Software Books

I confirm all that has been said.

It is the first source I have found that explains building the linux kernel in a way that makes it easy to understand. While you might be able to find this information on the net, this makes it easy to get an overall view of what is going on.

It is easy to read, and has great references. Well worth the price.

This book is very well organized, and provides a good level of detail of the topic. I do recommend it.

I am an experienced embedded developer that just inherited an embedded Linux-based project already in progress. As there happens to be no one else at my company with any embedded Linux experience, I automatically became the de-facto Linux expert and I needed to come up to speed on a lot of topics very quickly. I found this book to be an excellent survey of the must-know topics for the embedded Linux developer. It also contains many references to the most definitive sources of information on the various topics. Highly recommended for coming up to speed on embedded Linux.

For those engineers who start their first embedded Linux project, this book is a must have. The book is not for those who want to understand how kernel runs but it gives you the most important concept and work flow to bring up the OS on your development board. The author also provides a useful further reading list in case you want to dig more. A very practical and clearly written book and I would recommend it to those who have solid experience in embedded development but just start to explore in Linux.

This book, the CALAO SYSTEM USB-A9260 card, an eeePC and a cross over cable is all that you need to study embedded system everywhere (even along the Seine river in Paris - yes I did it !).
The chapters about the U-BOOT bootloader, the BUSYBOX embeded Linux and an extra piece of information on the JFFS2 file system are welcome. If the cross-development environment chapter had been about BUILDROOT, this book would have been THE BOOK for the present embedded Linux based systems designers.

I have read (well, ok, read through or I would post more reviews) quite a few technical books about SQL Server. Where many books follow a very rigid path through a subject, quite often in a very feature driven manner (Here is this command, and you can do this. Next, this command) or process driven manner (First we do this, then we do this...).

This book is very different from that. The title includes the word "Expert" for good reason. This is a book that doesn't assume you know nothing and start from scratch, nor does it try to teach you every knob and switch on all of the SQL commands. It it more about going to the next level and becoming the expert at programming with SQL Server by covering several deep dive subjects that every person needs to make the transition from "Pro" to "Expert".

It has eleven chapters, each of them about a distinct facet of programming SQL Server, from the common stuff you need to do or use right (testing, errors, privilege, CLR, encryption, dynamic SQL and concurrency) to three chapters on really deep applied stuff (spatial data, temporal data, and graphs/trees). Each chapter has some very deep information, and a lot of code that could make you dizzy if you try to ingest it too fast. It is all explained nicely though, and if you take the time to understand the code you will be far better off for it.

I would not suggest this as a book for the casual "I would like to know a bit more about SQL" reader. It is more for the reader who is already good and wants to become a solid professional/expert SQL programmer who know the right way to do things. For that reader it should be on your required reading list.

This is really a great book. It covers specific topics really extensively and it is very easy to read. I was impressed because I was able to find great information about topics such as Encryption or Hierarchies that cannot be found very easily in other books. The examples are very descriptive but the most important thing is that the author will show you all possible solutions and will prove why the one he selected is the best. It is not a beginner's book but it is a fantastic book for advanced DBAs/Developers.

The author imparts a wealth of knowledge on the reader in a mere 445 pages. His style is direct, clear and doesn't waste any pages on trying to get you up to speed. He gives you just what you need and nothing else. I wish they were all like this.

By providing actual performance testing Adam Machanic doesn't just make expert claims for his methods. In fact, my favorite quote from the book: "The hallmark of a truly great developer, and what allows these qualities to shine through, is a thorough understanding of the importance of testing."

Having never worked with spatial data before, I found the coverage of the topic fascinating. Also, entire books have been written on tree's, hierarchies and graphs. Adam provides enough information in a single chapter for the developer to choose a strategy that works.

5 stars - easy

The book presents real-life SQL Server problems and shows you how to solve them. It is written in a friendly and story-like fashion. The amount of detail presented is just right - detailed enough to understand the topics yet simple enough not to feel overwhelmed by the amount of information presented.

In the first chapter, the author reviews coupling, cohesion, encapsulation and database role in the application development cycle.

Chapter 2 is extremely useful for testing and tuning queries. It teaches you all you need to know about SQL Profiler. Other topics include unit and functional testing and performance counters. The chapter also introduces the SQLQueryStress Performance Tool which is a free query performance and load testing tool designed by the author.

Chapter 3 covers the different types of errors and exceptions and also shows you how to write error handling code using new error-handling construct added in SQL Server 2005.

The chapter on Dynamic SQL, chapter 7, is a must read for every database developer as it teaches you how and when to use dynamic SQL to make your application both efficient and secure.

Other advanced topics covered in the book are encryption, SQLCLR security and designing systems for application concurrency.

Recommended for SQL Server professionals of all levels.

Frankly, I was expecting a very SQL Server 2005 specific book. Instead, what we have is a good general RDBMS book that happens to be using SQL Server 2005. Encryption, access control, testing, basic software engineering and exception handling are never touched in SQL programming books -- including my own! The spatial chapters were new to me. The little asides were also worth looking up. Good clean style, great job.

Final Cut Express has a bit of a learning curve to work through. I'm only half-way through this book, and its worth is already more that I paid for it. I'd already been through most of the online help, and also another FCE4 book that I had purchased, when I bought this one. It has provided many valuable insights that have made it possible for me to actually become productive with Final Cut Express.

This is a very useful book for anyone learning the program. Video editing, particularly titling and animation, can be detailed and laborious. The writer--an experienced editor--takes you through the process step-by-step in contrast to manuals that merely describe a program's functions.

The accompanying CD has hands-on lessons for every chapter, so the reader can actually experience what the writer describes. Invaluable. Final Cut, even the express version, offers many video capabilities for both amateur and professional. This book shortens the learning process and brings you up-to-speed quickly.

I purchased three books on editing Final Cut Express 4. This is the most helpful of the three. It was the only one that was helpful in setting up my iMac to work effectively with Final Cut Express 4.

Everything I needed to improve and speed up my learning curve on FCE. Highly recommended.

I've gotten each new edition of this book, even though there aren't a huge number of changes. It's just nice to see the updates he's made and draw from his rich knowledge and experience with Final Cut Pro/Final Cut Express/iMovie, and the new nuances he throws in with each edition.

You can already learn some key points to keep in mind about the latest version of FCE in the Excerpt from the front of the book available for viewing on Amazon. It's worth the price of the book right there!

Tom works so hard providing lucid and practical support on the Apple Support page for FCE, and no doubt uses that to enhance the next edition. You're going to be getting his free advice sooner or later, so you might as well throw a few bucks his way and give him some credit for all that you will benefit from his wisdom. I've bought several of the other FCE books over the years, but Tom is the best.

Ron Carlson

This is a great "how to" book loaded with examples of how to implement genetic algorithms. The two main points this book makes is that many seemingly different problems can be reformulated as problems of program induction and that the genetic programming paradigm described in this book provides a way to do that program induction. No prior knowledge of conventional genetic algorithms is assumed. Thus the first three chapters are introductory material. In particular, chapter three describes the conventional genetic algorithm and introduces certain terms common to the conventional genetic algorithm and genetic programming. If you are already familiar with genetic algorithms you can skip ahead.

Chapter 4 discusses the representation problem for the conventional genetic algorithm operating on fixed-length character strings and variations of the conventional genetic algorithm dealing with structures more complex and flexible than fixed-length character strings. Since this book assumes no prior knowledge of the LISP programming language, section 4.2 describes LISP and section 4.3 outlines the reasons behind the choice of LISP for the implementation of solutions in this book. Chapter 5 provides an informal overview of the genetic programming paradigm and chapter 6 provides a detailed description of the techniques of genetic programming. Some readers may prefer to rely on chapter 5 and hold off on reading the detailed discussion in chapter 6 until they have read chapter 7 and the later chapters that contain examples.

Chapter 7 provides a detailed description of how to apply genetic programming to four introductory examples thus laying the groundwork for all of the problems to be described later in the book. Chapter 8 discusses the amount of computer processing required by the genetic programming paradigm to solve certain problems. Chapter 9 shows that the results obtained from genetic programming are not the fruits of a random search. Chapters 10 through 21 illustrate how to use genetic programming to solve a wide variety of problems from varying disciplines and are defined by the table of contents. The examples in these 12 chapters make up the heart of the book.

The final eight chapters discuss aspects of genetic algorithms common to all implementations. Chapter 22 discusses the implementation of genetic programming on parallel computer architectures. Chapter 23 discusses the ruggedness of genetic programming with respect to noise, sampling, change, and damage. Chapter 24 discusses the role of extraneous variables and functions, and chapter 25 presents the results of some experiments relating to operational issues in genetic programming. Chapter 26 summarizes the five major steps in preparing to use genetic programming while chapter 27 compares genetic programming to other machine learning paradigms. Chapter 28 is an interesting one in which the spontaneous emergence of self-replicating and self-improving computer programs is discussed. Chapter 29 attempts to wrap up the book with a conclusion.

This book is best used for its examples and practical viewpoint. There are certain matters, such as how to program in LISP, for which you will need dedicated books since the amount of detail in this book is not enough. I do highly recommend this book as a uniquely practical one on how to implement genetic algorithms via computer programs. I haven't found another with so much practical information.

I became interested in Genetic Programming after hearing one of the professors at our university lecture on it to a small group of students and other professors. I asked what book might be a good starting point and he pointed me here and i'm glad he did.

This first volume in the Genetic Programming series of books by Koza is very well organized and clear in its explanations. I have not tried the techniques presented yet, but I have some good ideas on how to proceed. The author uses LISP as the language of choice in the book, but practically any modern language should be sufficient.

If you have any interest in Genetic Programming, I encourage you to at least pick up this first volume and read through it. This technology is still relatively new and the application of the techniques seems virtually limitless.

If you are someone who plans to study Genetic Programming, or are already doing so and feel kind of lost about it, then you must read this book. It starts from the very top and brings you through all the steps of Genetic Programmin with tons of very useful examples.

This book is great!

Yeah, its a big book...weighs a ton. However, only the first few chapters are concerned with the basic mechanisms of GP (should be familiar to anyone with a background in genetic algorithms or evolutionary computation). The rest of the book is chock full of examples on how to apply GP. These examples are essential and very welcome. I've found that I can usually find a solved problem in Koza that is similar to what I'm after, then I adapt it to my needs. This is a great reference, but don't be fooled into thinking this book is a tutorial. Think of it more as an exposition of GP with examples. For a tutorial, look somewhere else.

The book was very large but enjoyable and made the subject very clear and easy to understand. It explained the genetic programming algorithm very well and showed the results of many experiments to show applicability, limitations, and characteristics of the method.

There was some repetition in places, maybe because the author wanted to emphasize some points and also to remain understandable to persons who may read selected chapters or examples rather than from cover to cover, page by page.

Although the book states that Genetic Programming does not depend on the LISP language or features, it uses LISP as its exclusive language of choice. I would like to implement these generally very computationally intensive Genetic Programming Algorithms in a very fast and efficient way, which for me implies assembly language, and although the author gives good tips about making the algorithm run faster the implementation shown is all LISP and nothing else. I am also interested in using the algorithm to generate efficient, parsimonious, code. The author described the additional problems of parsimony, but gave no information on generation of fast code from S expressions. I will have to refer to some compiler books and my own experiments to go further in this area.

I look forward to experimenting with the subject and reading some of Dr. Koza's other books on the subject.

This is a must-have resource. Gorgeous illustrations, detailed descriptions and referenced by the leaders in the field.

it is amazing that such an authoritative text can actually be written. but there it is!. a masterpiece, which is so encompasing that words fail. braunwald has a tradition and every new edition is a towering giant over the previous.seeing is beleiving, thus i strongly recommend this text to any one wishing to perfect himself in any aspect of cardiology.

Dr. James Thogtam: A classic book for those in the field

WITH THE SEVENTH EDITION OF BRAUNwald's Heart Disease, the editors have accomplished an impressive feat: improving on an already classic text. With 36 new chapters and full-color figures and photographs, the new edition is substantially altered in both content and appearance. Compared with the rather limited color-plate photographs in the sixth edition, the color photographs, figures, and tables in each chapter significantly enhance the new text.

Informative chapters on the foundations of cardiovascular medicine remain, including detailed discussions of history taking, physical examination, and electrocardiography, topics often overshadowed in an era of rapidly progressive medical technology.....

The seventh edition of Braunwald's Heart Disease would be a worthy addition to the medical library of any practicing cardiologist, cardiology fellow, or health care practitioner with a special interest in heart disease.

THIS MASTERPIECE IN CARDIOLOGY BRINGS TO SPECIALISTS AND HEALTH PROVIDERS IN GENERAL THE APPROACH TO KNOWLEDGE FOR SUCCEDING IN THEIR TASKS.SINCE THE BASIC AND SIMPLE TO THE MOST COMPLEX UPDATED AWARENESS, THIS ENCYCLOPEDIA CONVEYS THE READER THROUGH THE RIGHT PATH, AS A DIDACTIC AND AMUSING STORY OF CARDIOLOGY.
RAUL M. MARCH MD

Anyone familiar with Dr. Braunwald's superb cardiovascular exploits in the "Harrison's Principles of Internal Medicine" would not be surprised by the richness of this book.
The diligently crafted chapters are comprehensive, authoritative, well-illustrated, and include all the 'ins' and 'outs' of contemporary cardiology. It is one of the most consistent and coherent multi-authored texts in the field.
This single-volume CD-ROM package is a rich blend of evidence based medicine, best practice, and all the user-flexibility an e-book enthusiast would expect.

Image processing is used to improve the visual appearance and transmission of images to a the human eye. It also concerns the preparation of images with respect to measuring an image's features and structures. Now in a newly updated and significantly expanded fifth edition, "The Image Processing Handbook" by academician John C. Russ (Materials Science and Engineering Department, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, North Carolina) "The Image Processing Handbook" features an informative chapter explaining which visual cues elicit a response from the viewer; descriptions of the latest hardware and software for image acquisition and printing including digital cameras; multichannel images and an analysis of their principle components; the issues of deconvolution, extended dynamic range images, and image enlargement and interpolation, and so much more. Enhanced with more than 2000 illustrations, and with the availability of a companion CD-ROM, "The Image Processing Handbook" is a seminal and essential addition to professional and academic library Computer Science and Electrical Engineering reference collections.

This, the fifth edition of this industry standard reference book on image processing has been significantly expanded. There are some 600 new and revised images. A major feature of the new edition is to describe the new advances that have come about in hardware for image capture and printing. This includes both new versions of traditional equipment and new emerging technologies. The text has been expanded in areas like deconvolution, extended-dynamic-range images and multichannel imaging including principal-components analysis.

In general this book does not cover the background mathematics that enables image processing. Those are left to specialty books on the subject. Instead this book is intended to be used in conjunction with hands-on equipment where the reader is encouraged to experiment with different methods to determine what is needed for the particular job.

While suitable for use as a text, this book is really a handbook for technical users. The book is more oriented to what the various tools availavle to help actually do.

I am a biologist with a little background in math. Using this book and matlab I could quickly implement basic feature recognition tools to analyze microscope images. The book focuses on concepts and explains them in intuitive language rather than in mathematical terms. Overall, it worked perfectly for me, but could be over-simplying for people with technical background.

John Russ' book on image processing was never intended to be a textbook on how to understand and write your own image processing algorithms, as you might believe by looking through the table of contents. It does cover just about everything you would see in such a textbook, but from a user's standpoint of these operations, not as an author of image processing code who needs to understand the algorithms behind these operations. Instead, Russ explains all of the operations, their value in various applications, and provides many illustrations showing before and after pictures of what each operation does. There are no algorithms, pseudocode, or mathematics in this book.

The jewel in the crown of this book is the companion CD. It contains over 200 Photoshop plug-ins for performing the operations mentioned in this book. These plug-ins work on 8-bit grayscale and 24 bit RGB images and are divided into the categories of image adjustment, color manipulation, image math, boolean operations, Fourier processing, morphological operations, neighborhood processing, distance-map operations, thresholding, feature measurement, calibration, stereology, and surface rendering. The bad news is that you have to obtain the CD separately. If you need to understand the detailed mathematics behind such operations, you might consult Digital Image Processing by Gonzalez and Woods, and then come back to this book for the tools to accomplish the operations explained in that book. The updates to this fifth edition include an additional chapter on human vision and how it ties into image processing. Also, the author has updated his sections on image acquisition hardware and software to describe the latest tools available. Finally, the topic of tomographic imaging has been expanded and given its own chapter and the chapter on 3-D image acquisition has been deleted.

This is an excellent book on image processing from a systems engineering and user standpoint. You will be disappointed if you expect to learn the algorithms behind the techniques demonstrated in this book.

As others have stated, this book comes as close as you'll ever get to a single-source reference on image processing. But if I were ever going to shoot anything down in it, I'd say that a little more mathematical background on some topics (and maybe pseudocoded examples) would help. For example, in the satellite geometric correction section, only a very high level view is given yet this is a challenging topic that could use more depth. Geometric transformations in general could use more depth, e.g. camera calibrations or image warping/morphing/mapping to other projections for example. Another example would be the need for a little more depth on how to make slow algorithms fast ...like convolution multiplications for example. Sure, you could write out the multiplies and spot commonalities, then re-use results that appear in more than one subsequent equation and what not, but some exploration of matrix math and how to make it efficient would be nice. But again ...I'm picking at small things here, and if John's book covered everything that I'd like it to, then it would become 2 books, not one ...hey! Now THERE's an idea! A 2+ book set by John Russ that covers a broader range of topics and does so in greater depth! That's something that I'd pay for (and much better to read than Ballard & Brown)

After several trips to car shows with my husband, I had lots of beautiful photos sitting in iPhoto ready to print. I thought a DVD would be more useful and enjoyable for him, and tried to make a DVD project - NOT! Having already used The Missing Manual books, I promptly went out and bought this one. Great choice, as it filled in the blanks and gave me lots of ideas also. I am a photographer, not a tech person, and am pretty clueless when it comes to creating projects on the computer.

This series suits me perfectly and the book is highly recommended - with the aid of the book I sat down and promptly made a beautiful DVD, with lots of lovely effects, great music, and best of all it was easy. My husband was very happy with his DVD and watches it often.

The manual is clear, concise, easy to read and enjoyable. Unlike so many texts, it is not dry or overly technical. Anyone can make a great DVD easily with this reference. Next project - a video. Ready.....

This is the book you really want if you use iMovie at all!

I had recently started using a Mac at work, and suddenly I was put in a position to work with video on the Mac. Mr. Pogue's other books had been very helpful to me as I began to learn my way around the Mac, so I thought I would pick up this one to help me with my video work. I was very glad that I did. You see, iMovie HD has tools that help your movie look professional, but the iMovie HD help files are very tedious to go through. There is a great deal of referencing, cross-referencing, and nothing is smoothly laid out. This book is another story, as it is very well laid out with clear instructions and illustrations. It is very long, but since these applications are powerful, it would be expected that any clear explanation of them is going to require some space.
What is particularly good about this book is that the author doesn't assume you are a professional video author, and he spends part one of the book helping you learn how to shoot videos and shares tricks that will make you good at it. Part 2 is dedicated to iMovie, and shares not just how to use the application, but the little extras that will make your video special - transitions, effects, titles, captions, and even how to work with sound in your movie. Part 3, on finding your audience, was another unexpected treat. There the author shows you how to move between iMovie and Quicktime, and how to post your movie to your phone and to the web. Part 4 of the book is on iDVD. I particularly liked the chapter on iDVD secrets, where the author shows how you can use AppleScript to customize iDVD itself.
It's hard to believe that a year ago I didn't even know how to use a Mac, and now I am quite the fan, especially when it comes to multimedia applications. I notice Amazon does not show the table of contents, so I do that here:
Part 1: CAPTURING DV FOOTAGE
1. The DV Camcorder
2. Turning Home Video into Pro Video
3. Special Event Filming
Part 2: EDITING IN IMOVIE
4. Camcorder Meets Mac
5. Building the Movie
6. Transitions and Effects
7. Titles, Captions, and Credits
8. Narration, Music, and Sound
9. Still Pictures and QuickTime Movies
10. Professional Editing Techniques
Part 3: FINDING YOUR AUDIENCE
11. Back to the Camcorder
12. From iMovie to QuickTime
13. Movies on the Web - And on the Phone
14. QuickTime Player
Part 4: iDVD5
15. From iMovie to iDVD
16. iDVD Projects by Hand
17. Designing iDVD Themes
18. iDVD Secrets
Part 5: Appendixes
A. iMovie HD: Menu by Menu
B. Troubleshooting
C. Master Keyboard Shortcut List

Very informative AND entertaining! If you feel you are even the least bit interested in breaking into digital film making this book is fantastic. I have been using iMovie for several years now and have a camcorder. However, I thought this book might help me kick things up a notch. It certainly will. I have only gotten through the first fifty pages, but I've already learned enough justify this purchase.

When I first received this rather intimidating 450+ page book I thought I would use it mainly for reference. Well, that was before I started reading it. Now I find it hard put down. It is very well written and arranged by areas of interest.

This book is great for everyone, from beginner to expert. It will undoubtedly prove to be a very valuable reference book in the future, but for now it's a great read.

If you're a heavy user of iMovieHD and iDVD, this book is a must. Most questions that users have about both software can be found in this manual (though he doesn't read like a boring manual). Pogue not only provides all the how-tos for learning the software, he also helps you troubleshoot problems that will crop in movie and DVD productions. There's hardly no aspect of either software that I didn't find covered in this book.

As a veteran Oracle DBA, I had some potential customers with both Informix and Oracle to support and since I had not used Informix in 5 years, I needed to brush up on my Informix skills. This book is unfortunately now out of print, but my copy from 5 years ago is still used on occasion. I agree with other poster that on a general DBA basis, it covers Informix quite well. I just wish that it had more coverage of high available clustering and replication topics as well as troubleshooting problems with Informix. Still good and only book that really covers Informix in detail.

This is a really good look and is suitable for both the novice and expert. There should have been more coverage of topics on HA & Replication. Also it is sad that it does not cover the latest releases. As this is out of publication, I paid a bit more than original price for a used look, but it was worth its weight in gold. The reseller from Ohio promptly sent me the book and answered my calls. Book arrived in new and good Condition. The book's website has been neglected. It needs some attention. Visited the InformiX users group for info and latest trial software after talking to the author, when I found that the CD needed keys. In the end everything was available at www.iiug.org and I had a pleasant experience using the book.

All In All A Good Book.

Of all the books I have read about Informix, Flannery's is the easiest to use. The topics are well organized and cross-referenced, which helps me find what I need quickly. In addition, the book has a web site which keeps it current. Also, the book's numerous examples make it easy for me to apply the knowledge it contains. I love the formatting and the way that I don't have to read hundreds of pages to find the answers. Well done!

This book is awesome, I just wish more topics including replication, more detailed troubleshooting techniques, and finally a good DBA practices/methods section. I now have two books, one for work and one for home. It is constantly open on my desk (both places). The sections on privileges and optimizing indexes have been my favorites due to the easy layout. Each section presented the infomation in clear and concise ways, allowing for quick implementation.

As a new DBA (1yr.), I can't thank Mr. Flannery enough. I only wish the rest of the Informix Press books would strive to meet or exceed this standard.

Since I'm new to Informix, I was forever looking for a book that would help me get a better understanding on how to support Informix databases. The Informix user manuals were very unorganized make it very difficult to get the answers I needed. This book is well organized, making it easy to locate the needed information. There are plenty of useful examples that are easy to understand. This book has now become my main reference source. For the novice or expert, this book should should be in your reference library.

I have taught a course in computation theory for computer science majors for almost two decades. Before the first time, I had never had any of the material in a course so I was required to learn the material on my own. This was the book that I used. For about a month, I set aside a block of time each day and went through the material section by section. When I had completed each section, I would work a few of the problems and would not move on until I understood what the answers should be.
The coverage is:

*) Deterministic and nondeterministic finite automata
*) Regular expressions
*) Context-free grammars and languages
*) Chomsky normal form
*) Pushdown automata
*) Turing machines
*) Post machines
*) The relationship between machines and computers

When it came time to teach the class for the first time, it all went very smoothly. This remains the most readable book for the self-study of computation theory that I have ever seen. Cohen has written a later, more concise edition and that is what I have been using as the text in my course.

I read it during my undergraduate, it was the course book for the thoery of automata course. More recently when I tried the popular "Introduction to Automata Theory, Languages, and Computation" by Hopcroft et al. for the purpose of revising the concepts, I realized how great this book is. It is definitely a better book than Hopcroft et al's, with in-depth explanations of all topics, lots of examples and exercises and in a writing style very friendly for the novice readers. Very good work!

I must say this is one of the best books I have ever read. The auther is humorous and insightful. He manages to take very abstract concepts and explain them in clear concrete terms and metaphors.

The book has one important attribute: it's clear, undoubtedly. Having a minimum of prerequisites, I think there's no way to not understand what Prof. Cohen says through its pages. It makes the job of learning this part of theory easier than any other text.
But ... but I can't totally agree with Cohen's crusade against formalism. I agree that the first target of a book should be to clearly transmit the intended knowledge, and Cohen perfectly succeeds in this. But formalism too has its importance, thereafter. A compact and clear formalism helps to communicate efficiently, and moreover unambiguously. Like in mathematics, the first, important thing is to understand. Yet, there's no way for you to efficiently work with math without using any kind of formalism, should it be more or less "standard".
That's it: a very powerful book for a "profound" understanding of the subject; a bit more of natural formalism would make it a "complete" understanding also, and the book a five stars one.

This an excellent book. Basically, the whole point of it is to mathematically define what a computer is and prove that it works. The author does this by defining and manipulating mathematical alphabets and languages without resorting to any kind of advanced math. Starting from nothing, the whole thing leads up to Turing Machines. More specifically, according to the Preface, the goals of the book are:

"(1) to introduce a student of Computer Science to the need for and the working of mathematical proof; (2) to develop facility with the concepts, notations, and techniques of the theories of Automata, Formal Languages, and Turing machines; and (3) to provide historical perspective on the creation of the computer with a profound understanding of some of its capabilities and limitations."

The author did a wonderful job of it. Plus, unlike almost all other computer/math books I've read, this book is almost enjoyable to read. Again, as stated in the Preface:

"This book is written for students with no presumed background of any kind. Every mathematical concept used is introduced from scratch. Extensive examples and illustrations spell out everything in detail to avoid any possibility of confusion."

Astonishingly, those are all true statements. At a guess, I'd say that almost anyone interested in computers could get through this book without undue stress. To make it more meaningful, I'd suggest (only suggest) prerequisites of having programmed a computer and knowing some discrete math. From that point of view, it's odd that as of last year, this book was used in Florida State University's (FSU's) COT 4420: "Theory of Computation" course, which, obviously, is a 4000 level course requiring various prerequisites that put it out of the reach of all but senior (or graduate) level students.

Now, with all that glowing out of the way, there are a couple of small problems with the book. The first is simply that the exercises don't have any solutions. For the self-studyer, that's a bad thing. In a school teaching environment, it's probably acceptable, though. The second problem is that after getting through the book, I simply have to ask: "So what? WHY should I learn this?" Again, in the Preface, the author states:

"Leaving aside the obvious worth of knowledge for its own sake, the terminology, notations, and techniques of Computer Theory are necessary in the teaching of courses on computer design, Artificial Intelligence, the analysis of algorithms, and so forth. Of all the programming skills undergraduate students learn, two of the most important are the abilities to recognize and manipulate context-free grammars and to understand the power of the recursive interaction of parts of a procedure. Very little can be accomplished if each advanced course has to begin at the level of defining rules of production and derivations."

But, in my experience, I have to say that except for one reference in one other book I've read, I've never seen any of this stuff used. Even more, I've never known anyone who even knew of anyone who used (or even knew of) any of it. EVERYTHING has been done at a much higher level of abstraction than alphabets, languages, and various levels of algorithms and machines up to Turing Machines. I'm not saying that the material in this book isn't used SOMEWHERE. But, I'd honestly have liked to have seen actual, specific, concrete cases: they'd be fascinating.

So, factoring those two nits in, I rate this book at 4 stars out of 5. If those two things don't bother you, then you could easily consider this a 5 star book.

Although it's the teacher's addition it actually work better for my benefit, it has all the odd and even answers in the back. It doesn't come with the solution book but that's fine with me for the price i'm giving. Overall it's worth my money

This is a great text book....easy to understand and really helpful. And I'm awful at math! haha

Great condition for a used book. Plus you can't beat the price at any College Bookstore.

I picked this book (sixth edition) from many others after watching my daughter struggling with Mario Triola's Elementary Statistics that her teacher used in the classroom. I wish Weiss's Statistics was her (and mine) first encounter with the subject. The book is well written and structured, easy understandable, and at the same time interesting and engaging to learn more. My daughter found it very helpful. I also enjoyed reading the book; it helped me to put my knowledge in order and finally understand the logic behind different hypothesis tests and other statistical concepts. If you always wanted to learn basic statistics just read this one book and you will be surprised to discover that learning and applying statistics can be easy and fun (do exercises!).

I can not say enough about this book I have never taken a class in statistics for fear that I would fail it .However, this book mapped it out so well if you fail the class it won't be because of this product.My first grade was a 94%, which is great for a person who hates math. I breezed through the class with this book. purchase it you will not be sorry.