Applied Languages Books

I have really found it super. No problem and I would like to go on purchasing from you.

I would buy three more copies if it had the author's picture on the back cover.

This is a good book describing an excellent free scientific Matlab-like software package available for many computing platforms. It complements well the extensive on-line help of the software and the information available on the Web.

The first three chapters gives a condensed overview of the software. I found the description of the graphics capabilities particularly useful as a reference. The next two chapters describe the use of the software for linear algebra, polynomials, linking to C and FORTRAN, and more advanced aspects. The remaining chapters concern tools and applications mainly of a system oriented nature. The tools are generally of a very high quality and accuracy, but of course slower than in compiled languages.

The book would have been been even more useful if it included more information on how to customize the software and a more comprehensive index. Also, the linking to C and FORTRAN routines does not appear to be completely simple.

The book "Engineering and Scientific Computing" in Scilab,
presents clearly the elements of the Scilab language.
A scientist with some programming background,
even elementary, can readily learn and exploit the
elegant and compact Scilab scientific programming
environment.
However, the strongest point of the book is its tutorial
value. The reader can through the Scilab tool,
improve the knowledge of important signal processing topics,
exploit algorithms for the numerical solution of ODEs and
tackle with optimization problems. Furthermore, the book contains
excellent material on SCICOS (the dynamical system builder
that accompanies Scilab) and a lot of applications.
The CD that is included with the book is also very helpful.
The presented scientific applications are aimed mainly
to the advanced scientists and engineers, although a large part
can be utilized and by undergraduate students of an intermediate
level.
In summary, I liked and enjoyed this book and I strongly
recommend it to all the scientific/engineering community.

I scanned dozens of books on ethics and communication ethics before settling on this one as my basic text for the New Media Ethics course I teach for The New School in New York City. Johannesen's book is perfect for the intelligent layperson who needs a thoughtful, clear, and comprehensive introduction to ethics, and more specifically, ethics in communication. Highly recommended for students, professors, or anyone that wants a deeper understanding of some of today's difficult ethical challenges, and a set of approaches to resolving them.

I read this book for one of my college courses and it was very interesting, insightful, and complete. Dr. Johannesen weaves into his book many different aspects of ethical communication to include responsibility, politics, culture, small group, interpersonal, religious, as well as feminist contributions. His writing style is easy to follow, yet professionally done. He includes all members of the ethical communication "dream team" and provides clear interpretation of their texts. After reading his book, I signed up for an independent study at my college on the ethical attributes of communication in the workplace. In a time when ethical communication is needed most, this book provides an excellent foundation for considerations into our communication with others. A must read for anyone who communicates.

Bachman explores language testing from a theoretical point of view in this book. I found the coverage of measurement, testing purposes, reliability, and validity to be very useful. Perhaps the one warning I would give is that this book is a little statistics-heavy, and it assumes that you have at least some knowledge of statistics. If you don't have any knowledge of statistics, then the sections on reliability and validity may take a little work to get though. In that case, I recommend Brown's text on testing. It's a simpler read. However, this volume by Bachman is more detailed and Bachman is rightly considered to be an authority on testing.

Bachman shows more than just why tests are important. His depth of insight is illuminating and the carefully analysed topics will definetely trigger an ever lasting curiosity in anyone concerned with testing which is certain to render rewarding dividends.

This handbook is an excellent resource for those looking for informed advice on how to successfully deal with the complexities of global software development. I find the chapters on Requirements Engineering, Architecture, and Risk Analysis - all written in the context of global software development - particularly useful. In addition, the book offers tried-and-tested approaches for project and quality management in global software development settings, which are also illustrated through four real-life case studies presented in Section V of the book.

This handbook is a rich source of pragmatic knowledge and I highly recommend it to anybody who is concerned with achieving success in global software development.

Most companies today are doing some type of global development if they are innovating or improving their products. Unfortunately, many of these global projects fail because there is little guidance or help through the rough spots. The GSD Handbook provides the kind of guidance that most companies need to begin setting in motion a solid productive program.

This book is for those that have more than one location working on a project with integrated teams and may also have to contend with changing requirements from various users - which is most companies. Beginning with specific methods and workshop descriptions, the authors show how it can be done from their experience and give tips on what works and does not work. There is also a defined process and descriptions of how the process can be used with differing conditions. Most models (like CMMI and ISO) point out that teams can make a project work if they have what they need to perform the work. Section II talks about the project planning: risk management, requirements, architecture, etc. Section III describes the organization: types of teams, team members (roles and responsibilities), and supplier management. Section IV is extremely important as there is a description of how to manage the project that is "in play" - monitoring and control the project which also includes the importance of communication.
This is a must read for multi-location project managers. The case studies also help explain how these techniques actually worked in real life.
This book is not full of theory and dense concepts but instead is a very practical, easy to read and understand "handbook".

Extremely expensive, but required by my teacher in grad school in class "Neural Networks". Good, comprehensive source of knowledge to understand NN. However, If you want to use NN to solve just practical problems, read Help in Matlab nntool (2007a), which is decently explained, and follow examples.

I found Dr. Samarasinghe's very easy to understand yet very comprehensive in its coverage of neural networks. The hand calculations really helped me see how the algorithms are applied to real-world problems. This is one of the best books on the subject that I own, and I own a bunch of them. I highly recommend it!

Very good with Numerical Recipes. If you are experienced, it is good, if you are a fledgling, complement it with a beginers book. I recomend it.

The C++ source code given here can be useful if you are in a hurry to implement an algorithm given in the main Numerical Recipes book. One might consider that a CD of the source code would be more useful. But the examples are short subroutines. Manually typing in the code from the book should not be a big deal for any of you.

The example data sets used for inputs to some of the subroutines is also useful for unit testing.

This book has many creative ideas to use with ESL students. The projects do not require much preparation. They are easy and the students enjoy them. Information such as short stories are easily understood. The best part of all is that the activities are organized by month. This book is a good resource for the ELL teacher.

I am an ESL teacher. The district I work in supplied us with this book. It is an excellent book full of useful ideas. My students find the book a great help. I use the stories to teach them new vocabulary, help them with their prounciation and allow to enjoy themselves while learning. Great book! I encourage everyone to check it out!

The main force behind Lantolf's book is to broaden the base of theories for second language acquisition (SLA). A major theme running through the text is the inadequacy of popular interactionist theories of SLA for explaining and describing language development, and the need for a research framework that accounts for the role of social context and collaborative dialogue. The text starts with a good overview of sociocultural theory, outlining the major aspects of the theory, including activity theory, inner/private speech and the zone of proximal development. The relevance of these areas are then discussed by a number of SLA theorists/researchers, with the aim of calling for a deeper, contextual and qualitative analysis of language learning interactions/tasks, and asserting the efficacy of sociocultural theory in facilitating and explaining effective language learning. A very readable book.

Lantolf is probably the foremost authority on Sociocultural theory and its Vygotskyan psychological approaches to Second Language Acquistion. I used this volume for a comparison of Chomskyan UG and Vygotskyan Sociocultural theory for a Masters level final essay and received 93% for my efforts, much of the cited material came from this volume. Highly recommended!
Together with Dorothy Robbins' comprehensive review of Vygotsky in "Vygotsky's and A.A. Leontiev's Semiotics and Psycholinguistics : Applications for Education, Second Language Acquisition, and Theories of Language (Contributions in Psychology) (Hardcover)", these two books provide more than sufficient research in this interesting and innovative approach to SLA.

The author achieves the hard task of explaining the subject in a very simple and, at the same time, intelligent way. The MATLAB m-files are short, educative and full of useful tricks. The book is well motivated, focused in the essentials and easy to read. I am very fond of most of Prof. Trefethen writings and this book is no disappoitment. It contrasts starkly with the lack of mathematical insight in most of the engineering collocation literature, but at the same time has a hands-on approach to the problems. This book should be useful to anybody interested in solving PDE in regular geometries.

i would have given it a 4-stars, but i feel that i need to counter the negative comment by a reader below who complains that the book is loaded with errors.

first i should say i am not a mathematician although i used mathematics and numerical methods frequently. so there are certainly many details that i overlook or ignore.

in my opinion, most of the errors in the book (inc those not listed on trefethen's website but which i have noticed) are insignificant and inconsequential. they are things like writing 'n' instead of 'N'; the confusions and errors in the indices (this is due to matlab must start from '1', while frequently we are used to start from '0' when writing the mathematics); calling something obvious an inappropriate name, etc. to me, these are trivial errors. (if you are a numerical analysis theorist, i accept that you don't agree with me). only a handful of errors are actually serious in terms of the mathematics, and i believe the number of them are acceptable. every book has errors.

at the level i am reading this book, i just need an introduction to the theory, and then start computing. as far as i am concerned, if the mathematics is seriously wrong, you will notice when you do the computing.

what i like about the book is that it starts you computing right from the first chapter. although mathematical softwares such as matlab have been around for one to two decades, until recently not many books on numerical methods give you an opportunity to do the computations yourself. if the matlab scripts were not provided, i doubt that many would know how to code them (in any language you are familiar with); or even if you do, you may be doing it in an inelegant or inefficient way.

i used to wonder what is the use of a book on advanced numerical methods. for example, i would not know how to write a fluid dynamics code using spectral method to do direct numerical simulation of turbulent flows after reading and even mastering, say, Canuto et al's Spectral Dynamics in Fluid Dynamics. on the other hand, if i am familiar with spectral methods programming, it is also likely that i am familiar with the theory. so what these books are for is just as a store of knowledge and convenient references. you may know that the kind of fluid dynamics code i mentioned above can require a team effort over many years. so most numerical methods books which claim to cover applications are in fact useless, except you are already a practitioner, when come to developing codes for modern advanced simulations.

however, i think introductory books should have examples of how the computer codes to some numerical methods actually look like. before these past few years, i didn't see any such book. only recently, there are at least a dozen books on numerical methods or differential equations with C/C++, Matlab, etc. and i think trefethen's book is setting an example on how to do this without much fuss and long discourse. who knows, you may also learn the basic skills require to work on a much more complicated piece of computational code.

also, trefethen never claims that you can learn matlab with this book. he suggested, for example, higham & higham's matlab guide.

lastly, i should say one should not judge a book by the personality of the author. he may (or may not) be arrogant, but that does not necessarily make his book bad. (it appears to me that the reader below is the arrogant one. just because trefethen probably didn't give him responsive and 'grateful' replies, he wrote this review here).