Computer and Science Books

Walters' comprehensive knowledge of the world of IT and incredible ability to explain complex concepts make this book a fascinating read for any gadget geek interested in how stuff actually works. And he doesn't settle for simple, surface level explanations. Instead of shying away from the details and tech-speak, Walters takes you one step further than you thought you could ever go through insightful examples and meaningful analogies.

In addition, his ability to put technological developments in context allow the reader to see the larger factors and trends that have and continue to drive change. A seemingly chaotic and overwhelmingly fast-changing industry suddenly seems logical and "trackable" after reading Walters' book. In this way, it's easy to forgive the fact that the text is a bit out of date. Everything I've read about today's technology I've easily been able to connect back to the ideas I learned here.

Truly one of a kind.

It is very cool book, I would say valuable book to build up your understanding of IT in general. It converges many technologies into one coherent pattern so you start to understand many things. I combined reading of this book with "UNIX Essentials" DVD and it nice to explore many of the conceptions in action. If you are lacking some evenness with your IT knowledge pick this one it is nicely shape your vision of it.

With 6+ years marketing management experience and an MBA, I feel this book was very helpful in understanding the many facets of technology and its evolution through time. The book is a must read for anyone who needs to build or brush up on a solid but basic understanding of technology. However, many of the newest trends in technology are only briefly covered. This is due, I believe, to the fact that many of the pervasive technologies and collaborative applications now being pushed in the marketplace didn't make the editor's draft of the book even though the published date is 2001.

There is a great breadth of information presented in a very lucid fashion. The material is easy to understand, and the author adds a great sense of humor.
However, with the rapid advancements in technology, the book is a bit dated. I would highly recommend this book to anyone who wants a gain a great breadth of knowledge in the field of Information technology, in a short period of time.

THE ESSENTIAL GUIDE TO COMPUTING is simply an extraordinary achievement. It reflects a breadth of knowledge and clarity of presentation that is remarkable. It makes every effort to distill knowledge about computers and computing in an easy, reader-friendly, memorable way. For computer users everywhere -- in organizations, schools, colleges and universities, and individuals -- this volume gives multiple ways of getting to know more about computing in its fast changing environment. First, you get to know the foundations of how computers and computing works in practical, everyday language. Second, you get a reference book that explains key terms, key workings, and key interconnections among the parts.

The most noteworthy aspect of the book is its superb coherence in presenting vast amounts of computing knowledge arranged in for easy understanding. Information and explanations in one chapter are referenced in subsequent ones, never failing to explain connections among them, with a view to present an overall picture of how computers and computing works.

Each chapter highlights technical terms related to computing and information technology, provides an overview of specific aspects as for example "An Overview of How Storage Works" (Chapter 2, p.40), and highlights in grey explanations of widely used terms such as "Disks From a User's Perspective" (p. 56). Each chapter also ends with a summary list of questions that focus on self-evaluating one's grasp of the chapter's contents.

E. Garrison Walters' book will continue to enrich the understanding of all who enjoy working with computers at work or for pleasure. I wish this book had been available to guide me in computing long before I found it, and, that I had written it ! It is a remarkable achievement!

Overall this is a really great book with lots of examples and good problems, however my complaint is that some of the problems haven't been covered in the examples and so they are too difficult to solve. For instance, in the chapter on node voltages, none of the examples covers floating voltage sources that have other components like resistors in series with them, yet a number of the problems involve such floating voltage sources. I had to refer to the Schaum's Outline of Basic Circuit Analysis (another very good book, btw) to find an example problem for that.
If you're looking for books on electric circuits, however, I would definitely recommend this one along with the Schaum's Outline book I mentioned above.

This is a decent start for novice engineers. Unlike other texts on the same subject it has very effective methodology of teaching the very basic concepts of electric circuits. A bulk of solved examples is there to help you understand techniques of circuit analysis. It really soothed me when I was suffering from "circuit phobia". This text is highly recommended by me for beginners.

I am very satisfied with Alexander's book. Compared with any other book in this field, the others actually don't really stand a chance. Why? Because you can actually teach from this book EFFECTIVELY. The pedagogy works here, whereas many other authors have unfortunately failed. The communication works; and the chemistry works too. I think we engineers really need to realize this important issue. And always try to improve.

This one book ist the best Engineer book for me since my undergraduate years. The great difference between this one and others are the very illustrativ problems. Charles Alexander is somewhat well known as an engineering educator - I could very feel this from the book's layout.

This is probably the most useful engineering textbook I have on my shelf. Not only is it very easy to understand, but as a reference, I like it even better! The math is lucid, yet never overwhelming, and in addition, the problems are quite interesting. I highly recommend this book, rather than Nilsson's. (I think one of the Authors of this book has written/edited an EE handbook as well, which I am less familiar with. Maybe I'd check that one out too)

While this is not a book for a graduate level computer science course, it is an excellent text for a general management audience or perhaps an undergraduate information systems curriculum. Canavan covers the right areas at the right depth in a very real and practical sense. Because of its practical nature, it may be a bit outdated in 3 more years, but since its release in 2001 it has been "on the money."

I do wish the price was lower, or that it was offered in paperback.

This Network security book is non-technical, yet it is detail enough to make you comprehend the material easily. Among other things, the book discusses in detail firewalls, intrusion detection, and the importance of policies. By pointing all the key points, you get what you must know to tie them all. It is an excellent book for someone who aspires to be a network security manager.

This Network security book is non-technical, yet it is detail enough to make you comprehend the material easily. Among other things, the book discusses in detail firewalls, intrusion detection, and the importance of policies. By pointing all the key points, you get what you must know to tie them all. It is an excellent book for someone who aspires to be a network security manager.

I am not an expert in all aspect of security, thus I find the book very informative. Security is a chain of process covering all inter-connected equipment and applications. The book not just descibed (briefly) network security, but also includes systems and applications. The title of the book could be misleading as it reads 'Network Security', it could have just been 'IT Security'. There are some misleading information in certain vendor specific systems, which I am familiar, causing me to doubt the accuracy of the other vendor specific information, which I am not familiar. The author could have kept all information as neutral and avoid treading on thin ice. I do not think a second edition will be published unless the book is re-written.

The book is well written and the concepts it covers are both current and relative. It covers the concepts of basic computer and network security and basic terminology to disaster recovery plans. One of the major concepts I found very interesting was the idea of how much is enough security. He reduces it to relatively easy terms; make the computer or network secure enough for any would be hacker to be discouraged and go somewhere else less protected. His explanation of symmetric (private key) and asymmetric (public key) encryption and digital certificates was especially helpful in helping me understand those concepts. The explanation regarding the different types of firewalls was also very informative. Toward the end of the book, the author covers a subject frequently left out of any discussion of network security - security policies and procedures. He stresses the importance of these for any administrator to be able to identify possible security leaks.

This is an excellent book for any potential reader who is looking for a text which gives an overall viewpoint of computer and network security without getting bogged down in the details of any one facet of security.

I liked when they ran from the police because it was not only exciting, but they did a lot, too. Like play Meteors, run away from some gangsters, try to find a copy of their game, and actually play their game that had virus in it. I also liked how the author switched to the police, and then back to the twins. He usually did this between chapters. I didn't like how he explained the hole in the back of the neck that was used to plug the human brain to the game. That was digusting! No one in the future would do that! Of course no one would be that crazy to get a plug in the back of their neck, because it would be quite costly. All in all I thought that it was good because it started out quick, and had a lot of detail. This is a very good book. A must read for you Sci-fi readers!!

I'm 14 years old, and I still enjoy this book as a quick read. I've always been a minor fan of video games, and what attracted me was the cover of the book. Very nicely done. Then I began reading it. Takes place in the future, blah blah blah. BUT, unlike many other sci-fi novels, this description of the futur is as dark and infested as others. Sure, there are the major slums and acid rains and society is in a rut, but that didn't detract from the novel at all. It actually enphasized the bootleg video game part vendors that were around, and all the places the twins could go to escape the cops.
From the very beginning, the book readl ike and RPG/Adventure game. Y'know: the characters had to go on little quests and met an assorment of characters. Then, they go into the game. Not only does this game sound like one heck of a game, but there's a bug in it. They have to get it out. I guess that is the supreme ordeal of the novel. The twins (Liz and BJ) went into hiding b/c the police were after them for making a game that put people into a coma. Now, they are trying to fix the bug. So they go on this quest.
This book is recommended for any age. For the kids, it's a thrilling page-turner, and for the older guys, its a quick 2-hour read with an ending that will leave you speechless. Buy this book. Its worth it.

Hi,
I am a 14 year old, I hate to read, and i hate books, one day i was looking throught the library, and i noticed this book in the online cataloge, I looked it up and immidiatly loved it after 1 page, i took it out and had it read within 1 week, This book is amazing, delivering more than an entertaining book, it has a suspensive plot that keeps you reading for hours on end! Now, im buying it to put it in my "fairly small" Collection hehe!

Hi,
I am a 14 year old, I hate to read, and i hate books, one day i was looking throught the library, and i noticed this book in the online cataloge, I looked it up and immidiatly loved it after 1 page, i took it out and had it read within 1 week, This book is amazing, delivering more than an entertaining book, it has a suspensive plot that keeps you reading for hours on end! Now, im buying it to put it in my "fairly small" Collection hehe!

Hi,
I am a 14 year old, I hate to read, and i hate books, one day i was looking throught the library, and i noticed this book in the online cataloge, I looked it up and immidiatly loved it after 1 page, i took it out and had it read within 1 week, This book is amazing, delivering more than an entertaining book, it has a suspensive plot that keeps you reading for hours on end! Now, im buying it to put it in my "fairly small" Collection hehe!

This order was handled above and beyond the call of duty. They handled everything, including the problem of USPS losing the package. No questions were asked and the book was reshipped immediately. Thank You for the great service.

This book opened my eyes. I'd finished a Ph.D. in computer science, and had a decent exposure to quite a few programming languages and paradigms, before coming across this book. I was surprised to start working through this introductory book, and find myself learning new things! The book transformed my approach to programming.

From page one, HtDP starts talking about good program design, and gives a methodical approach. Until this, I'd always thought programming books were "here are ten small example programs; go write ten more." That's hardly teaching. But HtDP builds up a straightforward design recipe, to guide programs along. If I get stuck or have a mistake in my program, 90% of the time I realize it's because I strayed from the book's recipe. The approach is language-independent, although some programming environments make it much easier to implement the design recipe; the book provides links to a good (free) Scheme environment, which it uses for its code examples too. (I've come to use that environment day-to-day). My code--in any language--has become much more robust, and when I do have a bug I usually locate it early, thanks to this book.

In addition, HtDP made me think about things I'd taken for granted: How is assignment to a variable fundamentally different than assignment to a structure's field? Even, *why* do I use assignment statements in certain situations, instead of choosing a functional approach? How often do my programs actually need the efficiency of imprecise floating-point arithmetic, vs using bignums which totally liberate me from numerical inaccuracy?

Although the text is available on line, I cherish my hardcopy. This is a book to first learn programming from, and one to revisit every five years.

As a programming do-it-yourselfer I've had many conflicting responses to this text -- it's didactic style, its attention to detail, its sometimes patronizing tone, its rigor and broad scope and at the same time its immersion in minutia and quiddities I have never encountered in 'computer books' I had ever perused. Perhaps it's my liberal arts background, or love 'em/hate 'em sensitivity to all those broad stiff-spined textbooks I had carried in back-packs since childhood, combined with a disdain for the authoritative stilted style these educators exude -- despite their patent love of their subject. I felt at once both patronized and condescended to.
From the very start of their journey into a detailed six step-by-step process that show the reader how to analyze problem statements, how to formulate goals, make up examples, outline a solution, and test a solution the authors proclaim their pedagogical ends: "We [...] believe that the study of program design deserves the same central role in general education as mathematics and English. Or, put more succinctly, everyone should learn how to design programs..." This is not a textbook, this is a revolutionary pamphlet calling for educational reform. I had read nothing like this in the tens of 'Dummies' and 'In 24 Hours' books I had exposed myself to. One part priggish, two parts pedagogic. I often found myself asking for whom was it written? First-year college student?, ambitious would-be high-school programmer wanna-be? Math mavens? Surely not a middle-aged bookish clerk who tastes run more to Turgenev and Dostoevsky than Turing and Dijkstra. But then I demanded more than mere anonymous web-lurking from my lowly pc. I remember myself many years ago trying to learn BASIC on a massive time-share computer and telling myself surely there was had to be more magic to computing than this. Well, after reading more texts and having had to unlearn the 'Dummies' and the 'In 24 hours' style of disinformation I had finally found the marrow of a discipline that is as demanding as any I had ever come across and as vexing as any artistic rigor I had ever been inspired by. Come be confused, come be amused, amazed and intellectually abused. Sorely, if I find I have little talent for this excruciatingly logical endevour, I have also found a full-blown appreciation of such daunting computational cheekiness. Much to learn here, and this is only the "core subject of a liberal arts education." What had I been wasting my time on all those years as a professional student?

I have been professionally developing software for about 5 years. I found this book to be one of the most useful and helpful books to help my coding skills. Even though I have been programming professionally for a few years and have a computer science degree, I learned a lot of new neat concepts from this book. It also helped to me to remind me of all the basic good practices that I have forgotten.

It is also an excellent book for beginners. The books doesn't use a popular programming language like Java to accomplish its goals. Instead, it uses Scheme so the student can focus on the concepts rather than syntax. It also teaches great concepts and breaks the problem down on how to solve various problems. Also it isn't "hardcore" like SICP-- it is very friendly to non-MIT level people.

Great book! I liked the way the author approaches how to begin designing programs. I am half-way through the book and I am finding it very entertaining. Yeap! I recommend this book.

Exactly as described, fast delivery. I will always try to choose amazon from now on.

This book is THE best LP book I have come across. The topics are very clear and presented in the best possible manner. Introduces you to several basic and advanced LP topics, theorems and algorithms. The exercises at the end of each chapter test the students' understanding in an appropriate manner. A good number of examples are given to explain the theory in a better way. I would definitely recommend this book to a student interested in learning about optimization procedures and/or algorithm development.

Surely helps if you have taken a linear algebra course before. Some students who haven't had a linear algebra course find the math nomenclature formidable in the beginning.

This book is impressive for theory, every thing you ever wanted to know or how to avoid some other is here. I teach to industrial engineering students, so i have to use other books for the application, but for the theory, everything is covered here, even more, in the book are several simple rules to avoid tipical problems of the simplex method or transportation problems, or integer forms. You can't call yourself a pro if you haven't read this book.

Most part can be expressed in a more terse way and with math language. However, the book revolve around using very lengthy sentence to explain, which is not so helpful and clear as expressed with math. It can be condensed to half thickness.

The best part of this book is the first half, where the foundations of linear programming are presented in a clear yet relatively rigorous fashion, accompanied by numerous intuitive geometrical explanations of the abstract general concepts. This approach, supplementing mathematics with graphical insights, works extremely well for this topic.

The quality goes down somewhat, perhaps neccessarily, in the latter half of the book as topics are presented less carefully, and in a somewhat rushed manner in order to cover all of the material the authors decided to include. Given that the fundamentals are covered so well, perhaps this is a fair trade.

The only real negative I can think of is that it's a small crime for professors to create their own publishing companies (Athena only publishes works by a small group of MIT professors) and then still charge outrageous amounts for the books. This would be completely unacceptable were it not for the fact that, unlike most self-published work, this book's production quality is on par with that of the large publishers.

The book doesn't teach you Java. It is assumed that you already know Java.
doesn't cover all of Numerical calculus and not all of mathematical proofs but great if you are looking study practical programming with Java.

I recommend this book only if you know Java and have basic numerical knowledge.

This book is an introduction to numerical computing that is both comprehensive and fun. It is not a textbook on numerical methods or numerical analysis, although it shows many key numerical algorithms all coded up in Java. The book examines these algorithms enough that you get a feel for how they work and why they're useful, without formally proving why they work. There are also demonstrations of many of the algorithms with interactive graphical programs. Overall I enjoyed this book a great deal. It is not a beginner's book on Java - you should be a pretty good Java programmer already. Also, you should be at least somewhat mathematically mature for the material past part one. That is, you should have had some Calculus and some Linear Algebra prior to reading the last 3 of the 4 parts of this book. I further describe this book in the context of its table of contents.

Part 1: WHY GOOD COMPUTATIONS GO BAD - Simply copying formulas out of a math or statistics textbook to plug into a program will almost certainly lead to wrong results. The first part of this book covers the pitfalls of basic numerical computation.

Chapter 1 discusses floating-point numbers in general and how they're different from the real numbers of mathematics. Not understanding these differences, such as the occurrence of roundoff errors, and not obeying some basic laws of algebra can lead to computations that go bad.

Chapter 2 looks at the seemingly benign integer types. They don't behave entirely as the whole numbers of mathematics do. Arithmetic operations such as addition, subtraction, and multiplication take place not on a number line, but on a clock face.

Chapter 3 examines how Java implements its floating-point types. The chapter examines the IEEE 754 floating-point standard and shows how well Java meets its provisions.

Part 2: ITERATIVE COMPUTATIONS - Computers are certainly good at looping, and many computations are iterative. But loops are where errors can build up and overwhelm the chance for any meaningful results.

Chapter 4 shows that even seemingly innocuous operations, such as summing a list of numbers, can cause trouble. Examples show how running floating-point sums can gradually lose precision and offer some ways to prevent this from happening.

Chapter 5 is about finding the roots of an algebraic equation, which is another way of saying, "Solve for x." It introduces several iterative algorithms that converge upon solutions: bisection, regula falsi, improved regula falsi, secant, Newton's, and fixed-point. This chapter also discusses how to decide which algorithm is appropriate.

Chapter 6 poses the question, Given a set of points in a plane, can you construct a smooth curve that passes through all the points, or how about a straight line that passes the closest to all the points? This chapter presents algorithms for polynomial interpolation and linear regression.

Chapter 7 tackles some integration problems from freshman calculus, but it solves them numerically. It introduces two basic algorithms, the trapezoidal algorithm and Simpson's algorithm.

Chapter 8 is about solving differential equations numerically. It covers several popular algorithms, Euler's, predictor-corrector, and Runge-Kutta.

Part 3: A MATRIX PACKAGE - This part of the book incrementally develops a practical matrix package. You can then import the classes of this package into any Java application that uses matrices.

Chapter 9 develops the matrix class for the basic operations of addition, subtraction, and multiplication. It also covers subclasses for vectors and square matrices. The chapter's interactive demo uses graphic transformation matrices to animate a three-dimensional wire-frame cube.

Chapter 10 first reviews the manual procedure you learned in high school to solve systems of linear equations. It then introduces LU decomposition to solve linear systems using matrices. An interactive demo creates polynomial regression functions of any order from 1 through 9, which requires solving a system of "normal" equations.

Chapter 11 uses LU decomposition to compute the inverse of a matrix efficiently and reliably. A demo program tests how well you can invert the dreaded Hilbert matrices, which are notoriously difficult to invert accurately. The chapter also computes determinants and condition numbers of matrices, and it compares different algorithms for solving linear systems.

Part 4: THE JOYS OF COMPUTATION - The final part of this book covers its lighter side of numerical computation.

Chapter 12 covers Java's BigNumber and BigDecimal classes, which support "arbitrary precision" arithmetic--subject to memory constraints, you can have numbers with as many digits as you like. This chapter explores how these classes can be useful. You compute a large prime number with more than 3,000 digits, and you write functions that can compute values such as the square root of two and e^x to an arbitrary number of digits of precision.

Mathematicians over the centuries have created formulas for computing the value of pi. Enigmatic Indian mathematician Ramanujan devised several very ingenious ones in the early 20th century. An iterative algorithm supposedly can compute more than 2 billion decimal digits of pi. Chapter 13 uses the big number functions from Chapter 12 to test some of these formulas and algorithms.

Chapter 14 is about random number generation. A well-known algorithm generates uniformly distributed random values. It examine algorithms that generate random normally distributed and exponentially distributed random values. The chapter concludes with a Monte Carlo algorithm that uses random numbers to compute the value of pi.

Mathematicians have mulled over prime numbers since nearly prehistoric times. Chapter 15 explores primality testing and investigates formulas that generate prime numbers, and it looks for patterns in the distribution of prime numbers.

Chapter 16 introduces fractals, which are beautiful and intricate shapes that are recursively defined. There are various algorithms for generating different types of fractals, such as Julia sets and the Mandelbrot set. In fact, Newton's algorithm for finding roots, when applied to the complex plane, can generate a fractal.

I have got hold of this book just recently. This is an excellent book on numerical computing using Java that covers many important aspects in numerical computing. I have been writing numerical methods in Java back in graduate school as well as in my professional career for mission critical programs. I must say this book has addressed many issues that must be taken into account such as machine epsilon, choices of numerical methods for different problems, limitations and precautions in using different data types, etc in Java in which if taken for granted, would produce disastrous results.

Ronald Mak has taken the trouble to explain IEEE floating point standards in a fun and easy-to-understand manner.

Another thing about this book that is worthy of a mention is its great OO programming styles. Codes are also well commented and reader friendly. Overall, it is a great source to learn not just on how to program numerical methods in Java but how to write good OO programs.

The only two bad things I could say about this book is that I should have gotten of this book much earlier and if only Amazon allows a Six Stars rating.

As the author says, last time I looked Java still had the +, -, /, * and % mathematical operators.. though most programmers end up forgetting it lost as they are in the boring, vulgar and repetitive coding of boiler-plate "enterprise" (read "sell sell sell") applications. This book does a very good job of introducing a Java programmer to one of the most fun and interesting powers that Java can offer ... that is playing with numbers and exploring the world of mathematics. Forget (at least for a little while) Servlets, JSP, EJB, and database massaging... and give a look to how you can use your JDK to study functions, solve differential equations, integrals, system of equations, discover prime numbers and admire the beauty of fractals. The treatment of the various subjects is done is sufficient detail to be clear and sound, but without burderdening the reader
with detail and depth best left for more specialized and hard-core texts that the curious reader can explore after this one. Refreshing.

At one time or another, most of us will likely have to write code performing some amount of numerical computation beyond simple integer arithmetic. As many of us are neither mathematicians nor intimately familiar with the bit gymnastics our machines must perform in order to manipulate numbers, we can get ourselves into trouble if we're not careful. Luckily, "Java Number Cruncher" comes to the rescue.

This book is an introduction to numerical computing using Java providing "non-theoretical explanations of practical numerical algorithms." While this sounds like heady stuff, freshman level calculus should be sufficient to get the most out of this text.

The first three chapters are amazingly useful, and worth the price of admission alone. Mak does a fine job explaining in simple terms the pitfalls of even routine integer and floating-point calculations, and how to mitigate these problems. Along the way the reader learns the details of how Java represents numbers and why good math goes bad. The remainder of the book covers iterative computations, matrix operations, and several "fun" topics, including fractals and random number generation.

The author conveys his excitement for the subject in an easy-to-read, easy-to-understand manner. Examples in Java clearly demonstrate the topics covered. Some may not like that the complete source is in-line with the text, but this is subjective. Overall, I found this book educational, interesting, and quite enjoyable to read.

The book arrived in a timely manner and its condition was better than described. Great price too! Thanks

"Keeping Found Things Found", is a must buy, an essential tool, as we all struggle to keep on top of, rather than be buried by, information. The book's premise is excellent, explaining as it does how to organize web information into our lives in ways that help rather than just adding to the clutter.

In today's frenetic pace, when we are swamped with information, this book gave me highly valuable suggestions. But, as importantly, it also gave me some very useful questions to ask. It seems as though every day I run across new Web initiatives or gadgets or software tools. Which are worth my time and trouble (and money)? The book gives a checklist of questions to consider.

"Keeping Found Things Found" is thorough and extremely readable.

This book is a great introduction and a consummate summary of the field of personal information management. Its comprehensive nature makes it useful for people familiar with the field, while at the same time it's a great primer for someone new to this area.

When the author of this book invited me, based on some of my web illustrations, to create some illustrations for this book I was interested in the project because it spoke directly to my own experience. I teach design for instructional media in a university setting and struggle every day, not only with my own deluge of personal information and how to manage it -- but with helping my students recognize that the end result of their own design efforts will be contributing to the personal information overload faced by their clients and their students. This book maps out the dimensions of our current personal information problems, and should be a required read for everyone who is engaged in adding to those problems, trying to solve them, or studying them in any detail. In particular, students of Information Technology, Information Design, Informatics, Instructional Systems, Human Performance and any other discipline with ties to personal information management -- and Jones makes clear how many of us that really is! -- needs to view the complexity of users' lives in this kind of comprehensive detail. Too many of us only think about what we are asking people to use or to do or to remember. This view of their lives may be daunting, but it is critical!

I'm a college dropout(Information Studies), now working in IT as a Systems Admin at a fair sized hotel. When I left college to pursue other at that time more interesting things. I couldn't really see the big picture in why we had to learn what they wanted us to.
Now I do, thanks to this book.

I keep feeling inspired about the management of my information. Both as PIM in my own department, but mostly also for my users. I can suddenly see some meaning in the way they manage their PIM. I as the IT department have to facilitate their professional PIM. I have to give them the tools to make sure they don't lose stuff, but also so they don't drown in information. Suddenly I have a much more nuanced view of my job. Being the geek who loves his tech stuff, can do everything to keep servers and computer running, is not really enough. I have to know my place in the business of managing information and information flow in the company.

This book could teach many programmers, much on how they can make their products more usable to the users. Make them understand some of how people look at the information being processed, stored, shared, pushed by the programs they write. We have to facilitate more styles of PIM than just our own, not everyone works like we do.

I have to stop myself, I just love this book and the ideas it keeps inspiring to pop up in my head.
There is so much for so many people in this book..

This is the book for you if you are new to MATLAB. The book covers the basic steps of MATLAB and how to apply them to real word engineering or mathematical problems in an interactive environment.

The book is well written and is very easy to use. This is a great book for the beginner, but I would not recommend the book for anyone that has over 6 months of experience.

The Item was in very good condition & the shipping was prompt & before time.

If you plan to start with Matlab with no prior experience, this book beats most of the other available titles.Since an inside view of the book is not available on Amazon, I will for the benefit of others list out the chapters here.Ch1 begins with the necessary introduction,developing familiarity with the command window,display formats and precedence of operators.It moves on to Ch2 and Ch3 where arrays are introduced and the mathematical operations on them explained.Ch4 is about script files,Ch5 on elementary plotting techniques using in-built functions like plot and fplot.Ch6 introduces functions and Ch7 extends the previous material to formal programming techniques like loops and control structures.Ch8 explains curve fitting and interpolation,Ch9 is about three dimensional plots and special graphics.Ch10, the last one of the book uses Matlab to do symbolic math which cover elementary algebraic equations.The examples contained in the book are from elementary physics and engineering,so if you are looking for more advanced material that has been treated using Matlab,this might be a little less helpful.The numerical techniques again cover simple problems like projectile trajectory,flow of water from a vessel with a small hole punched in its sidewall,RC circuits, viscosity and so on.Relatively advanced topics like Fourier transforms and applications to signal processing are also left out.If you are done with this book or feel that the material isnt of much help, I will suggest that you might try "Numerical Computing with Matlab" by Moler(he is perhaps one of the architects of Matlab).This book(electronic version) is available for free from the mathworks website [...].Overall this book does a good job in explaining details and is also generously sprinkled with figures and screenshots.Please try it if you are first timer to Matlab.

I am a robotics engineering masters student who is REALLY behind on his Matlab knowledge based on the fact that i have a background in biology. (Long story). I just completed my first semester and bought this book in May to learn matlab more thoroughly over the summer. This book is just FANTASTIC. I couldn't ask for more. It is structured logically, the examples are CLEAR and it just makes total sense. I never realized that it would be this readable and excellent. If you are a beginner it can truly be read cover to cover. The problems are interesting and the step by step guides are just what i needed. I initially thought twice about spending the $80 when there were cheaper texts available, but let me tell you from experience, don't bother. I have read some other Matlab texts and they pale in comparison to this one. It is worth every penny. If you have a limited knowledge or are without any knowledge of Matlab GET THIS BOOK. It is great and worth the extra money.

I purchased this title because I am starting a numerical analysis sequence next year using Matlab and I knew only how to plot in 2D and do simple calculations at the command line. After studying from Gilat's text for the past month or so I feel very comfortable using Matlab for all the basics and I am ready to learn how to exploit the full power of the program.

Each chapter gives just enough mathematical background to provide anyone with at least college algebra/trig enough to understand what is going on.
Although this book does not cover any topic too deeply, it does cover the fundamentals of many aspects of Matlab in a way that allows the reader to move fairly quickly through the whole book without getting bogged down in any one area.

In the end you will know the basics about how Matlab operates: how to work with vectors and matrices, how to write simple programs and function files, how to plot and format data, how to fit data to a curve, and how to differentiate and integrate both numerically and symbolically, and a bunch of other great tools for solving problems.

Also, as the other reviewers mentioned, the book makes very good use of graphics to show how input and output should look, as well as what exactly each line means.

I would recommend this text to anyone wanting to learn the basics of Matlab.

It contains many many exiting problems and stimulate to go through the world of art of biology and mathematics. This book can guide the way where to go when you lost in the world of biomathematics, specifically molecular modeling. It looks like a well-organized dictionary with analysis. So it is good for a beginner and also deep-thinker in computational biology field.

As a person with no expertise in molecular modeling who wanted to learn about this field, this book is right on! I find the author's lively text to be as well-written and clear as any science textbook I have ever read. I especially enjoyed the first two chapters for their historical perspective and their practical illustrations of applications of genetics in the world today. These chapters can be understood by non-scientists, whereas the rest of the book is clearly designed for graduate students in any one of the science disciplines.

The interesting information sprinkled throughout the book, including the boxes and figures, help keep the reader stimulated and yearning for greater knowledge of this exciting field. The color graphics also complement the book nicely. Although the subject covered in the book is extremely broad, the author managed to convey the perspectives of multiple scientific disciplines (e.g., biology, chemistry, computer science, math) very well. The combination of breadth and depth in a readable style is remarkable.

Overall, I highly recommend this book to readers interested in the area.

This book covers state-of-arts technologies used in today's hot field: molecular modeling. The book is easy to understand and it is suitable for graduate students in both theoretic majors and experimental majors. The homeworks in the book are practical for students to learn basic molecular modeling computer skills very fast.

Dr. Schlick is an expert in this field and her group has published tons of molecular modeling research papers. Her expertise also makes this book valuable for computational scientific researchers. I highly recommend it.

... not only to molecular modeling, but to some of the subtleties of DNA and protein behavior and geometry, too.

This book's focus is generally on interactions with large molecules, DNA and proteins, although it does discuss small molecules (drugs, a few dozen to a few hundred atoms) too. That means that it skips most of the quantum mechanical modeling of more advanced computational chemistry texts.

Nothing is lost, because Schlick covers her chosen topic (molecular modeling and dynamics) in such detail. She starts with a very clear discussion of the structure of large biomolecules, with emphasis on the features that need quantitative description for modeling. That covers protein structure at ever level. It also covers DNA/RNA structure in the best detail I've ever seen. The double-helix is the just the starting point. There are alternative helix forms, non-standard binding between nucleotides, and asymmetries caused by nucleotide composition. The next chapters describe the geometric model and, briefly, the forces acting between atoms.

The second half of the book gets down to the nuts and bolts of modeling. This includes numerical techniques, minimization, sampling and Monte Carlo techniques, and the start of dynamics. Schlick attacks some of the nasty points of the calculations, such as modeling of forces that act on very different time scales. As with the simpler material, the development is clear, descriptive, and free of pointless theorems. The meticulous reader should come away able to implement most or all of the techniques described. The level of presentation is consistent and approachable. I think freshman physics should be enough preparation for most students to get most of the value out of the discussion.

The book is written with clarity as a top priority. The glossary is in the front, making sure that the reader knows it's a first-class part of the text. After that, every chapter starts with a list of the mathematical symbols and variables used and a one-line description of each. These are small things, but they increase the book's readability immensely. The illustrations are generally informative enough. On the whole, though, they don't seem quite up to the level of the textual and mathematical presentations.

I needed a crash course in the mathematical techniques used for describing molecular structure and behavior. I should have read this book first - its clarity and thoroughness would have saved me a lot of time. After this one, I can now go back and reread the more complex texts with more hops of understanding. Do yourself a favor and read this one first.

I highly recommend Professor T. Schlick's book. It is beautifully written with many examples and great illustrations. The book is truly interdisciplinary; it covers, in good depth, both the biological and mathematical aspects of computational structural biology. Most chapters start with an amenable introduction and finish with "hands-on" recommendations and future challenges. I was particularly pleased with the level of detail in each chapter (in particular those that show the reader the advantages and pitfalls of the different methods presented). My colleague Mariel Vazquez and I used this book in the design and preparation of our "Special topics in Mathematics" course at the UC Berkeley Mathematics Department during the Spring of 2003.

This upper-level undergraduate/lower-level graduate course was centered on mathematical and computational models of the three dimensional structure of DNA, and DNA topology. We found Professor T. Schlick's book very useful in our class preparation. In particular we covered chapter 5 (DNA structure) completely, sections 3 and 4 from chapter 7 (basic principles and formulation of atomic interactions in molecular mechanics), and several sections or subsections from chapters 8 and 9 (force terms used in molecular dynamics simulations). We also covered most of the material in chapter 10 (Multivariate Minimization), and gave a brief introduction to chapter 11 (Monte-Carlo techniques) and chapter 12 (Molecular Dynamics algorithms).

Chapter 5 starts with a very amenable and brief introduction that relates DNA with other biological processes and describes some of the challenges in studying DNA structure. It continues describing the basic building blocks of DNA. The author wisely spends some time defining the nomenclature for each of the atoms, angles and bonds that form these basic blocks. The following sections teach the reader what parameters are relevant for describing a DNA double helix and how they characterize the A, B and Z- forms of DNA. Illustrations in this chapter are particularly helpful.

Although our course's approach to DNA supercoiling was different that the one in the book I found particularly useful some illustrations in chapter 6 and movies (to be found in her webpage) that Prof. Schlick's group has developed over the years. In brief, chapter 6 is a study of more complex structures and behavior of DNA (such as structural role of the DNA sequence, DNA-protein interactions, and higher order organization of DNA -i.e. DNA supercoiling and histone-DNA interactions). This chapter can be a good source for short research projects (e.g. final projects).

Chapters 7, 8 and 9 describe the basic concepts in molecular mechanics. From sections 7.3 and 7.4 I found of interest how the author addresses the problem of the system size (i.e. number of interacting molecules) and some of the details that the author gives for modeling the geometry of atomic interactions. At the end of the chapter (section 7.4.3) interested readers can find some of the limitations of current approaches. Chapters 8 and 9 describe in depth the force fields and how to implement them. Chapter 9 also illustrates with clarity how to implement periodic boundary conditions and the advantages of using different lattice models.

Chapter 10 describes a number of familiar methods for energy minimization (i.e. steepest descent, conjugate gradient, etc....). We used sections 10.1 to 10.4 and section 10.5.2 (conjugate gradient). I found the Hessian patterns shown in figures 10.4 and 10.5 and the minimization trajectories shown in 10.10 very pedagogical. As in previous chapters the author finishes with practical recommendations and future challenges.

We left chapter 11 (Monte Carlo methods) for last in the course and discussed chapter 12 (molecular dynamics) first. As in previous chapters the author gives a very nice introduction (section 12.1 and 12.2) and covers the basics on simulation protocols in sections 12.3 and 12.4. Section 12.4 describes the basic integration algorithms such as leap-frog, verlet, etc... Figure 12.3 was revealing for the students as it compares the time scales in biological systems.

Chapter 11 (Monte-Carlo methods) provides a very comprehensive introduction to Monte-Carlo methods. We found particularly useful some of the subsections of random number generation and the treatment of Importance sampling and Markov chains in section 11.5.

As mentioned earlier we were particularly delighted with the amount of details given in each topic. For example chapters 7 and 8 provide all the formalism needed for the problems of molecular mechanics. In section 8.4 (bond angle potential) the author highlights the differences (both formally and by figures-see figure 8.4) between different formulations of the problem (see also figure 8.6). In Chapter 10 the author describes minimization algorithms in detail and shows some of the patterns that one observes in the Hessian associated to minimization functions of biological structures (see figs. 10.4, 10.5 and 10.11). She also makes very detailed comparisons between the different minimization methods (see figs 10. 2, 10.10). In chapter 12 she compares the different methods and initial conditions for the algorithms discussed (figs 12.3, 12.4, 12.6).

Overall we found that Prof. T. Schlick's book is very adequate for a broad spectrum of levels and very accessible to both graduate and undergraduate students interested in mathematical modeling and computational biology. It is also very well organized facilitating the option of selecting parts of the material for the classroom or for use in one's research.