Computer Science Books

This edited book is an excellent addition to any collection of works concerning cities in the electronic age. Each chapter covers topics that provide insight and new ways of examining our ever changing urban environment. The references cited also provide a springboard for further readings on each topic.

This book is excellent reading for both the layperson and the academician.

I have not finished this book quite yet but felt it deserved a quick note to give everyone a "head-up"! If you read any one book today for an insight into where technology is taking us - THIS IS THE ONE! It ties the internet and telecom together and explains in very studied ways where we were 10 or 15 years ago, where we are today, and where we are headed. Technology changes daily, so this book may become somewhat dated quickly, but it will be easy to update.

I started off learning Quantum Computation and Quantum Information by reading Nielsen and Chuang's book in order to do research in my junior year on quantum cyptography. Despite the completeness and popularity of that book, it did not exhibit enough explanation and insights for me to be truly satisfied that quantum computation will truly take flight one day to be implementable in place of classical computation.

Recently, in my preparation for my qualifying exam in Quantum information at MIT, I commenced reading this book. The feeling was like drinking a long cool sip of water after a 10 mile run. In particular, I really like the mathematical rigor of the writers. I have known Kitaev as a clear and careful presentator while I was at CalTech as an undergrad, and this is clearly reflected in his book. I definitely would recommend this book to anyone interested in Quantum computing and quantum information, professionally or amateurishly to buy this book (and no, I was not bribed to give this review in order to pass my quals!).

The book covers classical and quantum algorithms;-- of the 250 or so, pages of text, roughly the first 50 pages are "classical", the rest quantum;-- and indeed the aim of the book is to teach the wonders of the qubit-algorithms. While other books, such as Nielsen-Chuang, serve as (more or less)comprehensive references, the present book (by Kitaev et al) is focussed on complexity. The mathematical prerequisits are minimal, but a reader with some understanding of basic ideas from CS, and from quantum theory (at the level of ch 1 in Nielsen-Chuang), will get more out of Kitaev et al. The book is a translation of a Russian 1999 original, but it is really well done, and nicely updated;-- for example, a handy appendix was added, covering elementary math terms that are used.
The book does a great job in explaining the fundamentals, both at the level of the *intuitive ideas*, as well as the mathematical proofs. The big question is why some qubit-algorithms (such as P Shor's factoring algorithm), are a lot better than classical counterparts(for example polynomial vs exponential), and a reader comes away with a good understanding of this in the end.

It's a great book if you need to know what's driving todays information technology w.r.t. bandwidth and how it can revolutionize the economy.

The IEEE Information Society releases (IEEE Press) releases yet another priceless book which is both historical in nature; yet every bit as current as when Shannon first started published some of his more famous works in the 1940's. This book is unquestionably a "must have" reference book for either communication engineers or mathemeticians who have either a serious, or newly found interest in the topic of "information theory." Shannon's theorems of Channel Capacity and Channel

Coding are studied by EE students worldwide. However, this book is much-much-more. The books 924 pages contain a wide assortment of articles written by this rare genius. Elementary cryptography and analysis of the Entropy of the written language; "communications secrecy" (which is quite honestly outdated by todays standards; but taken into context, the papers were valuable at the time.) Also obscure articles on "game theory" as it applies to the field of "artificial

intelligence" which at the time, he was a pioneer (along with other great minds including Turing, Minsky, etc..) Also, his articles on early computers and automata, and optimizing circuits so as to use less relays, etc.. are also quite interesting... Yes, the man was mortal, and to show that he wasn't all mathemetician, Shannon writes a fascinating article on the physics of JUGGLING.. The book comes with an introductory chapter which contains a somewhat adequate biography, and an interview with OMNI Magazine which was published in 1987.

This is definately a book which should be on the shelf of anyone serious about the subject. Yes, there are much more technical books on the subject. If you have a PhD in EE or mathematics, you might not be impressed... but Shannon's "easy writing style" which differs from some of the "dry" IEEE writings of today makes for an interesting read; if only for remembering history. -S.A. Hoffman, NY-

An extensive compendium of Halloween and otherwise Horror resources on the net.

Many subjects to choose from within this nefarious genre from artistry, to literature, poetry, music, holiday history, superstitions, character origins, psychodrama, multimedia, recipes, online goody recommendations, and costumed fun-eral.

Read by flickering screen and candle light in the gloom of your haunted room, and allow your imagination to transport you to arcane realms for amusement and fright!

Click or Treat provides a smorgasbord of Halloween & Horror, internet-style. Whether you are a budget conscious parent, a paranormal researcher, or someone just surfing for some good sites and laughs you will find something for you in this book. The Internet by its very nature is an ever changing thing but I found very few dead links in Click or Treat and highly recommend this book.

This is a very useful book to help focus on how to develop high performance designs. It is a little dated on the technologies covered but gets the job done. One thing to remember is that microprocessor development methods usually will become ASIC development methods after a number of years and related EDA tool development.

Whether trying to maximize the speed of a standard cell ASIC processor design or minimize the design time of a full custom processor this book describes, in detail, the considerations involved. The authors draw on real-world designs and extensively review several in particular. The book describes the impact on resulting processor performance of pipeline depth, clock tree design, register and latch choice, setup and clock-to-q times, slack passing, dynamic logic, logic design style, richness of standard cell library, wire and transistor sizing, floorplanning and other layout concerns, and the exploitation of process variation.

This book focuses strictly on processor circuit design and does not discuss software design, instruction set architecture, or die size and power issues.

This book gives a smooth, motivated and example-rich
introduction to clustering, which is innovative in many aspects.
Answers to important questions that are very rarely addressed if
addressed at all, are provided.
Examples:
(a) what to do if the user has no idea of the number
of clusters and/or their location - use what is called intelligent k-means;
(b) what to do if the data contain both numeric and categorical
features - use what is called three-step standardization procedure;
(c) how to catch anomalous patterns, (d) how to validate clusters, etc.
Some of these may be subject to criticism, however some motivation is always
supplied, and the results are always reproducible thus testable.
The book introduces a number
of non-conventional cluster interpretation aids derived from a data
geometry view accepted by the author and based on what is referred
the contribution weights - basically showing those elements of cluster
structures that distinguish clusters from the rest. These contribution
weights, applied to categorical data, appear to be highly compatible
with what statisticians such as A. Quetelet and K. Pearson were developing
in the past couple of centuries, which is a highly original and welcome
development. The book reviews a rich set of approaches being accumulated
in such hot areas as text mining and bioinformatics, and shows that
clustering is not just a set of naive methods for data processing but
forms an evolving area of data science.
I adopted the book as a text for my courses in data mining for bachelor
and master degrees.

First, understand that the type of clustering being discussed in this book is the statistical technique of finding clusters of data in a collection, where the collection is typically a database. This is not about clustered micro computers being used to work on big computational tasks as though it is a supercomputer.

Clusters of customers is a key area in data mining and knowledge discovery. You are usually trying to find groups of people with similar buying patterns but not necessarily identical. For instance if you have a group of people that have purchased a book on PHP, you might want to try to sell them a book on MySQL, or Apache, or Linnux. These programs fit together, but are not identical. Still the customer who purchased the PHP book is more likely to want a MySQL book than he is to want an audio CD of a murder mystery.

In this book, two of the most popular clustering techniques, K-Means and Ward's Method are presented. They are presented for a reader interested in the technical aspects of data mining as a theoretician or a practitioner. It is intended (the author says) that the material be useful to a reader with no mathematical background beyond high school. But the author also says, it might be of help if the reader is acquainted with basic notions of calculus, statistics, matrix algebra, graph theory and logic. (The author went to a different high school than I).

Clustering is described in this book to be used in a wide variety of applications, most of which are oriented to discovering social patterns, biological taxonomies, machine learning, etc. The book discusses the various techniques that have been developed and gives examples where they have been used in a wide variety of applications.

This handbook by Smid on the subject of CNC programming tackles the subject from a different angle than his bestselling "CNC Programming Handbook". That book is a more basic one aimed at beginners. This book is more advanced and contains several programming subjects that are very difficult to find either in other books or on the web. Even where there is overlap with the author's "CNC Programming Guide", this book provides much more depth of coverage on various subjects than that book does. As is standard with this author, this book includes many clear detailed drawings that greatly assist in visualizing the procedures covered. Whenever applicable, a complete programming example is provided. Equations and all tools used in each example are boxed and clearly labeled. As always, this author's instructions and explanations are clear and detailed. I show the table of contents next as the best way of explaining the book's contents:
1. Part Program Development
2. Calculating Contour Points
3. Formulas for Contouring
4. Using Cutter Radius Offset
5. Part Reversal in Milling
6. Using Tapered End Mills
7. Special Purpose G-COdes
8. Tool Length Offset Change
9. Block Skip Applications
10. Standard and Rigid Tapping
11. Polar Coordinates
12. Subprogram Development
13. Turning and Boring in Depth
14. Programming Tapers
15. Techniques for Grooving
16. Techniques for Threading
17. Restrictions in Threading
18. Practical Thread Milling
19. Knurling on CNC Lathes
20. Four-Axis Lthes
21. Pallet Changers
22. Working With Planes
23. Programming CAMs
24. Introduction to Macros
25. Did You Know That?
26. References and Resources

Technical readers who are familiar with the CNC Programming Handbook by Peter Smid will, without doubt, also react favourably to this book. The format is similar and there are hundreds of excellent illustrations and programming examples. While the previous book dealt mainly with theory and concepts, this work moves on to real life applications of these concepts. Examples include the use of tapered endmills in programming, multiaxis lathes, custom cycles, knurling, and other tips and tricks.

Excellent book for graduate student or anybody interested in TCM. The book covers all aspect of TCM. What makes this book different from other books is its briefness and being to the point. With a minimum knowledge of Coding you could get a lot from the book.

This is a very comprehensive book on code design for fading channels.

As an IT consultant, I found this book an indispensable guide for anyone who needs to quickly familiarize themselves with a new language/technology. While you might think that a single book covering 20 technologies is an overly ambitious scope, it is in fact the brevity of each topic that is this book's strength. The book assumes that the reader is well versed in some technologies and computers in general and then cuts right to the heart of each specific skill-set. Rather than 20 books of 300-500 pages each, this book summarizes the basic framework and essential knowledge required to quickly become productive in some of the most widely used techonolgies. I've often found myself wishing I could just get a "Cliffs Notes" version of many of the 5 pound books I end up needing to read quickly for work - this is finally it.

This book is a wonderful companion and reference guide for many of the programming languages a technology professional might encounter.

Each programming language is broken into a chapter and begins with a short synopsis of the language, a few facts (which serve as excellent reminders of a languages essential characteristic), and a short program with an explanation of what each line means.

Reading this book won't make you a subject matter expert in any one of the programming languages it covers. However, the book is an excellent reference tool that will help you understand the basics of many programming languages and help you remember the syntax and structure of a language you haven't used recently or are only vaguely familiar with.

The Swiss army knife approach taken by the author's to cover as many languages as possible is done quite well, making this book a bible for any technology consultant.

Petchers has written a well researched, definitive guide to CHP.

To those considering the CHP Handbook ----

I had the opportunity to hear the author, Neil Petchers, discuss the book at New York Institute of Technology at an AEE Meeting. To say that Neil has mastery of the subject matter is an understatement. The "Handbook" is a high powered, well written work that covers many aspects of energy management and distributed generation, including:
Generator types
Cycle types
Fuel costs
Economic considerations, including utility rates
Switchgear and types of operation (islanded, grid interconnected)

As a practicing engineer involved with the electrical aspects of utility interconnection, the information on other subject areas was welcome to broaden my understanding of the complete CHP issue.

Well done Neil !

This book receives my highest rating as a world-class work on the subject.

Respectfully submitted,
Wayne Hartmann