Customer Reviews

Numerical Recipes in Fortran 90: Volume 2, Volume 2 of Fortran Numerical Recipes: The Art of Parallel Scientific Computing

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

 

 

Although the original FORTRAN77 version of Numerical Recipes is highly acclaimed (and rightfully so, it is really worth every buck) I do not recommend this FORTRAN90 book. I was very disappointed when I received it. A huge part of the book only contains F90 program listings for the same routines that are derived and discussed in detail in Volume I (F77). The two new introductory chapters make it not worth buying the book. Instead, get the Numerical Recipes CD-ROM which includes the source code for C, F77, F90 and other languages and maybe a good introductory or reference book on F90.

(The review of "oblinqued" down below is obviously referring to the original book as the F90 book was not available in 1991).

This IS NOT a standalone book. It can be read ONLY with NR f77 (2. Ed. also titled Volume I). The discussions on the algorithms given there are not repeated here. The few new recipes (eg on random numbers using a lot of f90) are explained in the excellent style one has come to expect of the authors. However to make sense out of the book you must have both this and the volume 1 open at the corresponding pages. This makes it inconvenient to use. For this reason it was something of a disappointment.

The cleanliness of the code in the recipes (as expected from the authors other recipe books) and the introductory chapters on f90 and parallelization still make the book worhtwhile.

I think I would have given the book more stars if my expectations (based on previous version) were not so high.

This is one of the greatest advances in numerical analysis of the 20th Century, and a "can't do without" in the computer age. However, I bought a personal copy in 1991 and the quality of the binding was terrible as pages have kept falling out in the most frequently used sections. It's one of the books I'll take to my grave, if it doesn't die before I do. I think the publishers should be ashamed of themselves for not treating such a great classic with more respect.