Applied Languages Books

I got this book because the title sounded like just the sort of good algorithm design discussion I was interested in. Sadly, the book doesn't live up to expectations. By a long shot.

I got the book before reviews were up on this site, unfortunately... Listen to these reviewers!

The book provides a lot of interesting discussion and pontification without a lot of specifics or advanced concepts. The techniques described are nowhere near cutting-edge. It honestly reminds me of listening to one of my CS professors rambling after a long day.

The upside is that it contains a lot of interesting ideas and could be a good introductory text for programmers not already experienced in advanced algorithms, real-world game design, or higher mathematics. Unfortunately, that's a small audience, I suspect.

I bought this book hoping for information on fractals, random number theory, compression, etc. Very disappointed. He seemed to lean heavily on a few particular sources that I didn't think were very strong. (For example, I can't imagine anyone covering random numbers without mentioning Knuth's book which is considered one of the authorities on the matter.)

Basically, this book spends a lot of time describing to you in generalities the basic principles, without actually giving any compelling examples. In many cases, he teases you by talking about what *could* be done with the types of techniques he is describing, and you're like, "all right, now we're getting interesting." But then he never actually gets around to the meat of the matter. He talked a lot about fractals in general, but never any good examples of how to actually make fractals. Or in the chapter "probabilitity as a compression technique" (which is only 5 pages long, btw) he discussed RLE encoding, which is an excellent trivial example. The only problem is, that's where he stopped - I can't believe he didn't discuss ADPCM encoding, for example.

It's not that this is a beginner, book, either. There really just isn't that much material at any level. I'm still trying to figure out where all the pages went. Basically, a disappointment. Lots of fluff. Not much math, which is what the title would lead you to believe this book is all about.

I am participating in programming a tool for automated design, and I identified some ideas in the preface that I already had. After reading that, I really wanted to see what were someone else's thoughts on a subject that really interests me. But the preface happens to be the only interesting part of the book.

Random number generation is an evident first step, but you better read some good book about it (there are plenty). The methods outlined here are just not good enough.

Every chapter tries to develop a theory and then explain it with an example. The theory is usually a long explanation of a simple idea, without adding any interesting information to it. Then the examples are often too simple or don't have anything to do with the subject.

There are many pages devoted to fractals, and very little information in them. The same thing happens with random name generation, music generation, fractal terrains... These are all really cool subjects, but go learn about them somewhere else.

The chapters are totally disconnected, and the purpose of the book is not clear. If it's a book about techniques for making games with automatically generated worlds, the book should focus on how to develop such a thing, using the development of the program as a guideline for connecting the parts. If the book is about math, it's just the worst math book I have read (and I have read quite a few).

The author should learn how to write and should also organize his ideas better. Using a Mandelbrot image to modify probabilities of pairs of letters is just nonsense. The ghosts in Pac-Man are not good examples of self-similar behaviour, and have nothing to do with fractals. And there are many more examples of "thinkos" in this book.

Spend your money in a better book.

This is a good book for game programmers who are just starting to realize that the need a background in mathematics to reach the next level in the careers.

Other audiences will not really like the book. Mathematicians wanting to know more about gaming or graphic techniques will find the math lacking. There is not enough action to keep game players from yawning. There is no cut and paste code for second rate programmers to plagerize. Only a narrow audience will really find the book of interest.

I am really happy to see this book on the shelves. Game programming is a multi-billion dollar industry. Many of the people got their start in the business through graphic arts, or simply banging on computers without much training. This book shows how programmers need to evolve from just plain code monkeys to true thinkers.

It was interesting to see what subjects the author found to be important. He concentrated a great deal on random number generation, seeding, plot development, basic oop and finally he touched on fractals. Unfortunately, the mathematics in the book was pretty much obvious stuff. The book would not serve well as a reference, nor as a text book.

If you are in the game programming business, I would recommend this book. Others will not receive much value from it.

The "universe simluation" view of game design draws on a diverse array of topics in computer science: random number sequences, cellular automata, neural networks, fractals, formal languages, scripting, object-oriented systems, physics, algorithms, data compression, artificial intelligence. While Thompson's book manages to touch on most of the above, no topic is explored or applied in any real depth, and the difficult prose hinders reading.

The text is full of off-hand references to the classic computer game "Elite" as an example of an infinite game universe, but awfully short on specifics. A few hours of web research into gaming sites would have filled in the blanks. Even more shocking is the omission of "Starflight"---a groundbreaking computer role-playing game that used a good number of techniques in this book (i.e. fractal terrain generation) to support hundreds of detailed, explorable planets and star systems, each with its own atmospheric conditions, mineral deposits, ancient ruins, and mysterious life-forms. All that crammed onto a 720K disk---surely of great interest to this book's audience. Why is there no coverage of this classic?

Likewise, I can't understand why the author provides an illustrated reference to "R-Type" --- the most predictable shoot-em-up game ever --- while not mentioning the massive, still-unequaled world-simulation that was "Ultima VII - The Black Gate."

What exposition remains is obscured by the awful writing style and distinct lack of mathematical rigor.

What should you read instead? I recommend "The Computational Beauty of Nature" for the math side, "The Official Book of Ultima" for the design philosophy; you can read up online about the relationship of object-oriented systems to simulations. For people who are thinking about game design, read up on Interactive Fiction and some of the old papers applying discrete maths to storyline, plot, character, environment. I've been planning for years to write a book on these types of games someday---perhaps it'll be sold on Amazon? :-)

Actually I disagree to most of the comments submitted by other reviewers - In my opinion this book is really great, especially for people who are new to the areas of Evolutionary Algrorithms and Programming and particulary looking for ways on how to apply these technologies in practical terms. There are not many books out there which are (1) easy to understand, (2) provide sufficient and "what-you-should-know" type of information about the discussed technologies and (3) application-oriented and practical rather than theoretical. This, in my opinion is very important as it allows the reader also to understand how e.g. GA's can be implemented. Also the use of JAVA language for the practical demonstration and examples are very handy since it is currently one of the most widely used and popular programming language.
I believe that this book is very suitable as a course material for students (like me) who are new to the areas of Evolutinary Algorithms. In addition, it provides a large survey of references and websites where evolutionary code is available.

I only browsed the book but I perfectly agree with my friend from milano. Another one of those little useless trash marked with high price because they knew there would be few buyers. How can my favorite publisher Springer join this business? (John-Wiley seems to be the pioneer on this.)

I haven't read this book yet (hence the intermediate 3 stars rating), but I think people should know that, [...] See e.g. http://www.techbookreport.com/tbr0031.html

I completely agree with the previous reviewers. In fact, I found their criticism rather light. On the back cover, the book is presented as an introductory book with pratical emphasis. Although the book is very easy to follow (reading it cover to cover takes about 2-3 hours), it's definitely not at an introductory level. It covers basic material on GA & GP without sufficient detail. Furthermore, the design of the book is terrible. The author has allocated 105 pages to bibliography and appendices (the book has 225 pages). Therefore, the core material occupies only 120 pages. Moreover, the 2 chapters about GA and GP are totally 30 pages long ! The remaining 90 pages are about some not-so-interesting applications and future directions in EC. The bibliography is not at the end of the book. This makes following the references rather frustrating.

I've read/browsed at least 10 books on GA/EC. This is definitely the worst one. I recommend Eiben & Smith's "Introduction to Evolutionary Computing" and Michalewicz & Fogel's "How to Solve It: Modern Heuristics" to everyone interested in GA/EC.

Java being the choice language for enterprise no-bs concrete applications I was expecting a practical viewpoint and a hands-on approach in this book. It turns out this skimpy booklet is
more of a an extended paper, something like a thesis with no practical value ( and hence no value at all). It won't teach you neither GA algorithms nor how to use Java to code them. The Java
word was put in to fool buyers exploiting the Java marketing wave. The only java GA algorithm presented in this book is in appendix B.... can it get worse than this?

Since all the source code is available on the accompanying disk, this is an overall hard to find reference for those looking for technical programming. The procedures may need some editing depending on the specific application. Recommended!

Before using algorithms one should check code first. Otherwise pretty nice solutions. Recommendable for reading.

I bought this book because it includes a source disk and I did'nt want to reinvent the wheel in BASIC. What a drag to debug this code to get the calculations correct. It would have been faster for me to write it up from scratch!

There are no meaningful comments in the code nor any clue in the text.

A complete waste of time and money.

Too many code errors and very little help on how to correct them. The theory behind the code is extremely sketchy. Hence, the main reason to buy this book would be the included diskette containing the mathematical algorithms, but those too are erroneous. Suggest writing routines for oneself rather than investing in this book.

Exactly the algorithms I need and wanted. Unfortunately, the VB forms were shipped in binary form and can not be used with VB 6, which is what I have. What a bummer to have the code, but be unable to use it.

My point was not about my expectations of what psycholinguistics is or is not. I could, however, point out to the other reviewer that most research from that field does not cover L2 acquisition, but rather languages that are acquired 'naturally', from birth.

My main point is about what a cognitive approach to SLA should be. I don't think or expect it to be so behaviouristic. Nor do I expect a book marketed as drawing on psycholinguistics to be so lacking in citations of research from psycholinguistics.

As it is, this book is more a recapitulation of a lot of SLA research about tasks, much of it from Skehan himself. The title and the blurb are misleading. As for its applicability, that is, like so many things, what sort of 'stone soup' the ELT practitioner wishes to make. I highly doubt if Skehan teaches a SL or FL.

The Robinson book which Amazon pairs this with for selling is a far superior collection of research and analysis, by the way. I will try to get around to reviewing it.

It seems the other reviewer (only one at this point - Charles Januzzi) defines psycholinguistics differently than I do. As Skehan writes himself, psycholinguistics is "the study of the psychological processes underlying language learning and use" (Skehan, 1998, p.1). Based on this definition, Skehan's entire book IS about psycholinguistics. As a student of second language acquisition and an English as a Foreign Language (EFL) teacher myself, I have found this book a great resource. The first half of the book discusses psycholinguistics as it relates to instruction and testing. The second half of the book then discusses task-based learning (TBL) and how you can employ it in the classroom to support the psycholinguistic aspects of second language acquisition (SLA). Since TBL is a relatively new and promising area of research in the field of SLA, its investigation would not be complete if you overlooked Skehan's thoughts and contributions to TBL development.

In the end, I would probably give this book a 4-star rating since some of Skehan's ideas on how to implement task-based learning are not supported by current SLA research. However, since the other reviewer unfairly rated this book (in my opinion), I'm trying to "even the score" so to speak. Just because Mr. Januzzi's expectations for this book differed from the actual content, it does not mean the content itself is not worthwhile and informative.

This book was a major disappointment. The publisher (Oxford University Press) promises that it redresses a supposed imbalance between sociolinguistic and psycholinguistic ones in Language Teaching and Language Learning. Now one has to suppose that means this volume emphasizes psycholinguistics (since the word 'cognitive' is used in the title). That's interesting because (1) often sociolinguistic volumes say they redress an imbalance the other way and (2) there is very little about psycholinguistics or cognition in language learning in this rather long book (what there is comes from Second Language Acquisition research and is not cross-disciplinary in nature) .

If you teach a foreign language and want a book that reviews the the SLA research around the all-important concept of the 'task', this is a worthwhile read--though don't expect much that is directly applicable to teaching. (Unsurprisingly, a lot of the research cited comes from Skehan himself, so if you've read his papers, you don't need the book.)

Outside of that, it's a waste of time. It also fluctuates stylistically from very well written to turgid and nearly unreadable.

I teach pronunciation in Thailand and I use the exercises in the pronunciation part of this book (30 pages) to reinforce the learning of the phonetic alphabet part of my class. It's OK for this but I can't comment on the rest of the book. I can say that there are some errors in this part of the book however. You need to check every exercise ahead of time from a photocopy and make corrections before making copies for your students because about 50% have minor errors. Pretty poor editing work by the publisher to miss these sort of things before going to press. If there were no errors I'd give 4 stars.

If I lived in the US I'd have returned this book. The games aren't that great. Furthermore, they don't cover the grammar and conversation I teach in junior high school in Japan. The illustrations are terrible - I don't claim to draw and I could do better than this. To use any of these games (they're actually more puzzles than games) I'd cover up the ugly drawings with liquid paper.

I teach ESL in El Cajon, California. I have used this book for over ten years. I like it very much. A previous review was very negative. I did not find this book to be a dissappointment. I use it as a supplement. It is true that the book does not give explanations of grammer. To be fair it does give examples of proper grammar and usage. I use it as a fun supplement. You can create a lesson around the worksheets in this book. Another of my colleagues also likes it very much.

The book is a good supplement to review material that you have already explained in class. I get a lot of use out of it.

The "Introduction" in the title should be replaced with "A Revision .." The explanations are concise, and not much examples given. Without any prior background, it is difficult to grasp the point of each paragraph.

The theory of error correcting codes is a foray into number theory. It can be very abstract. And this might be the problem that some readers will have with the book. The discussion involves finite field theory and key ideas like permutations. All this is necessary to understand the topic.

But for students lacking a strong theoretical background in maths, getting to hands on manipulations and getting a strong intuitive understanding of the codes can be difficult. Each chapter does have an extended exercise set. Which is good. But the exercises themselves are also quite abstract.

I had to buy this book for my upper division (discrete) math course, and I must say this book is not the best introductory text.

I don't know if there's a better one as my professor professed out of this one rather extensively.

Luckily I had a good professor, so the book wasn't as bad compared to if I had just read this book by itself (and I'm a math major, I can read a math book in a week and understand it!).

It has a relatively "condensed" writing style, even for a math book. There is little discussion as to why I should care about why a code should be treated as a linear subspace of (Z/2Z)^n. There is, come to think of it, little discussion *period*.

I wouldn't recommend buying it unless you had to for a course.

this is a fun book to look at.

... and read the online documentation instead. The authors state that this handbook "adds to the online help". In a way that's correct. It may serve as a print out version of the online help if you are too lazy to click through the help desk. The latter, however, is for free.

I found the Maltab 5 Handbook very usefull, not only with the general information such as basic operation, but also with its explanations of the Matlab toolboxes, which I found difficult to understand in the Matlab book provided with the software. Also its in depth, but step by step explanation in using the Matlab Editor for Mathematical program writing. All in all I rate this book very highly and a must for all matlab users.

This book is slightly useful for people who know a little about Mathematica and more about statistics. The book is moderately useful in gaining some idea about how to go about doing statistics with Mathematica.

However, I hope that the editors involved with the publication of this text from Academic Press have all gone back to work at something that does not require eyesight and an ability to read simple words. Others have mentioned the ubiquitous errors. I have never encountered a published final text that is more rife with errors. I've used Mathematica to actually calculate the number of errors in the text (couldn't do it in my head), and the answer is 1.34252x10^14. There are few pages that do not contain at least one error, some, numerous. For example, on page 83 the output of has 6.43041<10^8, instead of 6.43041x10^8. Again, hardly impenetrable but evidence of extraodinary sloppiness. On page 81, we see Statistics'DataManipulation' which should read Statistics`DataManipulation`. On and on.

The most infuriating thing is that NONE of the text files on the data disk match precisely what is described in the text. Files are referred to by name and they do not exist. Or the data exists in an altered form in some other file. You have to spend your time doing with the editors should have ensured, and that is correctly matching the data with the text.
In short, the book should be taken off the market and either edited or consigned to the flames.

If you¡¯ve studied statistics before, then this is a good reference book to do statistical analysis with mathematica. This book has many examples and considerably decent explanations. I found some errors in data in the accompanying CD. One (census.txt) of them is very bad; others are annoying but can be overcome easily. Also this book has several typos, which are annoying. However, this book helps readers harness the power of mathematica for statistics.

Statistics with Mathematica (which I'll refer to as "SwM") is a book for someone who knows something about Mathematica and something about statistics--the more known, the better. SwM is neither a comprehensive tutorial on Mathematica nor on statistics. Rather, SwM illustrates by example how to perform statistical operations and produce graphs using Mathematica. SwM is both a tutorial and a reference book. SwM was written for Version 3 (or later) of Mathematica, although one can purportedly squeak by with Version 2.2.

A word of advice: Before you buy this book, decide whether you have some compelling reason to perform statistical analyses and make graphs using Mathematica, as opposed to, say, Excel.

I found the large number of typos, oversights, and the poor integration of the accompanying CD quite annoying. To the reader familiar with Mathematica, many of the typos are glaring and easy to correct. Other typos, such as incorrect page numbers listed in the index, are more problematic.

Knowledge of Mathematica will also see you through most of the oversights. For example, if you already understand why you must first load a Mathematica Standard Add-on Package before attempting to use one of its functions, you will not need such a reminder in SwM. A reminder is given, but many pages too late.

SwM's preface promises that all Mathematica input is included on the accompanying CD. That is simply not so--some files referred to in the text are not on the CD. However, if you don't mind typing a few missing files, you can make them yourself. The CD, oddly titled "UNTITLED_CD", contains two folders and a total of 60 files. Most files are cryptically named and are not referenced in the text nor vice versa. That's where the fun begins. The SwM text will refer you to an author-defined procedure, tell you to locate it on the CD, but fail to mention the name of the requisite CD file.

A redeeming feature of SwM is the collection of ready-to-use author-defined procedures available to the reader. Some are simple and obvious, while others, such the "Box and Whisker" plotters, would require some effort to write from scratch. The authors' procedures help both by extending the use of Mathematica's add-ons and by illustrating how one might write or modify such procedures.

SwM includes a chapter on data manipulation that illustrates how to transfer data from a text file to Mathematica list variables where the data can be worked upon. SwM, however, does not address how to transfer data from Excel or other commonly used data base applications.

SwM covers a wide gamut of statistical tools including descriptive statistics, univariate and multivariate methods, data smoothing and time series, probability and probability distributions, simulation, inferential procedures, analysis of variance, and regression and correlation, as well as the graphic representation of data and its attributes.

As far as I know, SwM is the only book of its kind that is devoted to statistical analysis via Mathematica. While sloppy editing does leave SwM frustrating to use, the reader could reorganize and index the CD's Notebook files and eventually find SwM to be a favorite reference.

A good book. If you know Mathematica 3 or later, a little of differential geometry, is a good way to do symmetries in differential equations.

I regret the time and money expended in acquiring the following information. In no way can I recommend this book to any reader.

This work is incoherent and reflects the incoherence of the design of the MathLie Mathematica Package. The text is neither an adequate introduction to the package nor a suitable reference. Descriptions of functions are locally incomplete and globally scattered throughout the book. Only after considerable searching does one find that, in fact, there is little functionality for the solution of any but the most trivial systems.
As a tool to learn applications of Lie Groups to Differential Equations, this text is useful only insofar as it represents the thinnest introduction to the material, suitable neither for the expert nor the novice.
As a tool to expand the capabilities of Mathematica, it is a pointless exercise in using essentially undocumented encrypted code with no evident organizational principle. One may well do better to seek help from a divining rod.

Before giving my opinion I would like to point out that there is a very negative review of this book by Dr. P.A. Clarkson. It appered in SIAM Review, Vol. 43, No. 3, pp. 549-581.

Now for my opinion.

I am doing research in nonlinear PDEs. What I need is a good Mathematica package to take me through the tedious calculations. Unfortunately, MathLie package included with the book does not meet my needs. I have often encounterd very cryptic error messages produced by the package internal functions. I could not find the root causes of those errors, because these functions are not accessible. This makes the results of the calculations suspect. In some cases they do not agree with published results. Dr. Clarkson in his above-mentioned review reports similar experience.

Most importantly, the book really does not help to interpret the output produced by the package. The online help is very inadequate.

I cannot recommend this book as either a textbook (too cryptic) or a research reference/tool (results are suspect).

In summary, I agree with Dr. Clarkson that "this book should have never been published". I only wish I saw his review before making a mistake of purchasing it.

Instead of this book I recommend "Introduction to Symmetry Analysis" by B. Cantwell, which is much more readable and provides a Mathematica package.

I was very pleased with this product. It came well wrapped and in good shape,

This book was recommended by a professor as a good supplemental text. So far, I have been glad I bought it. The main text is very good, but very technical. This book helps to fill in some of the holes that come up.

It is quite bright and colorful inside, and not what I expected. It is easy to read and demonstrates how to get started using MATLAB.