Customer Reviews

Logic for Computer Scientists (Progress in Computer Science and Applied Logic (PCS))

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

 

 

INITIAL REVIEW
I bought this book together with the similarly titled, longer text by Mordechai Ben-Ari, and I've reviewed that longer book too. Link to that book: Mathematical Logic for Computer Science This older 1989 and 170pg reprinted text by Uwe Schoning is essentially the core of the Ben-Ari book presented in a more readable way for this non-computer scientist reader. There are just three chapters, 1 Propositional Logic / 2 Predicate Logic / 3 Logic Programming. Between the good Ben-Ari book and this one by Schoning, this presently reviewed book would be my preferred first read.

TERRIBLE BEHAVIOR OF PAPER COVER
I started reading this book on Tue 8Nov11 late morning and have one major mechanical warning about the book. Content is very good and well-printed, and the pages do stay flat, but the front paper cover stays open and curls far back toward the spine as soon as opened and continues to do so. A) Spending time with other heavier books stacked on top of this one can mitigate much of the problem over time. B) I found also that rolling the front cover tightly under at least benignly keeps it from curling back, just making it slightly wavy. This is by far the worst problem with behavior of a paper cover in my decades of experience, but actions A) and B) combined did well flatten the front cover.

THE MUCH BETTER HARD COVER
With this worst ever paper cover, and with Amazon always having the available hardcover in 'Temporarily out of stock' and full price $54.95 status, I found another solution. Late on Wed 28Dec11, I ordered thru Amazon via Soir Books in Illinois a hardcover of this book for $49.95, including $3.99 shipping. That book arrived on Tue 3Jan12, and I should have earlier considered this excellent hardcover of this excellent book! I strongly recommend that anyone interested in this book should seek out a hardcover copy rather than battle that terrible paper cover.

(((SINGLE COPY ORDER-ON-DEMAND MANUFACTURING ((OPTIONAL))
On the very back page surface in my original copy, along with a bar code, it says "Made in the USA / Lexington, KY / 12 June 2011". So is it just this printing contractor in Lexington who has hasn't learned to fabricate a decent paper cover? I suppose so. Birkhauser certainly should not have selected them, assuming they were the ones that did select them. With 12Jun11 being the exact date I ordered this book thru Amazon, this title might be manufactured by a Lexington-based copy-on-demand type of operation. I ordered a second copy on Sat 26Nov11 at the lowest price of $33.60 I have seen. So if that copy has Lexington and 26Nov or a nearby date inside the back cover, that would seem to verify good book/poor cover prone copy-on-demand manufacturing. 2nd copy says on that very last page: "Made in the USA / Lexington, KY / 27 November 2011", the date Amazon shipped this Copy 2 with another Cambridge book. Therefore we do have copy on demand printing in Lexington every time someone orders this Birkhauser title. There must also be an Amazon shipping location at Lexington, as that was the address on the Nov11 shipping box, so who is responsible for the book manufacturing may be more complicated than thought originally. I don't plan to mess up the cover of this copy 2 of the great Schoning textbook.)))
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TO THE TECHNICAL REVIEW!

RELATED OTHER BOOKS
Content of this book seems closely related to three other books which I have read in and have also reviewed, but it has its own good special approach: Chapters 1-2 of Mathematical Logic: A First Course (Dover Books on Mathematics), big chapter 2 of Mathematical Theory of Computation (Dover Books on Mathematics), and early chapter II of The Foundations of Mathematics (Logic S.) For the resolution and logic programming content of the present book, there is some cross-talk with similar subjects in out of print (oop) Logic for Computer Science: Foundations of Automatic Theorem Proving, of which I do have a PDF and two used hard copies, and have also reviewed that book, including its chapter list.

GREAT TECHNICAL CONTENT OF THIS BOOK

READING THIS BOOK
On Thu 1Dec11 morning, I finished reading this great book. In general, Schoning wrote quite clear expository prose in this unique book, and included quite a few helpful examples that do aid a reader's understanding. Also, many of the proofs are long, but still fairly comprehensible and interesting. Schoning's thorough treatment of complicated resolution in his sections 2.5 and 2.6 is superior to my previous reading on that subject in section 2-3 of the above book by Zohar Manna, but strangely the 'first-orderness' of this resolution did not appear symbolically. I have found that Schoning's approach to resolution is fairly similar to that in the longer coverage of the subject in the oop linked book by Gallier. In addition, there are many exercises thru the whole book for those interested. This book appears to me to be at a sophomore or junior undergraduate level, as it is nicely straightforward.

Chapter 1 is 37 pages long and covers normal propositional logic with addition of Horn formulas and propositional resolution. In that chapter the author does discuss the severe computational complexity of large truth tables, and also of the resolution algorithm. They are both exponential.

Chapter 2 is the longest at 67 pages and covers most standard first-order predicate logic, and from p. 78 to the end, first order resolution and its variants are treated in great detail. There are several much used defined items uniquely present in this book. Several definitions and proofs rely moderately on well done pseudocode algorithms, notably for important Skolem Form and for unification prior to resolution.

Chapter 3 is 46 pages long and picks up some of the resolution issues from late chapter 2. SLD resolution from section 2.6 becomes the 'home' for logic programming in general, fully using the Horn clauses first introduced in chapter 1. The chapter finished with some of the oddities of the actual PROLOG programming language.

This book is my absolute favorite for its excellent content, but is rated at 4 stars overall, not the otherwise 5 stars, because of terrible behavior of its paper cover. I received an excellent hardcover of this book on Tue 3Jan12 and that robust copy enables the deserved 5 star rating.