Customer Reviews

The New Turing Omnibus: Sixty-Six Excursions in Computer Science

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Dewdney is one of the most stimulating writers on applied thinking and computer science that I have had the pleasure to read. Where the standard CS textbooks are most stale, Dewdney is the most provocative. He illuminates the dark corners of abstract thought with practical puzzles and plain language. This book is written in small bite size chapters that grow in complexity around multiple ideas, one being the idea of the state machine (if you don't know what a state machine is, don't fret, Dewdney is here to help). For us programmers, he gives enough information to actually implement the algorithms and explore the universe he envisions. I was able to take two of his pages and use it as a coding exercise that turned out to be quite enjoyable.

The appeal to Dwedney and his book stems from the fact that everything he writes is game-like or puzzle-oriented; while reading him one gets the feeling that an enlightened child is guiding the learned to a new level of thinking. Dewdney takes Computer Science on an enjoyable walk through a park where he ends up teaching the discipline to rethink shortest paths and non-intersecting traversals. What's more amazing about this book is that it is perfectly suited for a coffee table where the uninitiated could accidentally pick it up and join the conversation. That is, a degree in computer science is not a prerequisite to this fascinating read. It is brain dessert.

What you get out of the book depends upon how much you want to put into in. A reader of this book, could decide to just understand the general ideas, follow the detailed mathematics, or perhaps program on a computer (for example sorting routines, hashing and the like). Each of the excursions is well covered, sometimes witty, but at times I got bogged-down in the symbols. The chapter on "analog computation" coming in the middle of a book was a welcome relief presenting ideas of sorting, shortest path and minimum trees using spaghetti and strings without mathematics (and would be a good chapter to give to non-computer science friends if they ever make the mistake of asking you what sort of problems you think about). The chapter on neural networks, I thought was also clear. There are also some of the classic computer science problems presented such as the Tower of Hanoi, or "A man ponders how to ferry a wolf, a goat, and a cabbage across of river".

The 66 excursions cover a lot of ground, but often return to Turing machines, finite-state machines, and NP-completeness problems. I might have enjoyed more on algorithm analysis, computer languages, and game analysis. Additionally there are new topics since this 1992 publication, such as quantum computing, Bioinformatics, Internet related topics on virus and encrypting, and a raft of social questions including privacy. I hope the "Turing omnibus" refuels for another update.

The New Turing Omnibus is a gentle pass over many of the abstract concepts of computer science. It focuses on concepts, so if you want to learn to program in a given language, or if you want to master your Windows or Linux OS, look elsewhere. However, it does review all of the theoretical matters, from automata to logic maps, algorithmic analysis and beyond. It is a great read for a budding Computer Scientist, Electrical Engineer or Mathematician. Ideal readers would be younger students in Math or CompSci who want a gentle introduction to the real underlying concepts that govern all of Computer Science. Definatly a must for all CompSci book shelves.

If you are interested in Computer Science, reading this book is like watching a "Best Of" from your favorite TV show. It has a a 3-5 page headline on 66 different topics (with references, a must-have for academics) written so that anyone can understand the general idea without any background in the area being described.

If, as according to A. K. Dewdney, "W. Rouse Bell (was) the great English writer on mathematical recreations" then
Dewdney is the greatest Canadian writer.
Period.

This book has a lot of promise, and the premise is a good one: providing capsule overviews of 66 different areas of Computer Science. Unfortunately the delivery ends up disappointing.

I was hoping for short, but complete, overview of a number of topics. Something I could share with my teenagers to try and spark an interest in computer science (given that when I was their age to use a computer you had no choice but to dive in and understand how the machine worked, so it was a giant puzzle which begged to be solved). However, to keep the subject count high and the page count within reason, it feels like some necessary detail was left out, making it much harder to fully grasp or appreciate the content of each chapter.

For example, Chapter 3 (Systems of Logic) starts off easily enough but quickly jumps off to complete bases, relying on the reader to fill in gaps that they may be unable to do without having more information available. Figure 3.1, "Structure of the complete bases" would benefit from more exposition. Certainly my 14 year old had trouble making sense of the diagram.

In rereading the author's introduction, it is clear that he does not intend this book to stand on its own. I feel, however, that it would be more useful for autodidacts to pull ten or so of the excursions and add more sites to the remainder.

If you are a geek like me or want to be an armchair geek for an hour or so at a time, then this is the book for you. I loved it and I still reread some the chapters from time to time.

It is not only good for you but it's tasty too! :)

-- smerkdaddy

This book presents a clear panoramic for most of the computer science essential topics. I believe it is a demandable for CS student to start with. As a graduate student I find it very helpful for reviewing the computing theory.

I really got a kick out of this book. It's a creative exploration of various computer science concepts. I actually gave this to my college AI teacher because I thought it was a better book than what we used.