Customer Reviews

Boolean Reasoning: The Logic of Boolean Equations (Dover Books on Mathematics)

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Boolean algebra is the bedrock of computing. So if you want to deepen your understanding of computing, Brown presents this exposition. Beware. It is a lot more abstruse than the way Boolean logic is often taught in computer science courses. It shows a depth and elegance far removed from those treatments. There is a beauty here in the Boolean expressions that is sadly not appreciated by enough programmers.

Along the way, Brown explains Karnaugh maps to good detail. He also ties this into programs that optimise Boolean expressions according to various criteria. So yes, there are actual code examples, just in case you think this is all too airy fairy.

CANCELLATION OF THE BOOK BY DOVER / THEIR POSSIBLE RE-REPRINTING OF THIS BOOK
At the time I was reading this interesting book to about mid Chapter 5, Dover pulled 'Boolean Reasoning' off of their Logic 1 page on 14Jan11 in their web book store, apparently taking it out of print. That is the only time I've seen Dover cancel a book with no warning in the 1.5 years since I've been buying some books online directly from them. In contrast, last year (2010) they marked several books way down to 70% off as clearance books, and about half of them looked like they did finally sell out of stock, while some others were reinstated to normal published book status and full price. Dover has also recently resurrected a number of books out of print from them. In Amazon on evening of 22Sep11, the page for this book shows Dover reprinting it again in May 2012. That would be nice for killing the $152 hardcover version's viability. See my paragraph below on that hyper expensive and mysterious occurrence.

MY READING OF THE DOVER PAPERBACK "Boolean Reasoning" aka "BR" IN JANUARY 2011
Short chapters 1, 'Introduction' and 2 'Fundamental Concepts' were quite interesting and straighforward. Then during good but increasingly difficult and long chapter 3, 'Boolean Algebras', the author seemed to be writing at a level such that reading a simpler book on boolean stuff before this one would have been a good idea. Then Brown's chapter 4 on 'The Blake Canonical Form' was awful, mainly because of a useless circular definition of 'absorptive' on p.79, so that 'absorbed, absorption, unabsorbed', and so on were prominent undefined words used 15 times in the chapter. Context there was no help. Appendix A had the same circular definition, with 'absorptive' defined as not being absorbed yet again. On 23Jan I ended reading "BR" at the end of section 5.6 in chapter 5 'Boolean Analysis', just before difficulty of this book would increase severely. The place of diminishing returns for me had been reached. The remaining chapters were 6 'Syllogistic Reasoning' / 7 'Solution of Boolean Equations'/ 8 'Functional Deduction' / 9 'Boolean Identification' / 10 'Combinational Circuits: Specification & Optimization' / Appendix A 'Syllogistic Formulas'.

My own overall take regarding "Boolean Reasoning" is that it is a difficult graduate level book, and not much of a well written one. Very poorly done chapter 4 and appendix A seem to call all of Brown's writing into question. Also, I am unofficially a conventional first-order logician, and hence am not especially boolean algebraic in outlook.

MYSTERIOUS ULTRA HIGH PRICED HARDCOVER
It seems very strange, but Amazon is now (Aug-Oct11) considering a $152 original 1990 hardcover of this "BR" book as valid, and they're even keeping it in stock. How can an original hardcover still even be in print after Dover had reprinted it in 2003 after Kluwer canceled the book? The hardcover costs an extreme 9 times the $16.95 list price of the Dover paperback! $152 for this 304pg book is a whopping $0.50/pg. We could commercially photocopy that many pages about twice for this price. $152 for hardcover of this little book seems like unfair gouging of potential customers for it. Fortunately, it does look as if Dover will re-reprint "Boolean Reasoning" in 2012, so this super expensive hardcover will hopefully just go away.

A RECOMMENDED MORE CLEAR AND LESS EXPENSIVE BOOK
If you are willing to spend more than $16.95 for a book on boolean algebra, instead of hardcover "BR", I would recommend the book "Ones and Zeros" by John R. Gregg on IEEE Press/Wiley, about $56 and 295 pages from Amazon. "Ones and Zeros" covers boolean subjects very thoroughly, yet rather accessibly. It covers nearly all of what is in "Boolean Reasoning" more clearly than in that book, plus it covers all the circuit elements stemming from boolean logic. A very good and approaching reasonably priced paperback textbook. Here is a link to that book: Ones and Zeros: Understanding Boolean Algebra, Digital Circuits, and the Logic of Sets (IEEE Press Understanding Science & Technology Series)

I'd like to point out the following URL containing a complete review of the book
http://www.philosophy.unimelb.edu.au/ajl/2005/2005_6.pdf

Brown's book contains proofs of fundamental results that are only quoted in other books on the subject.
Boolean Reasoning: The Logic of Boolean Equations