Applied Languages Books

Definitely on my recommended book list. A must read for women in business.

Susan Bock
The Success Coach for Women in Business
www.SusanBockSolutions.com

I wish i could review it, dispite various emails this has not been delivered and I have not even received a decent response to my requests. So when I do buy it from a book store I will doubt I will giving Amazon a review

Kegan's books on development through the life span are always highly informative, and his seamless and reader-friendly writing make them thoroughly easy to read. This is his latest since he has moved into applying his psychology of adult development to the functions of business. A must for anyone in the field of business, or simply anyone in a peopled work place.

This book presents a simple worksheet to help you analyze your resistance to change. Once completed, you will understand the inner conflicts that hinder your personal and professional development despite your best intentions. Of course, simply understanding these conflicts isn't enough, so the authors present methods to understand the usefulness of your resistance, eliminate your judgement around it, and harness its power for change.

This method has helped me overcome my greatest dissatisfaction at work and I've experienced amazing results. I must warn, however, that despite being simple it entails quite a bit of self observation and continued effort. But this in itself is a huge asset.

I highly recommend this book for anybody experiencing even the slightest dissatisfaction at work or in life.

Imagine getting so much perspective on habits you're not happy about that you can actually keep your commitments to yourself. Using language structure as both the diagnostic and the cure, Kegan and Lahey offer up a fresh guide to creating sustainable change.

While it is designed to be used for workplace issues, it can also be used in other aspects of life. This book is clear, well-written, and so easily accessible it can even be used as a workbook. In fact the authors recommend a study group, and give clear steps to applying the model and specific case studies of participants who have successfully used it to create change. The significant difference between this and all other "managing change" books is a respectful recognition of competing commitments. That is, we don't need to conquer resistance, we need to understand it as a legitimate and experienced based reluctance designed for self-protection. Only then can the source and the solution be brought to light. This way of thinking is a treasure.

A lot of good ideas and theories for self-improvement, but just not great writing. This book was not meant to be read, it was meant to be heard in the seminar. I am sure Jim Loehr's seminar is wonderful, and very helpful to many people wanting to amke changes in their lives, but was not adapted very well to be read in my opinion.

The Power of Story gives you the opportunity to challenge your current story and decide how you will define your story from this point forward. If the traditional self-help books have not produced results, perhaps it is now time for you to consider digging deeper to create the story of your life. Well...are you ready to write the next chapter...your way?? If you are willing, you will be guided by author Jim Loehr who has worked with Olympic and Professional athletes and the Captains of industry.
Why not take the next step...and see what happens!

This is a very thought provoking and life changing book. Jim Loehr first brings us face to face with the stories that we tell ourselves. Your first reaction is that you don't tell yourself stories. But you do. We all do. And often the stories we tell ourselves are crafted to fit our excuses for why we do or don't do things. As long as we are telling ourselves stories that are not based in reality, we will continue to live according to the story line we are telling ourself.

The book is not just about stories, it is actually a step by step manual for finding out your old story, discovering where it is wrong and then developinig a new story based around your purpose in life.

When most people list their priorities in life, they go something like this: God, family, work and other. But when they really examine their lives, they have made their career the most important thing in their lives. They devote most of their energy to their career and never have enough left for the other things in their lives. They tell themself one story but live another.

There is another very important lesson in the book. We all think that time is our most important asset. As Jim points out, it is not time but the energy we bring to the time we devote to any activity. He gives countless examples of people spending time with family but not fully engaged. The energy is not there.

If we are not physically fit, we do not have sufficient energy to accomplish the tasks we set out to do.

This is not theory. Jim runs the Human Performance Institute in Orlando, FL and the book is filled with examples from the work he has done with thousands of people.

The book is well written, easy to read and a real eye-opener.

There is a step by step plan for the individual to come face to face with their old story, write their new one and change their lifestyle so that they bring their life into harmony.

Well worth reading. You will never be living your ideal life until you get your life aligned with your story. This book tell you why and shows you how. The rest is up to you.

I have been aware for some time that the way we think about ourselves and the decisions that we make is based on a programming of our sub-conscience mind. This programming has been established from the time we were born through today by a filtering system that we have through our relationships with customs, culture, family, friends, peers, colleagues and education whether thru Academia or Hard Knocks.

Dr. Loehr, in Part One, not only identifies these filters that make up what he and others have called `My Story', showing that if our story is not changed, we are destine to continue on with our life as it is. This "Slow Death", as he calls it, is made up of questions we ask ourselves:

"How did it come to this?
What am I doing?
Where am I going?
What do I want?
Is my life working on any meaningful level? Why doesn't it work better?
Am I right now dieing, slowly for something, I'm not willing to die for?
WHY AM I WORKING SO HARD, MOVING SO FAST, FEELING SO LOUSY?"

This is not just for the individuals themselves, it includes the business we own or work for, showing `Your Story' around; work, family, health, happiness and friends.

After showing the process of identifying `Your Story' now, through writing it down, Dr. Loehr, in Part Two, presents `The Resources, Procedures and Practices' that enable one to write, indoctrinate and live `Your Best Life' possible.

Jim Loehr's writing style is not only involving for the reader; the examples (Including his own.) are those that most everyone can relate to. It is an informative, magnetic, yet easy to read volume for self evaluation and improvement.

This process is not without work and accountability, yet gives a person a whole new outlook on who they are and what they are here for, should they follow through.

This book is not only for those who are oblivious to this phenomenon of how story controls our lives. I also recommend this information and instruction for others who are aware of it (Like Me.), to have a better understanding and procedure on `How To Make My Story Better'!

Dr. D. P. Gatten [...]

What stories do you tell yourself about your life? That you must spend every waking hour at the office? That you have no time for exercise? That self-fulfillment is an impossible dream? If this is your internal dialogue, then you should not be surprised if it is also your external reality. Acclaimed performance psychologist Jim Loehr spells out a program that will enable you to discard your old negative stories and develop new positive ones that will make your life better. He shows you how to turn these new stories into your new reality. Plus, he explains why physical energy is crucial in this changeover, and what you must do to stay constantly energized. getAbstract believes that anyone who is stuck in a rut will benefit from reading Loehr's inspirational book and putting his transformational principles to work.

There are about three books about XP that you MUST read, if you plan to do XP. This is one of them.

If you are interesting in Extreme Programming or need to evaluate it, I recommend this book. It is a very readable book but does have some drawbacks:

1. It is way overpriced. Too thin, not enough info for [price], even if Amazon discounts it. Ideas are repeated over and over again.

2. These authors (and others who review their buddies' books on Amazon and give biased reviews) are making a living off you buying into XP. It is funny how they say the last thing you want to do is adopt XP only partially.

3. So don't waste your money on more than one book from this group of XP diciples who are rehashing the same info over and over in about a dozen different books.

4. You can adopt only some of the principles provided in XP without adopting the whole practice. I've seen it done successfully in many places. These principles existed before XP and they can exist without it.

This is the most practical book among all the XP books ever published. You do only need to read Kent Beck's XP manifesto "Extreme Programming Explaining" before studying this book. Then you may skip all other books from the "Extreme Programming Series" and start to interpret written material about individual XP practices:

- Design Improvement: " Refactoring: Improving the Design of Existing Code " by Martin Fowler;
- Test-Driven Development: "Test Driven Development: By Example " by Kent Beck;
- Sustainable Pace: "Slack: Getting Past Burnout, Busywork, and the Myth of Total Efficiency" by Tom DeMarco;
- Pair Programming: "Pair Programming Illuminated" by Laurie Williams and Robert Kessler;
- Whole Team: "Agile Software Development" by Alistair Cockburn;
- Planning Game: "Planning Extreme Programming" by Kent Beck, Martin Fowler;
- Small Releases: "Software Project Survival Guide" by Steve C McConnell.

This book covers most of the XP practices at a glance, but with sufficient level of details. It tells in practice:

- How to introduce XP, how to overcome managers' and developers' resistance, how to set the right attitude (Part One);
- How to remember XP core values, how to handle exceptions if something has broken, e.g. the customer won't write stories or the number of developers is odd, how to do pair programming or stand-up meetings, how to steer and how to plan the whole project and the individual iterations, how to write tests, to create the pair-friendly space, how to refactor, and how to reduce the risk (Part Two);
- How do design the simple, what collective ownership means, how to automate acceptance tests and not get distracted by the code, why the overtime is not the answer and how to coach and keep the score (Part Three);
-How to "sell XP" (commercial aspects of XP projects, e.g. how to bill the customer), how to "scale XP", and how to "measure XP" (Part Four).

Enough said, this is the most practical book among all the XP books ever published.

This is the first in-depth book on Extreme Programming (XP). If you are at home with the concepts of XP, but have lots of questions that you feel the XP literature doesn't answer -- this is the book for you! I myself have been into XP for little over two years, and I can't think of any questions I've had, that aren't addressed thoroughly by this book

The book is focused on introducing XP, dealing with things like how to tackle resistance from developers and managers; which XP practices should be implemented first; what factors are important in order to successfully implement XP, and so on.

The authors list six of the XP practices as "the bare essentials". Not that the other practices are unimportant, but they can wait until the first six are in place. The six are: Planning Game, Small Releases, Testing (unit testing only; acceptance testing can be addressed later), Pair Programming, Refactoring and Continuous Integration. These six practices are very thoroughly described, dealing with the how and why a practice works, how to start doing it, and so on. As for the remaining practices, they also explain why each practice can wait until the first six are in place.

I tried to read this book with a critical mindset, so I kept notes of things I thought they failed to address properly -- only to find that they returned to them later in the book, forcing me to cross out items on my list. What was left on my list were only minor details, except one item: I would have liked them to deal with the System Metaphor as exhaustively as the rest of the practices.

Just as "XP Explained" by Kent Beck and "XP Installed" by Ron Jeffries, et al, this book basically says that, well, it is good if you can come up with a metaphor, but if you can't, that's not too big a deal. In these books, the topic of the metaphor and how it relates to the concept of architecture, is given only a few pages (2.5 pages in XP Applied). This is a pity, because I feel that it is an important issue. (I suggest reading "XP Explored" by William Wake, which has two very good chapters on this.)

If you only intend to buy one book about XP, I would recommend this book over "Extreme Programming Explained: Embrace Change" by Kent Beck (which is the XP manifesto). This is not to say that "XP Explained" is a bad book, though -- I nominate that book to be one of the most important software development books, ever. But if your aim is to learn as much about XP as possible, this book is in a league of its own.

If you can afford more than one book, I would suggest starting with either "Extreme Programming Installed" by Ron Jeffries, Ann Anderson and Chet Hendrickson, or "Extreme Programming Explored" by William C. Wake. I think that one of these books is a good start, since they both are very practically oriented. After reading one of them, I think it's a good time to read "XP Explained", which very elegantly describes the philosophy behind XP. Finish off with "XP Applied" to get answers to all your questions. I bet that you'll have a very solid understanding of XP by then.

As a complete newcomer to XP I bought this book based on the review by Peter Lindberg (see below) and I agree with his comments.

Some parts of the book assume that you know a little about XP at the start and you have to wait for a fuller description further on in the text to gain understanding. I didn't find this too much of an issue but you may want to buy one other introductory XP book to help.

I enjoyed the authors writing style and liked the use of guest experts in reinforcing the methodology.

Well worth the cost as you only need to buy this book and perhaps one other to get the XP story.

First, I want to weigh in on the general controversy over Press et al.'s treatment of the code as proprietary. This is a joke and I think was basically intended as such. A lot of the odd job programming world still works on the honor system, and it works, because enough of us respect what is done right and we respect other people's labor. But if you've already plunked down your $60 for the book, and you have a program that in some sense you are paid for (not that you're Adobe or someone big), they expect you to be crawling to them for permission to use a single routine. And yet these routines make use of other routines that I really doubt they wrote. I see the same basic code floating around a number of places. And for some things, it's so straightforward it seems crazy to say that it is "their" routine.

At the same time, the code is clear, well explained with examples, and--most important--easy to modify. Given a choice between two versions, one which was elegant but a bit confusing and one that was straightforward, they did the second.

Given that there's a new edition, and that we are 30 years past FORTRAN 77, you might wonder whether this book should still be in circulation. But there are a lot of industrial machines that are still running programs written in 77, say for process control, and it's nice to be able to alter them as opposed to starting from scratch. For example, you might find that a minimization routine actually can help for a program running the control of a valve in a mixing vat. Some of these routines are slow, but my attitude is, that just gives you more time to drink your coffee and look around, though of course, you might not like what you see. [12]

This is the single best book that I have found for teaching numerical methods in science and engineering to upper division undergraduates and graduate students. Students often comment that this should be the selected text even in the programming course because it provides both an overview of the methods and examples that demonstrate the application. The discussions are excellent and the Fortran 77 programs easy to follow even if one is more familiar with C or C++. You should not purchase the Fortran 90 version of this book without getting this book as well because the Fortran 90 book does not contain the excellent discussion of the methods and procedures. Rather it references this book for discussion and simply provides the F90 versions of the routines.

This book contains hundreds of "canned codes" in the FORTRAN language. The book provides several variations of many popular numerical techniques and provides the most stream line (comp. time) codes available. Most codes allow for optimization to be build in, such as an RK4 (4th Order Runge-Kutta) with variable steps sizes. Great if you don't want to write your own code for a subroutine, or it you just don't know the method well enough to write it yourself. The book also provides some basic explaination of the techniques and codes with is very helpful so that the code is less of a black box, although its not that detailed.

There is also a CD available that has the codes already written and ready to go. I prefer to type it in on my own, or just make my own because it gives a better udnerstanding of what the code is doing. The biggest turn-off for me is that some codes have subroutines upon subroutines which can make things a mess.

All around a useful tool for programmers, researchers, and students.

I first bought this text in 1994 while doing scientific programming for graduate school work. A fellow graduate student had suggested I use an undocumented routine that (I later discovered) came from Numerical Recipes (NR). I was impressed enough with NR's presentation of ideas that I also bought the example book ISBN 0521437210 (which I've hardly cracked since) and a diskette of source code (which cost as much as the book but worth it). I was able to do a lot of basic research quickly with NR code, and I still occasionally use NR's routines.

The authors have certainly done a good job assimilating a lot of material. Since other reviewers have done well to highlight the importance and utility of this landmark book, there is no need to repeat those sentiments here. However, to this title's detriment, the authors consider their book to be a proprietary library of source code more valuable than the explanatory text discussing it (one can in fact download the text on-line though it's hardly worth the hassle). This perception is ironic since the authors confess that "the lineage of many programs in common circulation is often unclear" (p.xviii), and many details of presentation, ideas, and algorithms are clearly "borrowed" from other excellent (some now out-of-print) numerical methods books or journals.

I often wondered why NR routines occasionally adopted bizarre and/or obviously inefficient programming structures - over time I decided that this was probably done to make these algorithms appear as so not to clearly violate other published material. As a student, NR's legal disclaimers regarding derivative works (p.xvi) never bothered me and I was willing to overlook the sometimes unpolished source code insofar as it functioned properly. However, as a professional I now find the lack of fair-use provisions on the uncompiled source way too restrictive to rely on these routines in good conscience (I have to buy another textbook or license for every soft copy or machine upon which the source code resides!). I suspect this policy ultimately hurts NR's textbook sales: it would be nice to able to use and pass along the source code between professional colleagues without restriction because most would certainly buy (if they don't already own) the textbook to understand what the source does (just as I did). Source code used in scientific programming is practically worthless without proper documentation, and there's no better documentation than a full length textbook!

I have since expanded my numerical methods library to other references supporting true public-domain codes. With an expanded basis of comparison, I regret to say that I am becoming less and less impressed with NR's implementations and explanations. I am finding many of NR's algorithms to be inefficient or unnecessarily approximate, and - on rare occasion - buggy. There have been quite a few bugs uncovered over the years, and the NR web site has done a good job of keeping track of them (although I know of at least one bug uncorrected by NR to this day).

This book is excellent for students wanting a good reference for quick and dirty types of analyses or scientific computing. Professional programmers, scientists, engineers, specialists or analysts performing software development for laboratory or scientific research would be well advised to reference this title, but ultimately they will likely need to rely other resources if they require efficient and/or unrestricted (public-domain) source codes for their work.

(P.S. - A reviewer elsewhere noted that the "quality of the binding was terrible" and I've also found this to be the case. My hardcover is literally had to be taped on after a few years of use.)

This volume, and its companions for other programming languages, is an absolute classic. The authors strike the right balance between cookbook solutions and theory, so that most of us get just enough background to choose the right algorithm but not so much to get drowned in theory. This edition is the first devoted only to Fortran, but is the second edition published by the authors. It includes a number of additions and corrections, many of which appeared in Computers in Physics (now the journal Computing in Science and Engineering published jointly by the IEEE and the APS). My only criticism is, where were these books twenty years ago when I needed them? I would recommend these books to anyone involved in the application of numerical methods. They are tremendous time savers.

I never bothered with the discs, as most of the routines are fairly short and not a problem to type in, but I recommend the companion example books to help get the routines running.

This is a good book on MATLAB but it is not designed for beginners. This book covers the basics, programming, graphics, linear algebra, and numerical methods. It also has a chapter on symbolic computing with MATLAB using the Symbolic Math Toolbox. However, if you are just beginning to learn MATLAB, check the book "MATLAB for Beginners: A Gentle Approach".

This is a book that doesn't ignore that MATLAB is a tool for mathematicians, but at the same doesn't alienate the non-specialist.

Starting with a basic tutorial and continuing with useful short cuts and introductions to script files, functions and graphics this book gives the reader an immediate working knowledge of the basic functions and data structures of MATLAB.

Later chapters address linear algebra (with treatment of eigenvalue problems, linear systems and matrix decompositions) and numerical methods (for differential equations and other problems); both with enough mathematical background and each topic can be accessed independently.

The book finishes with important topics such as optimizing functions, input and output, use of the Symbolic Toolbox and a final chapter with more tricks and tips.

You are left convinced that the authors are extensive users and admirers of this software, and through this book the reader can become the same.

I bought this book because I saw the good reviews about it here. I just started to learn Matlab, so what I really need is a book that can describe things clearly, and STEP BY STEP. When I was reading the first chapter, which is a small Matlab tutorial (The authors stressed that the readers should walk through chapter one), I got so frustrated because there are so many functions and procedures I don't know and the authors don't explain (They defend this in their preface though). I moved on to the rest of the book and I found that it happens everywhere: this book keeps jumping on some fancy math subjects without explaining clearly the fundermentals. They didn't bother to explain the syntax for lots of programs.
I gave up on this book. What I had to do is find a online tutorial to get me started. I did find one good tutorial from University of Dundee, you can search its website in google. I am going to keep Matlab Guide in case I need it some time. But for starters, look elsewhere.

Matlab Guide is a clearly written, well structured and quite comprehensive account of the capabilities of Matlab. In each chapter, the material explained swiftly progresses from the simple to the more complex, making this book a concise source of information and an excellent reference for the intermediate to advanced Matlab user. The focus is on mathematical topics; the pieces of example code are a nice mixture of playful toys and serious applications. Also, the book contains important hints concerning efficient programming, it has a very agreeable layout, and the citations at the end of each chapter do their job in keeping the reader's mood at a high level. Clearly, absolute beginners may have a hard time working their way through it, and the coverage of isolated topics, like file input/output, is a little meager. However, this is only a minor point. All in all, so far having used matlab primarily for data analysis (electrophysiology) I very much enjoyed and benfited from a fresh look at it from a different perspective.

I am going to also write a review on "Mastering Matlab 6.0", I will be also comparing the two books in the reviews. It is the basis of my review here. I am assuming (seee below) that one has learned Matlab at the beginning level and is looking for a book to get you to the Journeyman level.

If you are considering Matlab as a scientific computing language - look no more. It has licensened the "Maple Kernal" as part of its "Math Symbolic ToolBox", it uses LAPAK from FORTRAN for the algorithms for Matrix operations; it uses a high level language (very C++ like) and its own consise syntax for matrix manipulations as well as "Handle Graphics" to produce impressive looking plots and reports. In otherwords, it combines the best of various approaches. If you do not know C++, I advise that learn that first before attempting to learn Matlab.

Comparing "Mastering Matlab 6" (MM6) to "Matlab Guide" (MG):

*Both books are NOT for absolute Beginners, I think the assumption is that you will first study the book that comes with Matlab and the supurb "Help" Documentation that comes with the program. There are also good starting out tutorials on the net - search: "Matlab; Tutorial". The US Navy has a consise tutorial to get you started.

*MM6 does a better job on teaching to the next level beyond the Mathworks supplied documentation and beggining Tutorials.

Where Matlab Guide falls short compared to MM6: *MM6 WINS HANDSDOWN ON TEACHING version new to 6.0 specific features. You are short changing yourself by going for a 5.0 text. It is not as well cross referenced as MM6. "Where is the code to solve real world problems" is a grievance I have with MG.

*MM6 is geared more towards a programmer/scientist/engineer really needs to know; whereas, MG is geared to a mathematician. If you want "A survey of Mathematics with Matlab as your Guide" (a more appropriate title in my opinion) then this (MG) is your book. This book really jumps around. Example: Fibonacci sequence on p9, Collatz iteration on p10, Systems of Linear Ordinary Differential Equations on p12, Sierpinski gasket (fractal geometry) on p.17....

WHAT IS MISSING in MG: * Matlab 6.0 specific features. * Extending Matlab with Programming languages * Integrating it in with Windows./GUIs/ Dialog boxes.

Don't get me wrong, I eventually will read all of this book and learn a lot of math in the process - but to get to the Journeyman level in Matlab as an engineer or scientist, I reccomend MM6 instead. If you want to get real math specific, MG is your choice - but you will not learn as much Matlab and problem solving with Matlab.

"Los Animales" es un libro especialmente orientado a bebes o niños bien pequeños, que se distingue y sobresale por la claridad y calidad de sus dibujos. Si bien la presentación es sumamente sencilla, sus dibujos son muy coloridos, con figuras bien definidas y atrayentes para los mas pequeños. Permitiéndoles hacer una fácil asociación entre lo que ven y los animales que conoces de la vida real. En cada pagina se presenta un animal con su nombre y fuguran las dos posibilidades femenino/masculino, lo cual permite una mayor participación e imaginación de historias para ser contadas o leidas por ninños. Realmente vale la pena tenerlo en la biblioteca de cualquier pequeño y más si este es un fiel amante de los animales.

I'm a mother of a 3 year old girl who is bilingual and loves books. This book is one of her favorites, I had given it to differen children as presents. I love this book because it's colorful and helps me teach my daugther the names of the animals in spanish. I also teach spanish to children and I found most of my students like it, parents also like it because it has the phonics of the words, and they don't need to speak spanish in order to read it.

I will agree with another reader from Oregon: the pictures are good but the pronunciation guide is merely distracting for those who speak French and possibly detrimental to those who do not. Fortunately, I do speak the language and am enjoying reading this book with my daughter now that I have put white-out tape over the pronunciations and English.

This is a nice little book that reinforces vocabulary (in English and in Spanish) for names of 11 different animals. The illustrations are simple and happy. Tips on pronunciation of the Spanish words are included so even beginners can feel confident that they are saying the animals' names properly. My 22 month enjoys identifying the animals in both languages very much, and she thinks some of the pictures are funny.

I have been looking for books to share with my baby, to ensure she grows up bilingual, and Clare Beaton's series of books have been delightful. Even for a newborn, the bright contrasting colors enchant her, and I can prompt myself with the book's vocabulary.

I found this book very informative and valuable. Knowing about genetics is important because it is more and more penetrating into our lives. If somebody does not like that state of affairs he or she should get informed to be able to exercise qualified opposition.

The book is well written and on a non-expert level.

I got a little bogged down with this book. I'm pretty familiar with genetics and this is an excellent overview of human genetics (though the copy I have is from 1993 and an updated edition would be nice.) I like how the author presents human genetics in light of our evolutionary history: the book is as much about anthropology as it is about genetics. I thought the prose was a bit static and there were times that I had to reread passages to figure out what the point was. All in all a good book, though, with tons of information.

Book based on a series of BBC programmes.
The main themes are evolution through mutation and natural selection, and heredity.
The treatment is popular.
The text could have been better edited because certain topics are repeatedly discussed, although always with other examples.
This book is only recommendable as a first introduction.
Congratulations to the BBC.

The study of genes, and in particular the human DNA, is progressing at phenomenal speed. "The Language of Genes" gives the reader an excellent understanding of the importance of this scientific branch. The book avoids the scientific particularities and concentrates on implications and conclusions drawn from its insights. Steve Jones gives us a good understanding of how present days genes make for documentation of evolutionary history - and how evolution triggers genetic responses that can be seen in the genetic mix of the world we live in.

Jones touches some of the moral questions connected with genetic science. I personally appreciate the anecdotal style with lots of stories about mistakes from earlier days. But Jones also points to dubious conceptions in today's society as well as future dilemmas we will face when our ability to screen and manipulate individual DNA is improved even more.

"The Language of Genes" is enlightening layman reading for many years still. Since the matter at hand is subject to intense research and progress it is however inevitable that sooner or later the need for an update becomes apparent. The book is now fifteen years old, and since it was written we have seen the human genome being mapped in total and personal genome screening is approaching the USD 1000 limit when it is supposed to become available to "everyone". My advice is: Get a grip on what genes are, what they tell us and how genetic science will influence our future. "The Language of Genes" by Steve Jones is a good place to start.

Having but a limited background in Anthropology, there is much in this book that I appreciated. I found it to be a great way to start understanding a subject more shrouded in rumor than actual, factual, representation. And that is too bad. How typical it is though, for so few to understand the ramifications, and importance of this subject. And I laugh every time I see a horror movie that is based on a monster who was genetically engineered. It's important when someone from within the community of science comes out to report on what has been discovered, what direction(s) we're going in, and what it all really means to our place in this world, and our comprehension of that place. Steve Jones does a wonderful job, and it is important to note that he does stray from the subject of genetics, into the other strange facets that such entails. Like Anthropology, Statistics, Mathematics, Chemistry, and of course Biology. Not to mention a few laughs at the expense of those lunatic Creationists. But the book does not lack humility at the same time. There are just as many pokes at the scientific community as well. This book will make you feel smarter, and make you wonder about things like, why are there males? and, Are we just carriers for our DNA, who have their own agenda? It's a very compelling read. Therefore I must recomend it.

The Mathematica Guidebooks suite consists of 4 thick awesome tomes-Programming, Graphics, Numerics and Symbolics- on the Mathematica software and its usage. The GUI frontend is not covered. The author is an acknowledged expert at Wolfram Research and the set of books is the result of his extensive usage and experimentation with the software. To use these books effectively, you must be knowledgeable in Mathematica as well as other areas like physics and computer science. For a start, you should read (not browse) The Mathematica Book by Stephen Wolfram (the creator of the software) from cover to cover. The DVD packaged with any of the GuideBooks contains the whole suite. The amazing graphics alone is worth the price. All programming code is on view. Bear in mind that the books were written before Mathematica 6 was released. So not everything about Mathematica is in these GuideBooks. I recommend that you check out Mathematica 6-especially the Manipulate command.

Trott's 4 book set is an amazing achievement. The Programming volume is the most generally useful, and Trott suggests reading The Mathematica Book (by Wolfram) through, cover to cover, and then reading Trott's own books in the order Programming, Graphics, Numerics, Symbolics. So, start with Programming when reading Trott. I think following these instructions would be the best way to start from zero and master Mathematica.

It is hard to even consider all the information in here. I like areas others have discussed, like the Lambda calculus and the Metamathematica discussions. I also like that all 4 of the books are included, formatted as Mathematica Notebooks, on the DVD. The DVD that comes with any one volume contains that volume's notebooks already evaluated, and the other 3 volumes' notebooks unevaluated, and an unevaluated copy of that volume's notebooks, and the Table of Contents and Index and other infrastructural notebooks. So, while the hardcopy is very nice to have, I've also hunted around in the other volumes with great benefit.

It really makes no sense to compare these with Ruskeepaa's Mathematica Navigator, which is a nice example of the several books that help get one started with Mathematica. Trott is aiming at a whole different level. His explanations are more insightful, more complete. He discusses more topics.

Trott goes well beyond Wolfram's book. To quote him, "The four GuideBooks contain about 25,000 Mathematica inputs, representing more than 70,000 lines of commented Mathematica code. (For the reader already familiar with Mathematica, here is a more precise measure: The LeafCount of all inputs would be about 800,000 when collected in a list.) The GuideBooks also have more than 4,000 graphics, 100 animations, 8,000 references, and 1,000 exercises. More than 10,000 hyperlinked index entries and hundreds of hyperlinks from the overview sections connect all parts in a convenient way. The evaluated notebooks of all four volumes have a cumulative file size of about 10 GB."

Mathematica is a huge and powerful tool. As Mathematica is to other technical computing tools, Trott's set is to other Mathematica books.

Absolutely terrible book. The author fails to explain simple things simply and logically. The author should read "mathematica for Scientist and Engineers" by Thomas Bahder or "Mathematica Navigator" by Ruskeepaa to see how one should write a book.

Michael is a world authority on Mathematica. His deep insight, fresh perspectives and Herculean writing have produced a singular volume. It is impossible to turn the pages without a sense of amazement. If you want to appreciate the power and beauty of Mathematica, there is no better choice.

Here we see Mathematica as used by a master. The instruction is top notch, the examples are superlative, the topics are fascinating.

I think the customer rating system shows a blemish in allowing someone to rate this book as a poor introduction. It is a guidebook, a survey of capabilities, and as such is superlative example.

Michael Trott's skill, knowledge and enthusiasm regarding the use of
Mathematica in scientific research is extraordinarily impressive, as I
have found to my considerable
benefit from some extended professional contact.
His infectious passion is manifested very strongly in this Guidebook
(devoted to programming, with the subsequent three volumes --- already
available --- being
concerned with the topics of graphics, symbolics and numerics).
Chapter 1 ("Introduction to Mathematica")
alone contains close to twelve hundred
references to the scientific literature (mostly physics, mathematics
and engineering
in nature), pertaining to one application or another --- many of an
engaging/intriguing nature.
Each chapter includes a set of exercises and a detailed solution
proposal for each exercise.

It certainly behooves each reader to peruse the Table of Contents and the
Index to find the topics of most interest to him or her. Much valuable time
for the computer practitioner
can certainly be spent with simple browsing of this impressive work of
devotion and erudition.
Desirably, some of the virtuosity in the use of Mathematica, abundantly
exhibited here by Trott, can be acquired by the reader.

I have owned copies of the first two editions of this book and I was impressed with the updates to this third edition. There are several new topics and the existing areas have been updated. I was able to use some of the statistical code in a production piece of software two days after receiving this new version. The website associated with the book also has a nice feature that figures out the header dependencies for you.

Bottom line up front: Every computational scientist should own a copy of Numerical Recipes but, if you already own a previous version, then don't bother upgrading.

I already owned a copy of "Numerical Recipes in C, 2nd Edition" (from 1992), so I was absolutely thrilled when I saw that the book had been updated in over 15 years. This is why I was so underwhelmed with the 3rd edition. As a previous reviewer noted, the vast majority of the book is largely unchanged.

As in previous editions, the authors do a great job of providing codes that cover the spectrum of topics encountered by researchers. As in previous editions, the authors still take the "give a man a fish" instead of the "teach a man to fish" method. This might seem like a negative but, in my opinion, this is why every scientist should own a copy of Numerical Recipes. Often, topics pop up that need immediate solving and one can often find a code for the topic in Numerical Recipes. As in previous editions, Numerical Recipes is really just an annotated code repository, with very stringent/restrictive licensing rules by the way!

However, as the authors note in the introduction, they made a conscious decision to fill pages with verbatim codes, not building insight into various topics. In my experience, the codes given in Numerical Recipes get the job done, but these tend to be simple and less efficient than other well-known algorithms.

As in previous editions, Numerical Recipes is a terrible pedagogical text. If you're interesting in understanding a particular topic, then get a special-purpose book.

The perfect book for me, because I am interested in mathematics and also in computer programing.

I'm an engineer and I like to create my own solutions in Matlab, since it's easy to program. The problem arises when you want to deliver a nice and fast cpp executable.
This is where this books enters, with fast, easy to understand, operational code.

Fifteen years after its previous edition, this peerless book on scientific computing has been upgraded with some very welcome changes. Not only have some advances in scientific computing been incorporated, the explanations are even clearer and more detailed than before. More importantly, the code has been reworked so that it is better than it was in the previous edition. I don't agree with the other reviewer that "it is getting worse". However, it still does seem like C++ code that was written by a Fortran programmer who just doesn't want to let go of the past, although I'd have to say that the code has broken away from the Fortran-like structure of previous editions to some degree. If you do scientific computing at all, this new edition is a must have. Below I detail what is different in this new third edition versus the previous 1992 edition. There are a very few sections that were deleted. I don't mention them. Instead I list any sections or chapters that have been added.

1. Preliminaries
Completely reorganized to reflect the book.

2.Solution of Linear Algebraic Equations
THE SAME

3. Interpolation and Extrapolation
3.7 Interpolation on a Scattered Data in Multidimensions
3.8 Laplace Interpolation

4. Integration of Functions
4.5 Quadrature by Variable Transformation
4.8 Adaptive Quadrature

5. Evaluation of Functions
THE SAME

6. Special Functions
6.10 Generalized Fermi-Dirac Integrals
6.11 Inverse of the Function xlog(x)
6.14 Statistical Functions

7. Random Numbers
7.2 Completely Hashing a Large Array
7.3 Deviates from Other Distributions
7.4 Multivariate Normal Deviates
7.5 Linear Feedback Shift Registers
7.6 Hash Tables and Hash Memories

8. Sorting
THE SAME

9. Root Finding and Nonlinear Sets of Equations
THE SAME

10. Minimization or Maximization of Functions
10.1 Initially Bracketing a Minimum
10.6 Line Methods in Multidimensions
10.11 Linear Programming: Interior-Point Methods
10.13 Dynamic Programming

11. Eigensystems
11.2 Real Symmetric Matrices
11.6 Real Nonsymmetric Matrices

12. Fast Fourier Transform
THE SAME

13. Fourier and Spectral Applications
THE SAME

14. Statistical Description of Data
14.7 Information-Theoretic Properties of Distributions

15. Modeling of Data
15.8 Markov Chain Monte Carlo
15.9 Gaussian Process Regression

16. Classification and Inference (NEW CHAPTER)

17. Integration of Ordinary Differential Equations
17.7 Stochastic Simulation of Chemical Reaction Networks

18. Two-Point Boundary Value Problems
THE SAME

19. Integral Equations and Inverse Theory
THE SAME

20. Partial Differential Equations
20.7 Spectral Methods

21. Computational Geometry (NEW CHAPTER)

22. Less-Numerical Algorithms
22.1 Plotting Simple Graphs

Python Scripting for Computational Science is both an introduction to the Python language and an excellent reference for the intermediate developer. The approach taken by the author is to present the language in the form of tasks to be solved accompanied by example code. As expected for a book on scientific computing the modules covered in the examples emphasize numerical packages but this in no way detracts from the applicability to general Python enthusiast.

What really makes this book more than just another Python introduction is that the author bridges the gap between complied and interpreted code. He demonstrates how the speed of execution of compiled code can be tied to the rapid pace at which scripts can be developed. Examples are provided for interfacing C, C++ and FORTRAN code with Python. Calls to precompiled applications are also covered and the examples were easily adapted to my favorite computational tools. One of the risks with doing numerical work in a scripting language is the possibility of straying into computationally intensive tasks to which interpreted code is not well suited . Latter chapters discuss how to identify these portions of your code and how to migrating these tasks to a compiled language.

If you want to learn Python, you should get it. Author do not build some "big" application (like "internet store software" or "bookstore software") from beginning to end, but rather give you a lot of practical examples of using python.

It is not like in others book that examples include only learned functions/methods, but use topics from the rest of book (you have example on page 25 and note that explanation of this and that function you found on page 543). By that you have interesting examples to use in real-world problems, not only examples to explain freshly learned topic.
In other books interesting examples of use python you found on page 3234, because only when author introduce all useful functions. In this book nice examples is even on first pages.


You learn how to use numerical packages (numpy) in python, using some useful tricks on lists and arrays, introduce to using graphical interface in Tk.

Langtangen's emphasis here is on a reader who comes from a strong background in engineering or science, and is familiar with common computational ideas and has done some programming, but not necessarily in Python. The typical book on Python is aimed at a general programming reader, and the examples in such a book usually are quite elementary, from a computational viewpoint.

The merit of Langtangen's book is that he gets into a lot of computational ideas. This is not a trivial book. Aspects like parsing data in files, connecting to local and remote hosts, and interacting with programs written in other languages are covered. For the latter, the important cases of Fortran and C programs are explained. The choices of these languages is deliberate. In science and engineering, they are the dominant languages for raw computation. And you are likely to have legacy code written in these, that you cannot abandon while using Python.

When I first got ahold of this book I had just finished learning all the gory details of good numerical codes. But when developing tests for simple cases I found that development went way too slow, so someone suggested I learn Python. This book provides a great demonstration of how python can supplement your existing codes. Either by organizing the tests, formatting output, or just adding pretty interfaces.

This book contains a lot of the necessary extras that a scientist or engineer must do to get his work going or finished, which is too pedantic to be taught in most courses. It shows the power of Python over some other scripting languages for this purpose. It is definitely one of the best references on my book shelf.

I have both the 2nd and 3rd edition of the book. The book does have 'unexciting academic LaTeX format' which another reviewer pointed out, as is also true that one should 'NOT expect a cookbook of high performance algorithm implementations'. Rather, I would say that this is the type of book that algorithm-intense cookbooks could be made from.

The book has a lot to offer someone prepared to slosh through and dig in deep to the guts of the book. In this sense I found the book to lack a sense of conceptual significance, in that much of the mundane material of everyday programming receives the same level of detail that the more complex subjects do. So, it is often that I find myself skimming the trivial to find the core. Unfortunately, some of the core code elements and examples are compiled from a litany of trivialities and then it is necessary to go back and pick up the bits and pieces to make sense of where you are focusing on.

More often than not, the maze of obfuscation does lead to an interesting 'ah ha' and that makes the book worthwhile to me. I think the update from 2nd to 3rd editions is warranted, but should also have included a proper parsing of the chaff and a little creativity in layout would go a long way to making this book true reading material and a ready-by-your-side reference.

As it stands, I need to get in the right frame of mind to approach the book on even a casual encounter. But when I do, I am pleased with what I can take away from it and readily apply. The Tools and Examples section, which has high applicability to testing code, is very worthwhile but, again, is a little shaded as in viewing the forest from the trees.