Contents -- 1 From building blocks to computers: Models and modeling -- 2 The game of life: A legendary cellular automaton -- 3 Heads or tails: Probability of an event -- 4 Galton's board: Probability and statistics -- 5 Twenty questions: Probability and information -- 6 Snowflakes: The evolution of dynamical systems -- 7 The Lorenz butterfly: Deterministic chaos -- 8 From Cantor to Mandelbrot: Self-similarity and fractals -- 9 Typing monkeys: Statistical linguistics -- 10 The bridges of Königsberg: Graph theory -- 11 Prisoner's dilemma: Game theory -- 12 Let the best man win: Genetic algorithms -- 13 Computers can learn: Neural networks -- 14 Unpredictable individuals: Modeling society -- 15 Universal computer: The Turing machine -- 16 Hal, R2D2, and Number 5: Artificial intelligence -- Epilog -- Programs -- Further reading -- Index -- A -- B -- C -- D -- E -- F -- G -- H -- I -- K -- L -- M -- N -- O -- P -- R -- S -- T -- U -- V -- W -- X -- Z.