Algorithms Books

If you are looking for a book explaining practical optimal control computation stuffs, this is the book.

It is a book that helps our students of doctorate.

In the ceaseless search for better modelling of financial instruments and economic events, one approach is to look for methods from mathematical biology as inspiration. Here, the main approaches studied include neural networks, genetic algorithms and ant colony modelling. The first two are perhaps the most widely used.

The key inspiration is to look into the future. The later sections of the book involve predicting various events, like a corporate failure. The efficacy of the biological methods for doing predictions is unclear. The book's results are intriguing, though.

There appear to be 2 audiences for the book. One is biologists or programmers already using those methods in biology, and who are looking at applying these to finance. The other audience is mathematicians in finance wanting more tools. Consequently, each audience will find different portions of the book useful. The explanation of conventional financial modelling is for the biologist, for example.

This computer programming text will serve students well both as as a text or as a quick authoritative desk reference.

The authors'focus on answering the most common questions asked by beginning students in C computer programming is great. They also spend quite a bit of effort showing the differences among subtle symbology.

Note I think the people who invented C language did a huge injustice to all students of C by being very sloppy with their chosen set of symbols especially for "Pointers" -- which is often used in solving most intermediate and advanced programming problems.

This book tries to get to the root of all the confusion and sloppiness of the orignal inventors and thus end up greatly helping beginning students. Once students overcome all the sloppy terms and symbols carelessly adopted by the original designers then they can begin to enjoy the C langauge and make it do some wonderful things. But the learning curve is typically long and tedious to slowly overcome all the nuances in the language.

Sometimes I even feel that C language should be phased out completely and allow C++ to be the sole langauge for all beginning student computer programmers. But people are reluctant to change anything -- just like the '80's attempt trying to phase out English dimensional sytem with the Metric system.

Again this text understands all the areas of sloppiness that lead often to confusion and then goes to work at clearly explaining them all.

Normally it's a tough job to clear up others confusion but these 2 authors apparently were highly motivated and committed at trying to take a good stab at all inherent problems in communication -- which, in my view, most technical people don't pay enough attention to. They seem to think that after they design some complex system it's someone elses problem to figure out what they designed.

The original designers of C language certainly have caused a lot of unnecessary headaches for many beginning students trying to learn C; and this book focuses on being a Bridge to understanding this shadowy language which, in my view, again should be phased out altogether, or the designers should fix the confusing symbology and often unnecessary cryptic shorthand for almost everything in their C language. Note C was designed when computer memory was [more money] and limited, and the designers got very creative at working under this environment. But did they think about future students trying to learn this often confusing and thus, difficult langauge?

The only suggestion for the book is that the publisher should have used larger font for titles and subtitles and theoretically should have aimed for new page for each subsection. I could never undestand publisher's use of the bottom of a page for major subsection.

G. Jerry Sagliocca, P.E.
Schenectady, New York

This book contains combinatorial heuristic algorithms with computer programs in FORTRAN 77. Each of the following regarded problems has been shown to be NP-complete: integer linear programming, zero-one linear programming, zero-one knapsack problem, traveling salesman problem, Steiner tree problem, graph partitioning, k-center location. After a short description of each problem and the presented heuristic algorithm to solve it, the parameter description of the subroutines and the main program is given. The corresponding algorithms are printed directly by the computer. A little example with input and output data illustrates the usage of each computer program

The book gives some useful information on how to implement communication block on DSP. Good source of information for school projects/ self study activities on telecommunication system design.

...covers some basic maths, C algorithm, and a bit of explanation on communication system, so readers must refer to other texts to complement this book (for further studies). The programme is written specifically for floating point DSP (texas instrument) so some adjustment is needed if we want to implement it on fixed point DSP or other DSP...

additional comments: A bit outdated for the choice of the processor, but the fundamental is still there.

Should include implementation on fixed point.

This book should include some explanations on how to convert floating point calculation to fixed point, design considerations and pitfalls/ traps.

The books covers the necessary topics for a DSP course and is well organized. The projects are presented in a clear and readable way. This book should be included in a DSP course with excellent curricula results.

Wegener's book seems best suited for a graduate level course in algorithms or complexity. This subject is one of the key conceptual underpinnings of computing. For those of you desirous of a deep understanding of the complexity of a problem or algorithm to solve a problem, then the text furnishes good explanations.

All the classic problems are here. Knapsack. Travelling salesperson. And various black box approaches. The key demarcation in the text is between a problem that is NP complete and one that can be solved in polynomial time. But a virtue of the book is that even with an NP complete problem, it may well be possible to derive approximate solutions that are polynomial complete.

It's certainly not a simple book. Some of the problems are very hard. But that leaves room for you to improve on the current methods of solving them.

This book was good, but it was basically the same Bruno R. Preiss other and better book: "Data Structures and Algorithms with Object-Oriented Design Patterns in Java"

This book is basically the same book, with a diffrent name, and packaged diffrent for people who don't like to read compiler instructions. If you are interested in this book, you will be better off buying the fore mentioned book above, but in the end the diffrence is so slight that it really doesn't matter.

This was the first book I read on DS and Algortihm Design and even though I moved on to other texts with time -- this book remains one of my all time favourites in CS.
It lays fundamentals well and explains basic concepts clearly with easy to understand examples. Almost ALL basic concepts are covered by the book and it is highly recommended for those who find other texts confusing and/or hard.
However, for more advanced students the book by Horowitz and Sahni is highly recommended. For pros - Knuth awaits you with open arms. :)