failures of financial economics, econometrics, and behavioral economics can be attributed to using the wrong distributions.
This book, the first volume of the Technical Incerto, weaves a narrative around published journal articles.

Source: www.researchers.one