I haven't tried it, but it appears that the GNU Scientific Library contains functions for linear algebra, numerical differentiation, differential equations etc. You can download it here, and it's also in the standard Debian repositories (and I suspect also included with most other Linux distros).

When I learned about Microcontrollers in my EE course, we were first taught how to code in assembly language, and only later taught C. I think the idea is that the learning of assembly language can help the students to think about the inner workings of the chip (i.e. moving values into registers etc.), so teaching assembly language is a good first step before moving onto C.

Replying to undo accidental redundant moderation.

You should probably email feedback at slashdot.org (see the footer of this page) instead of posting this in a random thread; maybe they can fix it for you.

Sorry, I broke the link. Should have been: http://www.debian.org/CD/torrent-cd/

a hhttp://www.debian.org/CD/torrent-cd/

I understood the summary to mean that the OP is teaching a statistics course to soft science students (those who are majoring in social science and phychology), and not that (s)he considers statistics to be a soft science.

Have you considered getting one of the extension boards, which allow for circuit prototyping? I intend to use mine (when it arrives) to process the signal from a Nasa Jove receiver, but there are tons of other circuits you could build. It's probably true that everything you can do with a Pi you could also do with a standard PC; but it seems to me that things like the Pi, which fit on a stand-alone circuit, just seem more... Fun. :-)

Sorry, should have posted the link for anyone who's interested.

It's more than a few thousand people. Check out Stanford's Youtube channel, for example. They've uploaded multiple full lecture series on math, physics, biology, engineering, etc., and it already has 123,000 subscribers and 34 million video views.

Admittedly this doesn't answer the original poster's question of what publishers are best in this area, but I second the 'learn VHDL/Verilog' advice.

If you buy an inexpensive development board from a company like Xilinx, Altera or Digilent, you can immediately begin to experiment in developing your own digital circuits (there are some hugely expensive dev boards, but you really just need a cheap Spartan 3 board or similar to start out). Check out Opencores.org, which is sort of like the Sourceforge of digital hardware, where engineers share open source hardware designs; they are largely implemented in Verilog or VHDL, but there are also dev board schematics available for free.

A lot of the designs on the site are of course fairly difficult for an absolute beginner to follow. However, as it is with software, having working examples to base your learning on can be tremendously helpful. The site has multiple full microprocessors, hardware video decoders, Ethernet adapters etc.

"I understand the need to be aware of the attitudes of workers with high-level access to data and networks, but this strikes me as creepy. What if an IT employee suddenly has relationship problems or family issues?"

Not commenting on whether monitoring employee emails is right or wrong, but why would somebody use their corporate email account to deal with relationship or family issues? In a world where companies can and often will read their employees' emails, that anyone would use their work email for anything personal seems short-sited. Sign up for one of the free web-based mail accounts.

You're absolutely correct. I've been a vegetarian for many years. (I have no problem with other people eating meat -- I do understand that we evolved to eat it etc. -- but I just choose not to.) It's funny that, after all this time, I never crave chicken or steak or any of the better quality meats; but if I'm hungry and drive past McDonalds, I almost always start to crave a Big Mac, despite knowing how disgusting they are. :-)

The US isn't the worst, but it's certainly close.

If only someone had written an example in the post title. Some kind of drafthouse I would expect... But I guess we'll never know. :-)