Customer Reviews

Computational Geometry: Algorithms and Applications, Second Edition

5 star:		(12)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Pro:
(1) Each chapter begins with a practical example. For example, the chapter computing intersections of lines starts with a discussion of a map-making application that goes into enough detail to see how the algorithms they present would be useful. This is a considerable step up from the common practice in algorithms literature of motivation by way of vaguely mentioning some related field (i.e. "These string matching algorithms are useful in computational biology"). This book does a much better job of motivating the material it presents, but if you're primarily interested in the abstract problem, these sections can be skipped.

(2) Each chapter is relatively self-contained. Feel free to skip ahead to subjects that interest you.

(3) Surprisingly readable. Unlike most technical material, one can read an entire chapter in a single sitting without missing much. Generally, each chapter will develop a single algorithm for a single kind of problem.

(4) It's very up to date. This second edition is less than two years old, it includes some new results in the field.

Con:
(1) Algorithms are only given in pseudocode. The emphasis is on describing algorithms and data structures clearly and completely. If you're looking for a "cookbook" with code to copy and paste into an application, perhaps O'Rourke's "Computational Geometry in C" would be a better choice.

(2) There are many important advanced results that are not discussed in the main text. An obvious example is the first chapter, which describes a well-known convex hull algorithm that takes O(n log n) time but algorithms that are faster for most inputs are mentioned only in the "Notes and Comments" at the end of the chapter. Someone interested in lots of gory details would be well-served to combine this book with Boissonnat and Yvinec's more detailed and mathematical "Algorithmic Geometry".

Algorithm books are often quite hard to understand, but this is not the case with this book. The information is very compact so it is a slow read but due to the high quality of the text this is only an advantage. You are never left wondering what the authors might have meant with a certain statement.

The book focuses solely on theory, so it presents no real source code (only pseudo-code) which I think is good thing since that would otherwise have polluted the clarity of the explanations.

Many of the topics it covers has been a help to me as a programmer. Can be recommended for anyone interested in computation geometry - but it requires some computer science maturity so I don't recommend it unless you have a bachelor's degree in C.S. or something similar.

Jacob Marner, M.Sc.

I also completely disagree with the one-star review below. The "Dutch book" is the clearest, most complete, most up-to-date, best designed, best illustrated computational geometry textbook out there. Some of the material may be a bit advanced for undergraduates (and for those people I would recommend Joe O'Rourke's excellent "Computational Geometry in C"), but for graduate students and other researchers who want to learn computational geometry, this book is absolutely essential.

This is an algorithms textbook, though, not a textbook full of code. You will not find compilable code in the author's favorite programming language du jour -- this may be what the first reviewer meant by "desperately needed details". What you will find is clear, correct, well-motivated explanations of the underlying algorithms, data structures, and mathematics.

The book does have a few faults. The motivating examples are often forced ("mixing things" for convex hulls??). The authors deliberately chose to show only one algorithm for each problem they consider, and occasionally the algorithm they chose is not the simplest or most efficient. But these are minor points.

If you're going to buy just one computational geometry book, this is the one to get.

I taught a class using that book, and I found it an invaluable help as an instructor in presenting the material. Teaching layered range trees and fractional cascading for instance benefits immensely from the detailed pictures of the book. At times, I find the motivation part somewhat stretched, or limited, but always informative for the student, and giving a concrete, hands-on aspect to the topic. The algorithms are almost all practical -- and practiced! It's a book your students will keep on their shelf for a while even after the class is over. And the layout is clear. It certainly does not rule out other books (like the classic Preparata-Shamos, or O'Rourke's) because it does sometimes not cover problems covered in those books, but it adds a lot to them, so even if you have them, you might want to consider this one.

Compared to other texts on Computational Geometry, like the Preparata / Shamos collection -- this book is simple to read; it's very well written.

I cannot understate the clarity of the book; if you try comparing this to other graduate texts on Computational Geometry -- this one blows them away.

I think it covers a broad range of topics and covers them well. It is a wealth of algorithms.

I completely disagree with the above commentor who evaluates it as a kind of bad book.

I can not find any errors in pseudo code, and it's very easy for me to understand and follow. It contains hundreds of figures which help students understand the concepts. The idea is so clear, and followed by good examples. It's also worth reading for all computer scientists and mathematicians who are working on geometry. I highly recommend to use it as a text for Graduate course.

It can be worth being the "BIBLE" of all computational geometers.

The subject is not easy, so the book is surely not for a primer on graphical programming, even more for a primer on computation and algorithms.
But if you need some very advanced algorithms to solve any computational geometry problem, you'll find it here. Maybe the very latest advances on subject are not present here (a new revision of this book is available, not much news on that, look for the difference on the web).
Thanks to the author, whom I asked a clarification on an algorithm present in the book, and responded in less than 3 hours.

This is one of the really few computational geometry books available. It fills a niche and does it decently. However it could be better:

1. The chapter layout is not very good. There are many "revisiting this" and "we saw in chapter so-and-so".

2. The mathematical proofs are often written in a single paragraph full of "English" interspersed with mathematical notation, instead of the tried and true way of numbered equations and one-per explanations. This makes for disconcerting reading.

3. The book in general could have done with more math and code, and less "English", not to mention more and better diagrams -- they tend to be sparsely detailed (ie. a picture is worth only a hundred words). The arrangement of diagrams also needs to be better: some are in the margins, some are in the middle, again not easy and intuitive to follow.

Hopefully a future edition will address this issues.

This book is extremely well written, easy to understand, and actually is the standard text for Computational Geometry classes, as far as I know. The only thing I didn't like about it was that there seemed to be a few errors in some of the pseudocode. But, it's to be expected when publishing a textbook, and I think it'll probably be cleared up in future editions.

Overall, great book. I'd recommend it to anyone taking graphics or a computational geometry class.

I really liked the contents of this book when it was really still the syllabus of a course I followed at Utrecht University while studying there. Because of me, this book contains a little less typing mistakes than it would have otherwise. <ahem>

Very interesting and even though the subject being explained is often very complex in nature, the way it is is presented makes it easier to follow than it could have been.

Very good. I even bought a copy after having graduated when I saw it was finally out as a book. I still keep it in a prominent place on my bookshelf.