Customer Reviews

New Turing Omnibus (New Turning Omnibus : 66 Excursions in Computer Science)

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This book provides an excellent overview (or review) of theoretical Computer Science. If there are any of you who think that the high end of computer science is another form of mathematics, then this book is for you. If you think that computer science is just programming then maybe you should take a look at this book as well. After reading this book you will have a good overview of the "science" of computer science. I find too often that most of the undergraduate books in computer science tend to focus on the software engineering side of the field. When you finish this book, you will have been exposed to everything from genetic algorithms to Godel's theorem. The book covers advanced topics such as natural language thoery, but still introduces them on an introductory level. This book is still a little tough for those who have only studied programming. However, any computer scince major (or someone with the equivelent exposure to CS) would find this book to be an excellent reference and review of the things he (or she) would have missed or forgotten in their studies. Incidently, the book presents problems (no solutions, what's new) and refrences at the end of each chapter for further study.

The bottom line is this: This book is the closest thing to a hybrid textbook/encylcopedia of computer science. It covers almost every imaginable topic in computer science and should be on every CS major's bookshelf.

Dewdney does a nice job in covering a wide range of topics (e.g. NP completeness, codes, formal languages) that computer scientists take for granted as "common knowlege". It serves as a nice encyclopedia for both computer scientists and a layman with some mathematical background who is curious about some of the disciplines of computer science. A great book to have on your shelf.

An enjoyable read for those with some Computer Science or Engineering background. Overviews of 66 different topics in C.S. theory and practice, categorized into 11 general areas. Provides very accessible, intuitive explanations on these foundational topics, with an emphasis on how the theoretical topics relate to practical applications. Nice survey/review of the broad field of Computer Science for the computer professional, as well.

I carried this book around with me all the time in the early-mid 90s. It is probably one of the best books you could possibly give a young mathematically-inclined person. There is absolutely no fat on this book --- it pure math and CS ideas with a minimum of encumbering notation and pedantic proofs. Pure delight.

This is possibly one of the best CS reference books ever written. I started with the original (61 Excursions) when I was in the 6th grade. At that point most of it made no sense, but I was able to implement the Algorithm section in BASIC. Every year from then I was able to understand a little more and now that I'm a Junior in CS I have seen most of the topics in one class or another at some point and found the classes easier because I had already seen a general introduction thanks to this book. Don't let this book *not* be on your bookshelf.

This book presents a great "big picture" view of the issues in computer science for lay people. For some topics, however, it appears that depth has been sacrificed for breadth, resulting in a misleading representation of a field. For instance, computer vision is a field concerned with more than just polyhedral scenes, yet the chapter entitled "Computer Vision" deals only with polyhedral scenes.

This is a great book. It introduces computer science concepts in a accessible manner. This book is great as supplement to an introduction to computer science course. Even those without computer science backgrounds can read and learn from this book.

If you're a computer scientist, you have to own this book. It covers a variety of topics every CS graduate must know about. Pity they never published the next edition.

Perhaps I had mistaken the purpose of this book, but I had expected something more of a springboard into new topics. I found that this book went into details about things I was already familiar with, but didn't give much information about things that were more interesting and unfamiliar.

I previewed this book to see if it looked like it would live up to the hype, and I found this little "gem": "If you must skin a cat, do it quickly". What is wrong with so many of my fellow engineers that they think animal mutilation and suffering is somehow entertaining? Have they spent so much time among machines that they view life as another set of machines? Whatever the reason, I have neither the time nor the patience to put up with it, either at work or in my choice of reading material (and I've seen way too much of this and much, much worse among my coworkers). At least previewing the book saved me the $20 I would have lost by throwing the thing in the recycle bin.