Algorithms Books

This book was an inspiration. Dr. Ooi is a genius. I would recommend this book to anyone, who would like to enlighten themselves with knowledge of channel with feedback. Every college campus should own one.

"The Bible of channel feedback!" Dr Ooi has a keen understanding of the human condition and how it related to error correction and compression. I believe "James" has mastered communication without actually using any words from the english language!

With a crisp and cogent style, the author sets forth a new mathematical framework that can be used to develop and analyze coding schemes that use receiver feedback. We have already used certain concepts described in the text to design an improved version of our company's current microwave communication technology. This book is a must-buy for anyone involved in communication systems or in the practical application of information theoretic principles. This will surely place Dr. Ooi in a class with Shannon, Fano, Gallager, Wyner, Ziv, and the other intellectual giants in the field!

Dr. Ooi (of The Cambridge Analytic Group) provides an inspiring framework for analyzing and designing coding methodoligies for channels with feedback. His technical writing is of the highest caliber and the generality of his approach naturally unifies topics which had previously been deemed unrelated. This is an essential text for any professional or student interested in practical or theoretical coding.

For some of us learning programming has been less of a structured approach and more of a journey, picking up what we could as we went along. This book is a significant aid in that it takes us back to the basics of how to write problem solving code and at the same time giving us an extended toolbox to apply to how we perform it. It has been a real help to me by reinforcing things to me that I thought I understood, and teaching me new ways to do things that I had no idea on how to approach.
Al Edlund

Michael McMillan's "Data Structures and Algorithms Using Visual Basic.Net" is an excellent resource for the serious programmer using Visual Basic.Net. With the advent of the .Net technology there have been some major changes to Visual Basic, one of them being the collection classes. Most vb reference books provide a weak introduction to the collections and how to use them; this is the focus of the book and really allows the reader to gain enough confidence to start using them effectively in their own programs.



I look forward to more books from this author.

McMillan does for Visual Basic in .NET what other languages like Java, C and C++ have long had. Fundamental data structures like hash tables or hash sets, arrays, linked lists. He shows how to use these in the VB context. They greatly simplify your programming tasks. These constructs are so widely used in any practical programming language.

Without them, you find yourself having to tediously reinvent basic functionality. Adding little value. And with the risk that your implementations might be buggy.

McMillan shows how to use the structures in several algorithms. Having said that, this book will not be of any surprise to someone already familiar with algorithms. It does not go into these to the depth of Knuth's 'Art of Computer Programming', or Sedgewick's texts.

I have selected this book to be the textbook of an introductory course in data structures and algorithms for my second year programming students. There were three major reasons behind this choice:

1- The book doesn't go into the mathematics found in other books. Of course, mathematics are essential for those who want to create algorithms, but it's not the case for the majority of programmers, at least in the business computing field, who just want to implement them. On the contrary, I think that teaching the mathematics underlying the construction of algorithms makes the learning process unnecessarily hard.

2- On the data structures field, the book takes advantage of structures already implemented in the major development platforms. As the author says it: "students of data structures and algorithms can now see how to use a data structure before learning how to implement it" (Preface, p. vii). From an educational standpoint, this is a far better approach than starting to discuss a concept abstractly.

3- The examples are in VB .NET, which I consider a good starting programming language. For those who rather prefer another language, the author has recently published the same book for C#: "Data Structures and Algorithms Using C#".

In a word, I consider this book an excellent practical approach to learn common data structures and algorithms without going into the complexity of mathematics.

This book is really excellent book among all books about astrodynamics, they give us the details about how to solve problems step by step. i like Algorithm part.

I liked the original edition of this book very much, and I like the second edition even better. It is a unique format in that Vallado presents algorithms of all the major routines such as Lambert's Problem (several methods), Kepler's Problem (again, several methods), time conversion, date conversion, orbital element to ECI, and many, many other transformations. Although I no longer work in the field actively, I bought the second edition and would highly recommend it to anyone as an introduction and/or a reference to astrodynamics.

This is one of the most thorough, well-written, accessible texts on astrodynamics that I've seen. The coverage of spherical harmonics (zonal, sectorial and tesseral) in Chapter 8 is very well done and welcomed. Beginners (or those who need a refresher) will also appreciate the very accessible coverage of Kalman filtering in Chapter 10.

The text provides 70 algorithms in addition to the wealth of mathematical derivations throughout the text.

The publisher's web site does not provide the updated table of contents for the 2nd Edition (as of 9 May 2006). I have provided this below. I wish that I had the time to provide the section headings within each chapter. However, if you are familiar with the subject area, you will be able to see from the chapter titles that this text is quite thorough.

Loaded with well-executed illustrations and clear, descriptive text, I doubt that anything in this text will leave you with questions or confusion. You can't go wrong with purchasing this text.

Table of Contents for 2nd Edition

1. Equations of Motion
2. Kepler's Equation and Kepler's Problem
3. Coordinate and Time Systems
4. Observations
5. Celestial Phenomena
6. Orbital Maneuvering
7. Initial Orbit Determination
8. Special Perturbation Techniques
9. General Perturbation Techniques
10. Orbit Determination and Estimation
11. Mission Analysis

Appendix A. Dictionary of Symbols
Appendix B. Modeling the Atmosphere
Appendix C. Mathematical Fundamentals
Appendix D. Constants and Expansions

As a student taking a graduate-level course in astrodynamics, this book has been a fantastic resource. It has (for the most part), the same material as Prussing & Conway, but it really develops the topics much more. The algorithms Dave Vallado outlines in his book have helped me tremendously in my research. I have found this book to be the most comprehensive astrodynamics book I have ever come across - a definate must have for anyone studying astrodynamics!

Netlab implements in Matlab most algorithms presented in Christopher Bishop's excelent book Neural Networks for Pattern Recognition

Nabney's book is an indispensable guide if you want to go into the inner workings of Netlab.

Recommended.

Amazingly compact book and MATLAB toolbox that provides an exceptionally clear introduction to a core collection of pattern recognition tools. This text and the related MATLAB toolbox ostensibly accompany Chris Bishop's text _Neural networks for pattern recognition_ and brilliant as that book is, this is the perfect supplement that does so much more than just implement the algorithms (and not just for MATLAB users but for anyone who appreciates the merits of learning by doing). From the introductory chapters on MATLAB syntax and optimization (clearer and more useful than the _Numerical Recipes_ version) you know you are in for a breathless ride but the examples and demos are perfectly chosen to illustrate the relative merits of the different approaches under consideration.

The chapter titles are

1. Introduction
2. Parameter optimisation algorithms
3. Density modelling and clustering
4. Single layer networks
5. Multi-layer perceptron
6. Radial Basis functions
7. Visualization and latent variable models
8. Sampling
9. Bayesian techniques
10. Gaussian Processes

The MATLAB code is elegant and well-commented and lends itself to endless tweaking and experimentation. I wish I had written this book. Congratulations to the author and hope there is another book on the way.

This is actually a must-have book for those who want to study pattern recognition.

i first bought the book by Bishop (Neural Network for Pattern Recognition) and anyone who have read it can tell u how excellent that book is. This book has a little bit less theory and more on implementation which is perfect for me. This book include all the topics covered in Bishop and then some. How the book is organized, and how concise, easy to understand the material is at the same amazing level as Bishop's. I believe implementing and practicing things u learn is key to understanding them.. if you just look at how things are implemented, things would suddenly become 10 times clearer for you.. often to your own amazement (that you can actually understand all those stuff). this book is extremely useful even if u dont have matlab (just look up the syntax at mathworks web site), cuz matlab code is straightforward to understand. and the material included is very up to date and cutting edge indeed. i highly highly recommend it.

E' un libro molto ben fatto, che tratta in modo esaustivo tutte
le principali caratteristiche delle strutture implementate in C++.
L'unico difetto - non imputabile all'Autore - sta nel linguaggio
adoperato, oramai piuttoso obsoleto e lontano dall'attuale standard ANSI.
Perchè la Wiley non invita il dr Flamig a pubblicare un aggiornamento dei suoi ottimi libri? Sono sicuro che diventerebbe un best-seller!
In ogni modo, anche cosi' è altamente raccomandabile ai programmatori di ogni livello, perchè contiene un'infinita' di
varianti e suggerimenti e,soprattutto, il codice completo che mostra come realizzare in pratica quanto appreso nella teoria.
-

It contains the most simple and basic code that any one can handle, even if you are not very skillful with C, you can follow the text. It is very well developed and for begginers is just great.

Practical data structure in C++ is very impressive to me... I have some problems - the source codes sltst.cpp etc.. in chapter 8 are not executed. In BC 3.1, they work well. but by compiler MFC 4.1 I have used, execution error occurs. I guess member function Next() in slist.h cannot return point to next pointer. Why? What's trouble-shooting to this problem? Could you give the answer ASAP ? I'm in a big hurry..

All the code in "Practical Data Structures in C++" is provided to the student/programmer and not left as an exercise to the "student." I found the book "very" useful after I had taken an introductory "Data Structures" course. I purchased this book at the time where templetes were not implemented in Microsoft Visual C++; therefore, I do not know whether the included code will build with any specific compiler though I suspect that it will build with the latest MS compiler and the Borland products. This book is for the "working programmer" who has not looked at a topic since the required Data Structures course work. This book provides a very good review as well as complete example(s) of working "code snipets."

Reading the few introductory chapters, I discovered that this is an easy-to-read book that covers an interesting and evolving area of research. It provides the reader with a "jump- start" to the area of speech coding. Detailed explanations, with a large number of schematics and illustrating diagrams, furnish a vehicle for a fast learning curve.
Nevertheless, the quality of some of these schematics and diagrams need to be revised in future editions. Furthermore, there are some missing notations with some of the curves discussed; such as in Figure 1.14. I would be happy to see the word (Absolute Threshold in dB) on the vertical axis and the (Frequency in Hz) on the horizontal axis instead of AT (f), f.
In spite of these anomalies, I found the book to be deserving of esteem and respect. For me, the most interesting chapters were those covering linear prediction, PCM, algebraic CELP and speech quality assessment.

This books serves as an excellent bridge between speech coding standards and speech coding research publications. It does not seek to cover every existing topic in speech coding, but presents analysis and background of some of the most successful speech coding standards. Many "whys" that come to mind reading those standards are addressed. Carefully compliled illustrations accompany almost every important concept presented. This makes cover-to-cover reading of this book a pleasure.

This is a very good book on speech coding, especially focus on CELP coders. Many kinds of CELP coders are introduced in detail. If you are beginner on speech coding, this book is for you. But other coders, such as MBE and WI, are not presented. So I don't think it is a comprehensive book. I give it 4 stars.

I appreciate very much the amount of figures and simulation results presented in this book; also, the pseudocodes throughout the book helps in the understanding and implementation. In addition, the exercises complement very well with the text. I highly recommend this book to those interested in speech coding.

If you're reading this review now, you're considering whether this text is worthy of your [money]. Well, stop the guessing, and just read the darn thing for free at [the website]

I've found the first part of it is the same classical stuff I've seen over and over, but in a new light, differently perceived, and worthy of, sometimes, just closing the book and thinking about the implications. Take what I say with a grain of salt, as I've not nearly read everything. See for yourself, as well. There'll be no mystery.

(The famed "sister text," SICP, is also online as well at the appropriate address)

I can't rave enough -- by page 27, Sussman crisply solves a fundamental problem that I noticed as a schoolboy decades ago, and for which I never found a satisfactory solution despite discussing it with generations of the world's finest physicists, and that is, how, in Lagrange's equation, can @L/@q be treated independently of @L/@q_dot when q_dot depends on q through dq/dt=q_dot by assumption? Having had a lifelong mystery dispatched in a footnote, I am breathlessly working my way through the rest. I expect this will be a book I revisit every few years or so, like SICP, Abelson & Sussman's book on Computer Programs.

EDIT: As noted by another reviewer, it is a shame that one needs to be a Linux sys-admin to run the software as it stands. However, it is possible to rewrite the programs in Haskell or Mathematica on more commonplace platforms. It is also not actually necessary to run the programs as they stand -- the book is good just to read.

that despite being a brilliant book, the best part, the executable code is
extremely difficult to run as it works only on an obscure MIT scheme implementation. It would easily earn 5 stars if it ran in PLT scheme for instance.

Among the horrors of modern education is the production of vast quantities of poorly written, error ridden science text books. This is in spite of the fact that many if not most of the great scientists of the 20th century have been excellent writers and lecturers. Einstein and Feynman are important examples: brilliant in their discoveries, they were equally brilliant in their abilities to describe and explain some of the most difficult concepts of science. We should be asking why these people can write about their work with such perfection while the "professionally produced" text books in our high schools and colleges are so mediocre.

The MIT Press stands among those publishers producing the very best work. Sussman's and Wisdom's text, "The Structure and Interpretation of Classical Mechanics", provides a wonderful example. Here is a book providing further proof that (a) great science necessarily includes excellent writing and communications, (b) brilliant scientists tend to be the best writers in their fields, and (c) a text book on a difficult subject can be remarkably enjoyable as well as informative when well conceived and well written.

The very first chapter, "Lagrangian Mechanics", is worth the price of admission. It has all the attributes which make the entire book a gem: it is concise, efficient, clear, compact, full, and rewarding. Every sentence contains important ideas and information, yet each sentence is clear and direct. These are attributes usually associated with poetry, and one could argue that this text book approaches that level of literature. In the first three pages of the chapter, the authors present as complete a discussion as I've read on the relationship of mathematics to natural phenomena, the basic project of classical mechanics, and the "remarkable discovery that the same mathematical tools used to describe the motions of the planets can be used to describe the motion of the juggling pin." Furthermore, the chapter introduces and describes the concepts of configuration paths, variational formulation (and why that has some advantages over the classical Newtonian formulation), generalized coordinates, and the relationship of these formulations to a computer program in Scheme.

By the end of the chapter, students will be immersed in the subject out of interest, and will fully appreciate the themes and likely outcomes of the book. Classical mechanics will essentially "come to life" through a well structured use of computers to achieve a very deep understanding of classical systems.

Jump next to the book's Appendices, which present an introduction to the computer programming language of Scheme and a full explanation of the authors' adaptation of functional mathematical notation. Scheme is wonderfully crafted language for exploring, describing, and demonstrating science and mathematics. The mergence of Scheme, functional notation, and classical mechanics in a single text while retaining almost luminescent clarity ranks among great educational achievements!

This is almost too incredible to say, but the truth is that an entire semester could be dedicated to the first chapter and the two appendices, and everyone involved --- teacher and students --- would be entirely satisfied. But in this text, and in a course based on this text, these sections would serve as appetizers, and we would all want more. Fortunately, there is plenty more.

The authors write that they prefer using functional notation to traditional mathematical notation because, "In functional notation mathematical expressions are unambiguous and self-contained." This statement is, in fact, the best description of the entire book.

I believe that the book could be used effectively in high school, if there was some capacity for integrated curriculum planning. Students could be learning Scheme --- an excellent language to learn if programming is a major interest or even hobby --- and physics and math. Not least importantly, students would also learn the importance of good writing.

Some will argue that the book is more a college text, although I think we tend to underestimate the powerful minds and interests of younger learners. In either case, this book belongs in those places promoting good science and quality education, and, if you simply enjoy learning and reading, it has a place on your home bookshelf.

Sagans book makes representation theory easy. The book first covers representations using modules and then choosing a basis to show the matrix approach. With every new topic he develops it using what Doron Zeilberger has dubbed the Gelfand Principle ([...]) The principle is: "Always chooses the smallest example to make a point". It isn't easy to find the smallest example when Sn grows as quickly as it does, but Sagen always manages to do it.

The ensuing chapters follow in the same vein. Ideas are introduced and explained, sometimes with pictures, sometimes with calculations, but always as clearly as can be.

To read this book does require a firm grounding in linear algebra, as well as abstract algebra. Time reading it is time well spent.

This book has 4 chapters.Chapter1 is about general theory of representations of finite group.Chapter2 is about representation of symmetric groups.chapter3 and 4 are about combinatorial topics and symmetric functions. Though I haven't read all of the book,I highly recommand this book because this book shows us introductive part of representation theory with easy words.I think it is worth to read for all who are to begin the study of representation theory.

This book has 4 chapters.Chapter1 is about general theory of representations of finite group.Chapter2 is about representation of symmetric groups.chapter3 and 4 are about combinatorial topics and symmetric functions. Though I haven't read all of the book,I highly recommand this book because this book shows us introductive part of representation theory with easy words.I think it is worth to read for all who are to begin the study of representation theory.

This book is excellent. The material is presented clearly and concisely. It makes the subject matter accessible and interesting. I used it as the text for a one-semester graduate subject. I completed all of the exercises, so it is well-paced for this kind of study. I started with only an introductory knowledge of group theory, so it is self-contained. The only drawback is that there are no solutions to any of the exercises. If it had this, it would be a perfect bok.

Database concurrency control and recovery is one of pinnacles of computer science. An amazing collection of models, theoretical results, and implementation techniques enable thousands of users to simultaneously pound on a large database implemented on unreliable disks and networks, with full confidence that their data will be correctly stored. This book tells how this miracle is accomplished.

I teach database systems and also do research on databases, including systems-level refinements to concurrency control and recovery algorithms. This book has been invaluable to me in understanding the three major aspects of concurrency control in databases: the beautiful theory, the carefully constructed algorithms, and the specifics of the practice.

When this book first came out two years ago, I read most of it over a period of an intense week. That was such an enjoyable experience, because the book is very well structured and written in a smooth yet careful style. The authors ensured that all required concepts were in place before introducing a new concept. And the prose just flows, rendering difficult concepts understandable through well-chosen examples.

Since then I have referred to this book often with specific questions that arose in my research. Each time, my question has been answered fully in the book.

Each chapter ends with a section entitled "Lessons Learned" which summarizes the key ideas of the chapter and just as importantly, states the practical application of each concept. Some concepts have not yet been realized in practice; the authors are up front about this and explain why.

Mike Tarrani's review does a good job of explaining the similarities and differences between this book and the other seminal book on transaction processing, by Jim Gray and Andreas Reuter. Both books have their place, and both should be on the shelf (and read by!) all those who want to understand transaction processing at a deep level. And I agree with Jim Gray who noted in his foreword to the Weikum/Vossen book that it is likely to become (indeed, has) the standard reference in this field.

Exceptionally clear writing. Encyclopedic in its coverage of transactions. Anyone dealing with transactions (not just DB developers) would find this a very valuable resource. If you need a book on transactions, this should be your first choice.

Tradicionally, the 'transaction' concept is always discussed at the RDBMS classes in the University. But this book goes FAR BEYOND this wide known implementation; with a solid math foundation (some math required, specially set theory and algorithms ) it shows you there are a lot of 'real-life' transactions that requiere some formal methods for defining their implementation.

This book has no discussion or topic regarding any comercial vendor technologies (specially databases), and I think this is very good. The Page and Object models for transaction processing are clearly explained. There's a very nice discussion concerning RAID technologies.

This is not an 'academic' book in all the sense of the word. It can help IT professionals to make better transactional system desing (databases, workflow,e-business,etc).

I would like some RDBMS vendors will include this kind of theory in their documentation....

Before this book was published my primary reference and personal favorite TP book was "Transaction Processing: Concepts and Techniques" by Jim Gray and Andreas Reuter. At over 1100 pages that book thoroughly covered the basics and drilled down into the nuances of transaction processing in a way unmatched by other books on the topic since it was first published in 1993.

This book changes that by going far beyond transaction processing. It starts with the same fundamentals as the older book, and even covers many of the same topics, such as concurrency control, but it addresses each topic from a much wider perspective. For example, the discussion of concurrency goes far beyond the issues of transaction processing as a middleware component. It extends into application, database and search issues. Another indication that this book is more up-to-date is the material on queue managers. While they are at the opposite end of the spectrum from transaction processing monitors, they are integral to any discussion of transactional information systems. More importantly, both transaction processing monitors and queue managers are used in modern enterprise architectures. Having both topics discussed in great detail is a major point in this book's favor.

Personally I intend to keep my copy of the older "Transaction Processing: Concepts and Techniques" because it does cover some of the subject matter more deeply. However, this book has replaced it as my principal reference and if I had to choose between them this is the one I'd go with.

The book represents a very decent approach for a transition from the sequential algorithms design ( RAM model ) to parallel algorithms for different models of parallel machines( not only SMP for which most of the software engineers get accustomed ).

The book is an introduction for a person with a good background in a sequential algorithms design. The proof of the Master Theorem is somehow overcomplicated - it would have been better if there had been a sketch of the proof before the authors delve into the mathematically rigorous part. Before reading the proof in this book I recommend to read a proof of a simplified version of the Master Theorem as given in "Algorithms" by Dasgupta, Papadimitriou and Vazirani - it takes less than a page compared with 11 pages for the complete case in this book.

I first came across the first edition's translation on Russian nearly 2 years ago ( the author's site says it was translated in 2007, but actually it was in the first quarter of 2006 ), then I bought the original 2nd edition - the book worth it.

P.S. I've found nothing about Python language, as one of the review says, the authors use easily understandable pseudo-language. The book is not a cook book with code - this is virtually impossible for such a type of book as an algorithm realization heavily depends on a parallel machine architecture.

Have you been trying to find a way of to integrate the presentation of sequential and parallel algorithms? If you are, this book is for you! Authors Russ Miller and Laurence Boxer, have done an outstanding job of writing a great book on how to employ a philosophy of presenting a paradigm, such as divide and conquer, and then discussing implementation issues for both sequential and parallel models.

Miller and Laurence Boxer begin by introducing the concept of asymptotic analysis.
Next, the authors explain the Python programming language to write scripts. Then, they focus on fundamentals of induction and recursion. The authors continue by presenting the Master Method, a very useful cookbook-type of system for evaluating recurrence equations that are common in an algorithms-based setting. In addition, the authors next present an overview of combinational circuits and sorting networks. They also introduce fundamental models of computation, including the RAM and a variety of parallel models of computation. Next, the authors focus on the important problem of matrix multiplication, which is considered for a variety of models of computation. Then, they introduce the parallel prefix operation. The authors continue by introducing pointer jumping techniques and show how some list-based algorithms can be efficiently implemented in parallel. In addition, the authors next present the powerful divide and conquer paradigm. They also focus on two important application areas, namely, Computational Geometry and Image Processing. Next, the authors focus on fundamental graph theoretic problems. Finally, they cover sequential algorithms for polynomial evaluation and approximation of definite integrals.

Due to the fact that authors of this excellent book present design and analysis of paradigms for sequential and parallel models, the reader will notice that the number of paradigms that can be treated is limited. But, that limitation is of no consequence when compared to a traditional sequential algorithms text.

I'm coauthor, so I'm not unbiased. Having said that....

The dominant textbook in the field of computer algorithms is Introduction to Algorithms, by Cormen et al. This is a very fine book. However, we have written Algorithms Sequential and Parallel in a very different style, which we feel will give significant advantages to many who use our book. Points of difference between these texts include the following:

1. Algorithms Sequential and Parallel has a unified approach to the presentation of sequential and parallel algorithms. Students of 21st Century computing will need to learn parallel algorithms, which are often closely related to their sequential analogs. Ours is the first algorithms text to integrate presentation of sequential and parallel algorithms so that readers can understand their relationships. This integrated treatment also frees the instructor from the common practice of spending most of an algorithms course on the study of sequential algorithms, with the last 2 or 3 weeks devoted to parallel algorithms - a practice that may mislead students into thinking that parallel computing is still the immature specialization of researchers, rather than a core technology for the 21st Century.

2. Algorithms Sequential and Parallel does not compete with Cormen et al. in the scope of topics covered. The Cormen et al. text, whose 2nd edition is well over 1100 pages, seems designed for at least a year sequence in the study of algorithms. By contrast, Algorithms Sequential and Parallel, 2nd edition, is under 400 pages. This makes it suitable for a one-semester study of algorithms, appropriate for many undergraduate and first- or second-year graduate programs; also, it makes Algorithms Sequential and Parallel significantly less costly.

Algorithms Sequential and Parallel discusses mathematical tools used in the analysis of algorithms, a variety of sequential and parallel models of computation (including the RAM, PRAM, linear array, mesh, hypercube, pyramid, mesh-of-trees, and coarse-grained models), fundamental algorithms (including broadcast, semigroup computations, parallel prefix, sorting, searching) and their sequential and parallel implementations, paradigms such as recursive divide-and-conquer, and algorithms for a variety of applications areas (matrix operations and a variety of other numerical problems, computational geometry, image processing, graph problems, etc). Each chapter concludes with exercises at varying levels of difficulty.

Note that a disinterested reviewer gave the first edition of Algorithms Sequential and Parallel a rating of 5 stars (out of 5) in SIGACT News 34 #2, June, 2003, pp. 3-5.