Editorial Review

This book is one of the oldest and most popular introductions to artificial intelligence.An accomplished artificial intelligence (AI) scientist, Winston heads MIT's Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, and his hands-on AI research experience lends authority to what he writes. Winston provides detailed pseudo-code for most of the algorithms discussed, so you will be able to implement and test the algorithms immediately. The book contains exercises to test your knowledge of the subject and helpful introductions and summaries to guide you through the material. ... Read more

Reviews (8)

Can't get worse
This book is bad (period). It is very incoherent and ill-organized. The examples are vague and serve anything but support the material. Very theoritical with hardly any real life applications. Lacking in modern AI topics/game design.

Miserable AI book - avoid at all costs
Winston's book is really terrible.I mean truly repellently, malignantly bad."Can it really be as bad as all that?" you wonder.Yes!!It's that bad!!For starters, the book is poorly organized.Topics that logically belong together are often several chapters apart.There is no overall structure to the book.It seems like a collection of topics in AI that were hastily assembled without concern for thematic organization or flow.For example, the forward and backward chaining algorithms are presented in a chapter (Ch. 7) on rule-based systems, but are not even mentioned in the chapter (Ch. 13) on logic!Perceptron training is presented AFTER backpropagation!Contrast this with the much better book by Russell and Norvig, which uses the theme of intelligent agents as a continuing motivation throughout, and which groups related topics into logically arranged chapters. Very useful and well written; an industry perspective:
Suppose you are, like me, a software engineer who never actually studied CS beyond junior level undergraduate 'data structures'... and now you have to work on something involving complicated pattern matching... this is howto do it: buy this book and Sipser's on the Theory of Computation.Afterdigesting them (which is easy if you're as good with logical mathematics asthe typical software engineer), you should be able to read currentliterature in either field, and will have a deep, fundamental understandingof how to best solve whatever problem you're working on.That's whatworked for me, anyway.An excellent book, as is Sipser's. ... Read more

Subjects:  1. Artificial Intelligence    2. Artificial Intelligence - General    3. Computer Books: General    4. Computers    5. Computers - General Information    6. Computers / Artificial Intelligence   

Reviews (1)

lovely innovation in teaching programming
In a way, this is a tricky book for me to review. I learnt programming with Fortran on punch cards [remember them?]. Then later gravitated to other languages like Pascal, C and Java. But it was only in the 90s that languages started coming out with graphics built in. Prior to that, it was mostly text and binary Input/Output. That was our User Interface, shocking as it might seen to some of you. So there were always abstractions in learning a language, from the very start.
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Subjects:  1. Artificial Intelligence - General    2. Computer Books: General    3. Computers    4. Computers - General Information    5. Computer Programming    6. Computers / Computer Science    7. Computing and Information Technology   

Reviews (4)

learning to use STELLA on different problems
The book teaches the use of a modelling program called STELLA, that can be used to simulate the behaviour of dynamical systems. You can treat the text as an extended user's manual about the capabilities of STELLA. It appears to be an easy program to learn. Its user interface hides the gory details of coupled integro-differential equations that actually model the systems.
Dynamic Modeling, Second Edition
This is an excellent book for beginning and intermediate modelers. I found it to be engaging, practical, and easy to understand. Dynamic modeling has become an essential tool to facilitate understanding developments in our increasingly complex and interdependent world, to communicate ideas across disciplinary boundaries, and to help solve problems. This book is a great place to begin. It offers a hands-on introduction to dynamic modeling. Great blend of concept and practice
I have been involved in static data modeling as part of database design throughout my career, and because of that know very well that to really learn how to model, you have to do more than listen to lectures or read a text. This book, along with the accompanying STELLA modeling tool, is an excellent blend of concept and practice.Read more

Subjects:  1. Chaotic Behavior in Systems    2. Computer Engineering    3. Computer Simulation    4. Computers    5. Digital computer simulation    6. Dynamics    7. General    8. Research & Methodology    9. Science    10. Science/Mathematics    11. Biology, Life Sciences    12. Computer modelling & simulation    13. Computers / Computer Science   

Editorial Review

This collection of classic and ground-breaking papers explores the issues involved in information visualization--thought versus perception, mental process versus graphic representation. In Read more

Reviews (5)

I wish it had been available for purchase three years ago
If I would have been able to buy what basically amounts to a near comprehensive gathering of exactly the kind of research I've spent the past three years trying to find....I'd be a happer man with far more hair on my head. an oxy-moron
hey somebody ripped me off! INDISPENSIBLE SURVEY OF THE FRONTIERS OF INFOVIZ
Stuart Card, Jock Mackinlay, and Ben Shneiderman, all extraordinary leaders in creating and researching the field on human-computer interface design, have pooled their editorial judgment to create a comprehensive, andmuch-needed collection of pioneering articles on information visualization. They have produced remarkable survey of such topics ascontext, mapping,spatial metaphors, interaction, navigation, and visual tools.Read more

Subjects:  1. Artificial Intelligence - General    2. Computer Books: General    3. Computer Engineering    4. Computer Graphics    5. Computer Graphics - General    6. Computer Science    7. Computers    8. Computers - General Information    9. Digital Image Processing    10. General    11. Image processing    12. Information Theory    13. Information visualization    14. Computer graphics software    15. Computers / Computer Science    16. Human-computer interaction   

Subjects:  1. Computer Simulation    2. Computers - General Information    3. Engineering - Industrial    4. Science/Mathematics    5. Technology    6. Computer modelling & simulation    7. Technology / Engineering / Industrial   

Reviews (5)

Good in some ways but
It is difficult to understand who this book is written for. The authors are clearly clever guys but strangely the book does little to explain the command structure for modelling in the authors' own package! It would be useful to explain the models in the context of random effects/nested modelling in conventional ANOVA for newbies. Please authors if you do a second edition show how really simple models are programmed.
Very good textbook for (non)linear mixed models in R
Even though the title of this book is mixed effects models in S and S+ but this is a wonderful book for a person to learn mixed effect models in R. If you read this book carefully and also use the R to practice examples. Then you will get a lot from the learning process. Of course you should has a basic background in linear model before you read this book.
As someone who just learn R
At first sight, there are a lot of SPlus/R commands in the book which one may expect to learn a lot about using nlme.However, I found there is a lack in explanation of the command, if not missing.For e.g., in Chapter 1, the book talks about nested classficification models and gave the command in Splus/R, with the model equation right in front of me, I still can't figure out why in the command ...... random=list(Dog=~day,Side=~1) .... can't figure out the logic of this command in relation to the equation.I know this is not an introductory book for R, but a lot of time, when we want to use R or Splus the first time, it's not b'cos we want to do simple statistics, so a bit more explanation of the commands will be helpful, rather than following the commands blindly.Furthermore, I'm not even talking about R programming.Having said that, I still want to emphasize it is a good book written for the topic and package. ... Read more

Subjects:  1. Computer Science    2. Computers - Other Applications    3. General    4. Mathematical & Statistical Software    5. Mathematical Statistics    6. Mathematics    7. Probability & Statistics - General    8. Science/Mathematics    9. Theory Of Computing    10. Data capture & analysis    11. High level programming languages    12. Mathematics / Statistics    13. Mixed-Effects Models    14. S language    15. S-Plus   

Subjects:  1. Artificial Intelligence - General    2. Computer Books: Database    3. Computer Books: General    4. Computer Graphics - General    5. Computer Science    6. Computers    7. Computers - General Information    8. Data mining    9. Database Management - General    10. Decision making    11. Geographic information systems    12. Computers / General    13. Database software    14. Databases & data structures   

Reviews (10)

Outstanding introduction
... not only to molecular modeling, but to some of the subtleties of DNA and protein behavior and geometry, too. A long expected book in molecular modeling is finally here
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. Beautifully written!
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.Read more

Subjects:  1. Biomolecules    2. Chemistry - Physical & Theoretical    3. Computer Simulation    4. General    5. Life Sciences - Biochemistry    6. Models    7. Molecular Chemistry    8. Science    9. Science/Mathematics    10. Computer modelling & simulation    11. Genetics (non-medical)    12. Molecular biology    13. Science / Biochemistry   

Editorial Review

Traditional neural network computing uses continuous propagation of its signals, whereas biological networks use signal timing and frequency in their transmission and computation. Read more

Reviews (2)

relatively current
Pulsed Neural Networks (90's), Artificial Intelligence (80's), Cybernetics (60's and 70's) Telephone Switch Board (10's and 20's) Hydrodynamics (1700 and 1800) it is amazing the names put on cognitive science through the years.This book is a symposium (13 small books) on developing hardware devices capable of replacing or enhancing neurological functions. Using modeling techniques to duplicate biophysical neural pathways can take two forms. The first are math models, which obviously show the relationship between the neurons (virtual reality). The second type is models that build-spiking neurons in real time to which this book is directed. In the first part of the book, a summary of current thought, written by the main compilers of the book (Maas and Bishop) is worth the price alone. The book addresses the question of biological electrical (vs. chemical or genetic) coding, in which the method of information is actually transmitted and received. The compilers have emphasized the chronological event of development with the articles so that the reader does not become lost in which came first.Gravy is given the reader in the form of articles written by researchers in other fields (VLSI) to the point that the reader wonders if one is still reading a book on biophysics. The hard-wired neural net components are then compared to their biological predecessors for the purpose of obtaining usable "dry lab" tools for experiments. ("Dry-wet-electrical lab", "electrical-dry-lab-wet-computer-lab"?). Even though the material contains electrical engineering stuff it is still very readable to biological types and if interested, can muscle through this stuff. The math model development in Matlab is mentioned, but the reference to Matlab's current capabilities in this area is dated (95). Most of symmetries run in the book are older 200 Pentium type machines, and with a faster (650 up) and better busing Matlab's new neural net toolbox can build some interesting stuff (remember however it is still virtual). The "home modeler" can use chap. 7 and 12 as a theoretical basis for stochastic resonance models which the writers, while dealing with stochastic bit-stream overlooked this aspect. However, H.Wilson's Spikes, Decision and Actions is much better. (Matlab interactive).This is a really good book for modelers (reason for the review as opposed to `me to' reviews). Most of the neural nets and circuits designs are easily modeled in Matlab's Simulink to give real time results similar to those reported. (Whether the results duplicate reality is always a question with these types of models). Flights of fancy (the reason for modeling in the first place, at least the addictive part) can then be implemented according to the capabilities of the reader. The book also discusses "hard wired" CMOS chips available replicating biological systems with plug in units to standard computer I/O units (Motorola, National, and Fuzzytech).However a larger question comes from this book. How can the output of a non-deterministic system be modeled by deterministic model (hardware or otherwise) inputs (H.Wilson)?Without a specific knowledge of the role that neural architecture plays in the phase modulations and oscillatory behavior, how can information be transferred by digital or analog devices duplication neural transmission.As the author puts it in Chap. 12, "Furthermore it is not even clear what the goal of a learning algorithm for pulsed neural nets should be; the goal to learn a function or a function (operator). This book is not a failing because it cannot answer this question. Indeed, the avenues it reviews and discusses opens up many more fields and sparks new uses for the fields it introduces.

good introduction
This book presents a general overview to the growing field of spiking neural networks and their VLSI implementation written by many of the major figures in this field. It begins with several clear explications of the spiking response model which has been recently popularized by Gerstner (who has several good entries in this volume) and why looking at such a model might be a good idea (it really is completely fascinating). As with all neural network theory, understanding the model will require a fairly solid mathematical background. The middle portion of the book is dedicated to VLSI implementation (which I am not involved with so won't comment) and the last chapters present a wide variety of articles from the highly mathematical to advice for digital simulation of such networks. Chapter 10 is by far the most mathematical chapter and presents the analytic results that have been derived for a homogeneous fully connected network. Although this is far from a complete reference it provides a clear explanation of the reasons for this direction and enough good references at the end of each section to get you started. I have continually turned to this book while getting started in my research in this area. ... Read more

Subjects:  1. Computer Books: General    2. Computer Science    3. Computers    4. Computers - Communications / Networking    5. Networking - General    6. Neural Computing    7. Neural Networks    8. Neural networks (Computer scie    9. Neural networks (Computer science)    10. Computers / Neural Networks   

Editorial Review

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Reviews (11)

A Good Book for a Tough Subject
Abstract language theory is hard, but Languages and Machines does a very good job of explaining the subject step by step. The topics are covered extremely thoroughly and with just the right amount of rigor.As for those who claim it's not exciting enough, you can't get blood out of a stone.Only the most dedicated computer scientist and mathematicians will find this topic interesting.Even so, this book does a superb job of tying theory to application (e.g., the machines one can use language theory to build) for even the most obscure concepts (like the Greibach Normal Form).
emphasises the Turing machine
[A review of the 3RD EDITION, 2005.]
horrified
The book is incredibly boring.If you're condemned to read it (say, it's required reading for your qualifiers), I strongly recommend that you find a group of people to study w/ and pool your resources to only buy a single copy.The lack of answers at the back of the book makes self study difficult, and groupwork might be the only way to stay awake.
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Subjects:  1. Computational complexity    2. Computer Books: General    3. Computer Science    4. Computers    5. Formal Language Theory    6. Formal languages    7. Logic    8. Machine theory    9. Mathematics    10. Computers / Computer Science    11. Databases & data structures    12. Mathematical theory of computation   

Editorial Review

A practical book, Read more

Reviews (6)

A real gem of a book
Some books just have the right feel about them and this is one of them.The author clearly knows neural networks and also knows how to communicate to others in a no-nonsense fashion.With so many books being published, you rarely find a technical book that is as good as this.The emphasis here is on conveying the insights that the experts in this area would know.Importantly, concepts are explained equally in words, graphics and mathematics, maximising the uptake of knowledge from the book. Tufte would be impressed by the quality of the line graphics in this book, and the information that they convey, not to mention the overall presentation.I suspect that this book would make an ideal textbook for a course in neural networks. Overall, I've enjoyed reading it very much.

Neural Smithing
Book is excellent.Covers the theory very well, such that you can make the computer code yourself.They also provide puedocode.You will be able to learn it better than other books that just give you the code. I find that once you understand the theory, writing the code is easy.

Saves you months of information gathering
Everybody who tries to use NNets for real goes through these steps.Read more

Subjects:  1. Artificial Intelligence - General    2. Computer Books: General    3. Computer Science    4. Computers    5. Computers - Communications / Networking    6. Neural Computing    7. Neural Networks    8. Neural networks (Computer scie    9. Neural networks (Computer science)    10. Computers / Computer Science   

Editorial Review

Even those with little mathematical background will be able to understand this user-friendly book, which focuses on formal languages and models of computation. (The author devotes an entire chapter to induction and recursive definitions.) Read more

Reviews (20)

Lacks educational value
During the course this book has been anything but helpful. The introductory part is a laugh as it takes for given you as a reader is very deep into mathematical lingo and proofs. Indeed the poofs are some of the worst written, many of them using statements as "Clearly it is..." and "It is now easy to see...", well, no, it isn't easy and mostly seems like a shortcut from the author to excuse himself from actual explanations. Breadth Of Information
I normally don't write reviews. Couple of not very positive reviews could not stop me writing one for this title. In my opinion, this book really presents a breadth of information Terrible book
This book is awful. Hard to follow along with the reading. Poor examples, lacking and skipping many steps when there actually is an example. Answers to a few of the questions would have been nice, to know if the problems were done correctly. Must be a master of discrete mathmatics to have any understanding what is going on. I have seen many better books. ... Read more

Subjects:  1. Computable functions    2. Computer Science    3. Computers    4. Logic    5. Mathematics    6. Programming - General    7. Programming Languages - General    8. Science/Mathematics    9. Sequential Machine Theory    10. Computers / Computer Science    11. General Theory of Computing    12. Programming languages   

Reviews (3)

Somewhat dated but overall extremely useful
If you've gotten this far without actually looking at the summary information about this tome above, please note that this book contains nearly 1,000 pages. This book is a collection of research papers (of the sort you'd find published in books on HCI or from conferences of the ACM SIGCHI committee) organized into chapters by some shared topic (i.e. human factors, hypertext, speed/language/audition). Each chapter is preceded by a summary of the papers contained therein along with often useful bibliographic citation of related works, all grounded in their utility toward the field of HCI by the editors. Another Great Morgan Kaufmann Value
This second edition of a collection of great papers on human-computerinteraction (HCI) is a different snapshot of the field -- an excellentintroduction.In addition to the high quality papers, the text writter bthe editors, all highly regarded in the field, add a lot to the reader'sunderstanding.Recommended for students (required for all grad students inHCI), researchers, and for practitioners looking for something deeper thanguidelines.

prototype
3 type of prototype high low rapidRead more

Subjects:  1. Artificial Intelligence - General    2. Computer Books: General    3. Computer Science    4. Computers    5. Computers - General Information    6. Human-Computer Interaction    7. System design    8. User Interfaces    9. Computers / Computer Science   

Reviews (2)

Numerical Geometry of Images
A very well-written, interesting and useful book covering a wide range of topics in image processing and computer vision and beyond. A good balance between theory and implementation issues that make the things work. A 100% recommendation to students and specialists in the field.
Some additional info.
The book is an extended version of my lecture notes. Including
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Subjects:  1. Data processing    2. Geometry - General    3. Geometry, Differential    4. Mathematics    5. Science/Mathematics    6. Algorithms & procedures    7. Applied mathematics    8. Computer vision    9. Computers / Computer Graphics / General    10. Image processing   

Reviews (5)

Not introductory as I expected
This book served as my introduction to Eclipse, and I found it not as helpful as just playing with Eclipse itself. After play time was over, I went to the book again, and saw some improvements that I could have used. Best and Only Book on EMF
This is the best and only work on the Eclipse Modeling Framework, which is the code generation engine built into the Eclipse IDE. It's a solid work, but it's one flaw is that it is neither a completely how-to book, nor is it completely architectural work, so it will probably frustrate most readers to some degree. This is the only reason I didn't give it a perfect rating.

Significant Productivity Gains
If you have used Eclipse to program Java, you might have gotten comfortable with its capabilities. Very intuitive and kindly donated by IBM to open source. So when I opened this book, I anticipated oodles of helpful tweaks and shortcuts.Read more

Subjects:  1. Computer Books: General    2. Computer software    3. Computers    4. Computers - Languages / Programming    5. Development    6. Java (Computer program languag    7. Java (Computer program language)    8. Programming - General    9. Programming - Software Development    10. Programming Languages - Java    11. Software Development    12. Computer modelling & simulation    13. Computers / Programming Languages / Java    14. Java & variants   

Subjects:  1. Computer Vision    2. Computers    3. Computers - General Information    4. Engineering - Industrial    5. Manufacturing    6. Science/Mathematics    7. Applied optics    8. Automatic control engineering    9. Technology / Manufacturing   

Reviews (14)

The arcane made accessible
On the surface, the book seems focused on computers and even video games.This makes the activities appealing for middle and high school students.However, the ideas in this book are actually relevant to two entirely different fields:1) genetics, and 2) artificial intelligence.Both these fields have at their centers the concept of complexity arising out of simplicity.Students who work their way though the activites in this book will find that Dr. Resnick offers a window into a deep mathematical world that has applications far beyond computers and games.
Great Starting Point in Agent based Modelling
Mitchel Resnick shares a lovely sense of wonder, discovery and fascination in this slim, easily read volume about agent based modelling.Using micro-worlds (termites, ants and other modelling metaphors) Resnick shows us how collective behaviours are more than a simple sum of the parts - and through his experiments using StarLogo programming he shows the nature of emergent behaviours that come through decentralised thinking.
interesting, but describes an old version of the software
This is a book describing the research of a team at MIT using a version of the educational language "Logo". Running in a simple graphical environment which supports multiple parallel operation of code in the same shared space. Write a few lines of code for an "ant", then let 1000 of them loose. The current version of this "StarLogo" system is written in Java, and available as a free download for anyone to play with.Read more

Subjects:  1. Cognitive Psychology    2. Computer Books: General    3. Computer Science    4. Computer-Aided Instruction (General)    5. Computers    6. Data Processing - Parallel Processing    7. Neuropsychology    8. Parallel Processing    9. Psychology    10. Cognition & cognitive psychology    11. Computer modelling & simulation    12. Computers / Computer Science    13. Cybernetics & systems theory   

Reviews (1)

Impressed, this is well worth it.
I have been fascinated with AI for a long time, so I was excited to see this book.I own 3 other AI books, and all of them are really good.This book explains things in a way that is easy to understand.The author doesn't use any C++ in the book every algorithm is done in pseudo-code to make it easy to implement using any language.It is a definitive guide to the basic and not so basic AI techniques.The aicore that the author provides on the CD is well documented and is very helpful.
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Subjects:  1. Artificial Intelligence - General    2. Computer Books: General    3. Computer Graphics - Game Programming    4. Computers    5. Computers - Games    6. Artificial intelligence    7. Computer games    8. Computers / Computer Graphics / Game Programming