Departments and Programs Books

This book is a collection of articles Prof. Knuth
wrote about programming. He promoted a particular
programming methodology called "literate
programming", which weaves comments into codes and
make them more readable and easier to maintain. This
book was published in 1992, but Chapter 4, "Literate
Programming", was originally published in 1984,
which was an idea way ahead of his time (JavaDoc was
first released in 1998, 12 years after the Knuth's
article). Chapter one is Knuth's Turing Award
lecture and still worth reading for his view on why
programming is an art. I was wrongly impressed that
Knuth is a very theoretical people and doesn't do
much programming. As you would discover from these
lecture and other articles in the book, he indeed
did a lot of programming and arguably in a very
clever and beautiful way, "the program of which I
personally am most pleases and proud is a compiler
I once wrote for a primitive minicomputer that had
only 4096 words of memory, 16 bites per word
(pg. 10)." The discussion about the "goto" statement
in Chapter 3 is not relevant in today's programming
and computer environment. The last few chapters are
more like manuals of the WEB and CWEB programs (C
version of WEB), which are the programs generating
documents and source codes. These manuals may not
interest readers unless they are well motivated to
write program "literally." One gem should not be
missed is is Chapter 10, "The Errors of TeX" (and
the accompanying Chapter 11, "The Error Log of
TeX). Seeing how Prof. Knuth meticulously documented
all of his bugs in TeX is just amazing. Overall this
book is more of historical value and for people who
love Knuth and his work on literate programming.

This book is the only one that I can say has truly changed my view of software development.

The premise of this book matches my experience: technical communication with people is critical, and harder than communicating with the machines. Knuth carries that idea forward by one bold, logical step: in Literate Programming (LP), the main goal is to get technical ideas across to people. Programs are a co-product of the description process. This inverts the premise of JavaDoc and the like, in which human communication is incidental to the code.

A literate program, by the way, reads like a standard human document, whether an essay or an IEEE standard specification. JavaDoc output reads like an HTML dump of a cross-linked tree data structure - which it is. JavaDoc serves a valuable purpose, but does not permit system description in the order required by human reasoning.

My own experience with LP (a custom system) was very happy - I actually reached the "impossible" goal of true requirements traceability. I unified the system requirements, design, multi-language implementation, configuration control, and even tests under one document set. With HTML output, traceability was made real using interactive links. Anywhere else, traceability is mostly wishful thinking shared by the many owners of physically disconnected documents. (Process gurus - I hope you're paying attention.)

LP practice, however, has not caught on. LP, in today's form, does not support programming in the large. What LP does to the compilable form of a program brings C++ name-mangling to mind. I don't know of any WYSIWYG LP systems, so today's window-icon-mouse-pointer (WIMP) programmers will have nothing to do with it. And, ironically, the people who need the most support in communicating with their peers are the ones most resistant to tools for effective communication.

It's a grand vision and an exciting experiment. LP deserves more attention.

Writing computer programs is easy, writing programs that are useful is hard and writing programs that are very useful as well as correct sometimes seems impossible. Knuth takes this truism even further and offers up the radical notion that the very best programs are so profound that people will one day read them as one would a piece of classic literature. If the idea of curling up by the fire with a copy of The World's Greatest Programs and spending the night in a state of rapture seems absurd, you think as I did. However, after reading this book, my mind now concedes the possibility does exist. After all, most of the great works of literature describe actions, conditions and solutions (algorithms) to problems of human-human and sometimes human-god interactions. Science fiction writers and readers have known for a long time that computers are very interesting objects. Buildings, paintings or other works of art are often admired not only for their subjective beauty, but also for the talent that it took to create them. Programming ability can be admired just as easily.
However, an extremely large technical barrier exists, in that programming languages are literal, terse and lack flair. Knuth works to eliminate this problem by combining the programming and documentation languages into a structure called a WEB. He also adopts the reverse paradigm that a program should be an explanation to humans of what the computer is doing. The result does wonders for readability and introduces a bit of flair. Certainly, this is a good first step towards Knuth's ideal.
The development of TEX is chronicled in great detail. It is personally comforting to read about some of the errors made in its development. Learning that the great ones make errors provides emotional security to all who hack for fun and/or profit. Some classic programming problems are used to demonstrate exactly what literate programming is meant to be. Jon Bentley, author of the `Programming Pearls' section of "Communications of the ACM", contributes two chapters that were co-authored with Donald Knuth. These pearls demonstrate the applications of literate programming to common coding problems. All are presented in a clear, easy-to-understand style.
A bit of clever humor is also used. A WEB program is constructed from two distinct components. The Weave part explains what the program is doing, and the Tangle component produces the program. Of course, this suggests the line from Sir Walter Scott's poem Marmion, "O what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive."
I do not know whether to consider this book the product of a dreamer or a visionary. The truth, like most of the work of pioneers, is no doubt somewhere in between. My opinion is that it is more vision than dream. And is that not a common theme among the greatest works of art and literature?

Published in Mathematics and Computer Education, reprinted with permission.

There's a common misconception that Webs are analagous to technologies like Javadoc. The latter is effectively a fancy prettyprinter. The former is that, and more. A well-written web actually presents a program in a way that makes sense to the reader while providing a means to make that program also make sense to the computer. The idea being that you would be able to write code that looks like: for(i=0; i@; } so that you can defer exactly what processing an array element entails until a point where it makes sense. Since these redirections are handled by a preprocessor, there's no cost at run-time for doing that like there would be if the code were written with a function call.

Excellent analysis of control structures in the classic article "Structured Programming with goto Statements." Invents the literate programming style of program documentation. Convincingly demonstrates the literate programming style with six example programs. Includes an independent program criticism and an error log. Highly recommended.

I refer to the 8th edition, available since 1996. A really useful guide. I strongly recommend it to each and every potential taker for the expensive MBA studies.

The best book I have seen in one year searching and investigating about MBAs,GMAT, European vs American programs,etc. If you are planning to buy this book, wait for the 2001 edition which should have recent data.

Don't waste your time looking up for another book, this is THE MBA BOOK.

Do not expect some key information about Harvard, Wharton or NYU. This book just lists about 200 MBA with a quick overview (2 pages) on each. If you want to apply to an MBA in Australia or in China, this book can give you all the basic information you need to know.

"WHICH MBA?" is a valuable source of information for understanding the student composition and curriculums of MBA programmes all over the world. I appreciated Bickerstaffe's focus on European programmes. Often it is very difficult to find information on programmes outside the U.S. "WHICH MBA?" does not attempt to rank MBA programmes or assess thier reputation. It merely provides facts.

This book is a godsend to anyone contemplating one of the many top-notch MBA programs outside of the US. Bickerstaffe doesn't attempt to "rank" the schools, which seems to be the only way anymore that the US programs are described in the guidebooks. Instead, he provides factual information often difficult to locate anywhere else. I was surprised to find a book like this existed. Great find.

Murray Sperber shows the scandalous financial side to NCAA college sports in this well-crafted book. It's hardly news that college sports are corrupt - amateurism is and probably always was un-workable. What is news, however, is that most colleges lose money from their athletic programs. Readers see that while football and basketball might attract revenue, they seldom offset the losses from "non-revenue" sports like gymnastics, tennis, swimming, track, etc. Also, winning sports teams fail to increase academic donations to host colleges - alumni don't like their schools having "jock" reputations. The author shows how colleges abuse Pell and minority grants to benefit athletics, and how these institutions force students (or their parents) to pay hefty "activities fees" along with tuition to bail out the athletic department

Like most appeals to reform NCAA sports, this book fell on deaf ears - we simply like the games too much. Still, this book should be of interest to educators and to students forced to pay outrageous activity fees at tuition time.

How to evaluate and improve a university department? That has been a perennial and contentious topic in many universities. Wergin weighs in with several observations and suggestions.

The basic idea for moving forward is simple. The faculty should be closely involved in defining and promoting a department's mission and focus. This takes advantage of a desire amongst many academics for a sense of community and purpose within their department. The biggest problem is simply that, once tenured, individuals are largely autonomous. Plus, in order to get tenure, researchers often have to be very competitive within their fields. Wergin offers ways to counteract these tendencies. Appealing in part to that sense of community. Along with the notion that faculty working together often have greater political clout within a university.

FREEDOM FROM WAR: THE U.S. PROGRAM
FOR GENERAL & COMPLETE DISARMAMENT
IN A PEACEFUL WORLD (1961)

This document contains two of the worst fears of American constitutionalists.
These are:
1) the delegation of authority to an international governing body and
2) disarmament in accordance with that governing body's protocols

This document, which is a real State Department text, doesn't just propose "gun grabbing", it also recommends the disbanding of military forces! Legitimate military functions are limited to "preserving internal order" (a potential attack on the 3rd Amendment) and membership in the "United Nations Peace Force". The actual international disarming process would take place in three stages; these are laid out in the booklet. Also included is the "Declaration on Disarmament" which member nations would presumably be expected to sign on to.

If you want freedom from war, quit electing egomaniacs who love it!

"The manufacture of armaments would
be prohibited except for those of agreed
types and quantities to be used by the
U.N. Peace Force and those required
to maintain internal order."
~page 10

It's a slim volume and a bit expensive for being less than 100 pages, yet it gets to the point and gives you the nuts and bolts basics of WestEd's Program for Infant and Toddler Caregivers (PITC).

This is best used with Module I (Social-Emotional Growth & Socialization).

This is a great book and I definitely recommend it, but you really should get the premium program instead of the comprehensive program. The premium is the same book but also has a cd included which has four computer practice tests as well as lots of extra practice problems. It is well worth the extra cost for the premium book. I bought the comprehensive and after reading reviews about the premium, I realized I bought the wrong version and went ahead and bought the premium book in addition. I'm really glad I did.

I aced my first practice test, then didn't do as well on the rest. I was studying tons, so my score should have gone up. I suppose it could have been operator error, but I think these practice exams are screwy.

Nevertheless, practicing on the computer did help me prepare for the format of the actual exam.

I used this guide to prepare for the GMAT but I find that it is only useful as a reference as to how the GMAT is mechanically structured. Whatever skills you need to achieve your required score will depend on your grasp of the different mechanics called out in the exam. Therefore, I recommend the Kaplan guide to be used as a tool to help you succeed and not to be used as a "pass the GMAT in 5 days" program. You receive sample exams after registering for the GMAT, and those exams are much more realistic than the Kaplan exams. The Pearson GMAT Prep software is 99% identical to the actual exam, but the Kaplan guide provides many more sample tests and tests for the different sections. I recommend pounding away at the sample tests and just practice. I raised my practice test scores by over 100 points just using the CD and GMATPrep programs, and the actual exam score exceeded my expectations.

if you wish to prepare for GMAT you need only two books official guide to GMAT and this kaplan gmat book .

I took the Kaplan practice tests before taking the GMAT. Like most people, I think the Kaplan tests differ significantly from what you'll see on the real GMAT. The Kaplan math questions were just as difficult as what I saw on the real test, while the verbal questions on the real GMAT were much easier than questions on Kaplan's practice tests.

It can be disappointing to see low scores on Kaplan practice tests after doing a lot of hard work. Keep in mind, though, that it's in Kaplan's best interests for you to improve on test day, rather than see your scores go down. Also, when you score poorly on practice tests after going through their book, you might be more likely to sign up for one of Kaplan's courses. However, I think the most reasonable explanation for test taker's consistently underperforming on Kaplan practice tests is simply that the scoring system is poorly calibrated.

I prepared for the GMAT by going through the Kaplan 800 book. For the sections I found most difficult, I went through the practice questions in the three "Official Guide for GMAT Review" books. I think the key to a good score is doing as many practice problems and practice tests as you can get your hands on.

My practice test scores were:

Kaplan Practice Test 1: 640 (14 days before the exam)
Kaplan Practice Test 2: 640 (10 days before the exam)
Kaplan Practice Test 3: 580 (5 days before the exam)
Kaplan Practice Test 4: 540 (3 days before the exam)
GMATPrep Test 1: 740 (2 days before the exam)
GMATPrep Test 2: 740 (1 day before the exam)
Actual GMAT: 760

The Kaplan tests helped me gain a sense of how much time I had to spend on each question. It was useful for me to see how rushed I would be at the end of a section as a result of spending just five minutes too long on the first 20-25 questions. On test day, I benefited from being disciplined enough to move on before getting bogged down on a question.

I thought the GMATPrep practice tests that you get when you sign up for the exam were the closest to what I saw on the real test. To me, the verbal section on test day was easy, while the math section had more tough questions than I had seen on any other exam. There were at least 3-4 math questions where I just guessed and moved on rather than waste time trying to come up with a solution. Just beware on test day that this won't ruin your chances of getting a solid score.

As most have stated, princeton review is the easier book, and the kaplan series are more difficult.

For someone shooting for a top ten, I would recommend using all of the books. I would start with princeton review to break you in and set the basics, take their practice tests to warm you up, they are a bit easier than the others. I would then move to the Kaplan series. Take ALL of the tests you can get a hold of... they are the best prep and ia good ndicator of your progress.

That said, you can have a bad score one day and a good score the next, but the practice will help prepare you for the real deal.

Finally do the problems in the official GMAT books! Make sure to do all of those problems. The problems in those books are the best.

I got this study guide back in 2006 because I thought I was going to take the GRE. In fact i'm scheduled to take the PCAT, though I can't knock the text here. Was fairly substantial and if I had to take it, this would have prepared me.

This book gave me a great strategy for the GRE and broke down the questions so I could quickly narrow down the choices. I also used the vocabulary flip book. I got a great score and only studied for 3-4 weeks.

Don't buy this book for the online test. The registration code in the book didn't work. They sent another after I called. Then, after filling in several really annoying registrations forms multiple times (each time I logged in I had to repeat the same forms to "confirm" the information-and you have to fill out every annoying field!), another phone call and much frustration, I still haven't been able to access the free online test. Over an hour wasted. UGH!

Supposed to be instucting us toward "flawless" GRE performance??? How can they charge that much for something with an inexcusable number of errors? I printed the corrections sheet from their website which covered only a few of the many errors in the book. In the section on "tricks" to doing GRE math problems, I found ways to solve the the practice problems that were missed in the answers section! (And I didn't do all that well on the math part of the test.) What does this tell us about the level of the people writing the answers?! Sorry, but it's just annoying! These people are making the big bucks off all of us!

Practice test one:
Score: Verbal: 506 Quantitative: 420
Practice test two:
Score: Verbal: 600 Quantitative: 480
Practice test three (3 hours before taking GRE):
Score: Verbal: 520 Quantitative: 500

(This had me an emotional wreck the day of the GRE)

MY ACTUAL First time GRE SCORES:
Verbal: 720 Quantitative: 620

My only belief is that this book and program is designed to convince you to buy the courses. That being said, the 30 minute math tests did make me feel like I had all day to do the quant on the GRE.

I'm not sure this helped me very much. I think I would've been better off just with a math review book.

AND it is full of typos at critical points. For example, in one QC test problem it says "Circle 1 intersects Circle 2 and EXACTLY two points" and the problem requires it to be intersected at exactly one point to be solved.

This is an excellent book for trying to understand the problems between Ireland and England. Also the problems between fellow Irishmen: Prostestants and Catholics.

On the face of it, Marcus Tanner's history of Ireland's religious conflicts looks impressive. Although Tanner is an English journalist, his book is published by a leading university press, it possesses 39 pages of notes to 431 of text, and its bibliography contains many primary sources as well as considerable research among eccelesiatical journals and centuries old books. Tanner's thesis, according to the cover is that "the roots of the Irish conflict are profoundly and inescapably religious," the consequences of England's failed attempt to turn Ireland into a Protestant country.

A closer look reveals some problems. Tanner has written a history of Ireland while ignoring most of the leading historians of the subject. Marianne Elliot goes unmentioned, as does everyone's favorite trio of anti-nationalist Marxists, Paul Bew, Henry Patterson and Peter Gibbon. Nicholas Canny gets only a couple of articles, as does Kevin Whelan. One of the leading concepts in Irish ecclesiastical history, "the denominational revolution" goes completely unnoticed, and so does Emmett Larkin. John Whyte's nuanced history of church-state relations in independent Ireland is nowhere to be found. Donal Kerr's recent book on the Catholic Church and the famine is ignored. The economic historiography of Ireland is also passed over, no mention is made whatsoever of Vaughan, Clark, Moody, O'Grada or Kinealy.

But then that is not surprising, since the economic history of Ireland is also passed over. There is no coherent account of the Elizabethan conquest of Ireland or its consequences, outside of its effects on the Catholic church. The Irish potato famine gets only five pages, and mass emigration gets even less, much less than the disestablishment of the Church of Ireland in 1868. In fact the "religious" origins of the struggles is not really coherently presented. In the first few chapters the "Old English" and the Celtic inhabitants are shown to be quite capable of quarrelling despite their common Catholicism. The Catholic hierarchy shows little sympathy to the 1798 rebellion or to Fenianism, and Tanner spends the relatively few pages on the current "Troubles" showing the Protestants and Catholics trying to encourage an ecumenical peace. (The emphasis is on the good will of the Protestant denominations; the role of the Unionist parties, by contrast, isn't even mentioned. On the other hand Tanner views Ireland's political parties as the Catholic Church's willing toadies.)

What we have then is a journalistic effort more eccentric than scholarly. Much of it consists of journalistic anecdotes, such as the appalling state of Irish butter in the 1500s, or illegitimacy among Irish priests, or Machiavellian Anglican bishops. As a history of Irish religion it is curiously old-fashioned. Compared to the sophisticated historiography of the Reformation of such scholars as Christopher Haigh, Ronald Hutton, Gerald Strauss, Eamon Duffy and David Parker, it seems quaint and shallow. Rather than the sophisticated research about what people actually thought, the depth of their Christian convictions, the chimera of popular "paganism", the social role played by Christian institutions and other matters what we get is a history that looks at the bishops and the preachers and assumes the diffusion of their efforts. The last few chapters are particulary unsatisfactory. Gerrymandering in Derry corporation gets only a paragraph, discrimination and the Special Powers Act in Northern Ireland gets even less, but we get several pages on the rather marginal topic of Catholic anti-semitism. The final two chapters exude a shallow complacent attitude of "modernization" sweeping away the dark shadows of Catholicism's influence.

The idea that the Irish conflict is a religious one seems like common sense. Yet there are several major problems with it. For a start if England had not broke with the Church over Henry VIII's divorce, would the subsequent conquest of Ireland have been any nicer? There are other problems. Are the members of Sinn Fein or the Democratic Unionist Party more religious than their compatriots? Not really. Only one Catholic priest has died in the Troubles, one accidentally shot by the English army. Only one Protestant minister has been killed, and he was a leading Unionist politician. Sinn Fein has actually been more liberal on abortion than the Social Democratic and Labor Party. Northern Ireland's urban areas are both more violent and less religious than the rest of the province. In Richard Rose's loyalty survey only 8% of Protestants volunteered that they disliked the Irish Republic because of interference by the Catholic Church. It is not clear that denominational education are encouraging sectarian struggle (they don't in Canada). Tanner does not really discuss any of these matters. Ultimately, this is a book which sheds less light on Ireland than on the limits of journalism.

This history of Irish religion may have trouble finding an audience. Its rather exclusive focus on Irish ecclesiastical history in the past 500 years will not satisfy readers expecting a more general account of Cromwell, King Billy of Orange, the IRA and the rest of the Troubles. Moreover, it apparently is not scholarly enough to placate more learned specialists (see other review, below).

As an intermediate pupil of Irish history, however, I found this an enjoyable read. Tanner, a journalist rather than a professional historian, synopsizes some fairly dense material and keeps it lively. He is a master of the devastating thumbnail sketch. For example, the failure of the reformation in Ireland can be partly attributed to the low quality of the churchmen responsible for its implementation, such as the disagreeable, mediocre, corpulent English Archbishop of Dublin, Browne, and the slippery Irish Bishop of Cashel, Miler Magrath, who became rich from embezzlement and confiscation, and was "little better than a gangster who galloped about his diocese in armour, preceded by outriders and a man carrying a skull on a tall pole."

Writing about the evangelizing Protestants during the Famine who were accused of "souperism," or buying converts with food, Tanner cites one obtuse clergyman who defended himself by boasting that not one penny of his funds had been wasted on famine relief. He became exalted preaching to one group of "living skeletons" in Connemara, who in all probability would soon become first-hand witnesses to the glory of God that he described (Tanner puts this better, but I don't have the book in front of me).

The Catholic Church as well comes in for some well-deserved roasting, particularly those monumentally arrogant princes of the church who dominated the political life of the Republic until toppled by the sex scandals of the 1990s, exemplified by Archbishop Croke, an "oriental pasha" who made and unmade Parnell and other politicians.

Some of Tanner's choices are indeed eccentric (why does the chapter on the disestablishment of the Church of Ireland in 1869 precede the chapter on Daniel O'Connell and his agitating priests of the 1820s?), and a few errors creep in (the patrician, peripatetic William O'Connell at one point is assigned to New York, when of course "Gangplank Bill" was Cardinal of Boston).

As well, Tanner doesn't give enough credit to the churchmen, North and South, who played a crucial role in finally ending the Troubles (see last year's Secret History of the IRA), ironically when both Catholicism and Protestantism are dwindling in importance in a secular modern Ireland. (Archbishop Croke and de Valera would fulminate to see the girls of Dublin today in their miniskirts and platform shoes tottering about the discos of Temple Bar.)