Artificial Intelligence Books - Page 3

Creating Cool MINDSTORMS NXT Robots (Technology in Action)

Daniele Benedettelli

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Subjects -> Computers & Internet -> General AAS

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 5 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

Build and program MINDSTORM NXT robots with Daniele Benedettelli, one of the world’s most respected NXT robot builders. He shows you how to build and program them from scratch, starting with the simplest robots and progressing in difficulty to a total of seven award–winning robots! You can download all the code, along with low–resolution videos that show how your robot works when it’s finished. You don’t need to be a programmer to develop these cool robots because all the code is provided, but advanced developers will enjoy seeing the secrets of Benedettelli’s code and techniques revealed.

What you’ll learn

• How to create award–winning robots from scratch to final programming.
• How to build each robot and which materials to use.
• Why certain features have specific designs.
• How to program your robot–all code is available for free download.
• Inspiration and tips and tricks on robotics, a particularly valuable resource for teachers and students.

Who is this book for?

Anyone interested in building robots or seeing how it is done. Programmers interested in learning how robots are programmed.

Collective Intelligence in Action

Satnam Alag

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 4 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

There's a great deal of wisdom in a crowd, but how do you listen to a thousand people talking at once? Identifying the wants, needs, and knowledge of internet users can be like listening to a mob.

In the Web 2.0 era, leveraging the collective power of user contributions, interactions, and feedback is the key to market dominance. A new category of powerful programming techniques lets you discover the patterns, inter-relationships, and individual profiles-the collective intelligence--locked in the data people leave behind as they surf websites, post blogs, and interact with other users.

Collective Intelligence in Action is a hands-on guidebook for implementing collective intelligence concepts using Java. It is the first Java-based book to emphasize the underlying algorithms and technical implementation of vital data gathering and mining techniques like analyzing trends, discovering relationships, and making predictions. It provides a pragmatic approach to personalization by combining content-based analysis with collaborative approaches.

This book is for Java developers implementing Collective Intelligence in real, high-use applications. Following a running example in which you harvest and use information from blogs, you learn to develop software that you can embed in your own applications. The code examples are immediately reusable and give the Java developer a working collective intelligence toolkit.

Along the way, you work with, a number of APIs and open-source toolkits including text analysis and search using Lucene, web-crawling using Nutch, and applying machine learning algorithms using WEKA and the Java Data Mining (JDM) standard.

Combinatorial Optimization: Algorithms and Complexity

Christos H. Papadimitriou

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 18 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

A classic... 5 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

I won't lie to you: this book is well written but relatively hard to read. The subject is inherently difficult, after all! I highly suggest it, though, because the author is a recognized expert on the field and the price is relatively low. It's worth it even if you enjoy a few pages...

Combinatorial Optimization: Algorithms and Complexity 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 3 people found this review helpful.

The book's state is very good, so I am satisfied with it.

Well written 4 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

I bought this book because I wanted to have theory on linear programming including duality, integer linear programming, typical graph algorithms and matroid theory in one book. Up to now I have read only most of the chapter on matroids and I would like to say a big thanks to the author.

Although you will not solve the world's problems with greedy algorithms, my mathematical part of the heart was pleased and satisfied by the theory which explained the very nice relation between matroids and greedy algorithms.

Maybe I will tell you more in a few months

Editorial Review:

Clearly written graduate-level text considers the Soviet ellipsoid algorithm for linear programming; efficient algorithms for network flow, matching, spanning trees, and matroids; the theory of NP-complete problems; approximation algorithms, local search heuristics for NP-complete problems, more. "Mathematicians wishing a self-contained introduction need look no further." — American Mathematical Monthly. 1982 edition.

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The Emperor's New Mind: Concerning Computers, Minds, and the Laws of Physics (Popular Science)

Roger Penrose

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 60 Average rating: 3.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

For decades, proponents of artificial intelligence have argued that computers will soon be doing everything that a human mind can do. Admittedly, computers now play chess at the grandmaster level, but do they understand the game as we do? Can a computer eventually do everything a human mind can do? In this absorbing and frequently contentious book, Roger Penrose--eminent physicist and winner, with Stephen Hawking, of the prestigious Wolf prize--puts forward his view that there are some facets of human thinking that can never be emulated by a machine. Penrose examines what physics and mathematics can tell us about how the mind works, what they can't, and what we need to know to understand the physical processes of consciousness. He is among a growing number of physicists who think Einstein wasn't being stubborn when he said his "little finger" told him that quantum mechanics is incomplete, and he concludes that laws even deeper than quantum mechanics are essential for the operation of a mind. To support this contention, Penrose takes the reader on a dazzling tour that covers such topics as complex numbers, Turing machines, complexity theory, quantum mechanics, formal systems, Godel undecidability, phase spaces, Hilbert spaces, black holes, white holes, Hawking radiation, entropy, quasicrystals, the structure of the brain, and scores of other subjects. The Emperor's New Mind will appeal to anyone with a serious interest in modern physics and its relation to philosophical issues, as well as to physicists, mathematicians, philosophers and those on either side of the AI debate.

Schaum's Outline of Feedback and Control Systems

Joseph Distefano

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 7 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Excellent for Undgrad Course 5 out of 5 stars.
7 of 7 people found this review helpful.

I'm currently taking a Feedback Control Theory course at the undergrad level, and I think this book is an excellent exposition of classical control theory. Our text for the course is Feedback Control of Dynamic Systems, written by people from Stanford. Schaum's Outline actually has more *theory* than the textbook we are using. It eliminates all of the frills and pretty colored diagrams in favor of exposing everything an undergraduate would have trouble with. And for those people who think the emphasis is only on problem solving, this "Outline" has more mathematical proof than the book from Stanford I just mentioned! I highly recommend using this book to get off on the right foot in control systems, whether you are an engineer just learning the material or an undergraduate; it solidifies the foundations of the theory so that practical problems will come more easily. Also, it is a practical book as well.

Editorial Review:

If you want top grades and thorough understanding of feedback and control systems--both analog and digital--in less study time, this powerful study tool is the best tutor you can have! It takes you step-by-step through the subject and gives you accompanying problems with fully worked solutions--plus hundreds of additional problems with answers at the end of chapters, so you can measure your progress. You also get the benefit of clear, detailed illustrations. Famous for their clarity, wealth of illustrations and examples--and lack of tedious detail--Schaum's Outlines have sold more than 30 million copies worldwide. This guide will show you why!

Network+ Guide to Networks

Tamara Dean

Amazon Price: $101.95 List Price: $101.95 Not yet published By: Course Technology

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 20 Average rating: 3.5 of 5

Grueling Course 5 out of 5 stars.
15 of 16 people found this review helpful.

This book is officially approved courseware for the CompTIA Network+ exam. It has been approved also by the CSSIA (Center for Systems Security and Information Assurance). The book is very comprehensive. But as all textbooks go it has both strengths and weaknesses. In this review I will try to highlight some of both.

Like most computer industry books, this one comes with a supplemental CD. That CD includes the Certblaster and MeasureUP self-test software and other files the student will find useful.

Each chapter begins with a highlight box that will outline what will be covered in the chapters. Then it includes a letter or story from someone working in the industry. At first these seemed a little cheesy, but as I moved further and further into the book I realized that they were a great source for a feel for the material in the real world, and not just in the classroom or self-study. On the side of the pages are some green bars; these bars highlight specific information you are required to know for the CompTIA exam, and which exam objective they are part of.

One of the greatest strengths is that each chapter ends with a mini glossary of key terms or new terms from that chapter. There is also a complete glossary of all of these terms at the back of the book. Then at each chapter's end there is a series of review questions - multiple choice questions much like those found in self-test software and on the actual exam. Finally, each chapter has a series of hands-on projects. Each project gets progressively more difficult.

The greatest strength of this book is that it has all-encompassing hardware, software, different OS's. The weakness is that it is a lot of material packed very densely into nearly a thousand pages. When I did the school program, we did this book in 3 weeks. For most it was a little overwhelming.

If you want to write the CompTIA Network+ exam, this is a great book to help get you there. Pay special attention to the Novell Netware sections. There were a lot of questions on the exam about those. And Good Luck!

Editorial Review:

Completely revised and updated, this text provides thorough preparation for CompTIA?s Network+ examination, and acts as a perfect text for an introduction to networking course.

Judgment under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases

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Subjects -> Health, Mind & Body -> Psychology & Counseling -> Cognitive
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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 5 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

This is the best book I've ever seen about probability. 5 out of 5 stars.
75 of 94 people found this review helpful.

I've never seen better explanations of how probabilities should be calculated. And the book is fascinating -- especially what the authors describe about the results of surveys designed to reveal the most common mistakes people make when estimating probabilities.

Editorial Review:

The thirty-five chapters in this book describe various judgmental heuristics and the biases they produce, not only in laboratory experiments but in important social, medical, and political situations as well. Individual chapters discuss the representativeness and availability heuristics, problems in judging covariation and control, overconfidence, multistage inference, social perception, medical diagnosis, risk perception, and methods for correcting and improving judgments under uncertainty. About half of the chapters are edited versions of classic articles; the remaining chapters are newly written for this book. Most review multiple studies or entire subareas of research and application rather than describing single experimental studies. This book will be useful to a wide range of students and researchers, as well as to decision makers seeking to gain insight into their judgments and to improve them.

Extreme NXT: Extending the LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT to the Next Level (Technology in Action)

Michael Gasperi, Philippe E. Hurbain, Isabelle L. Hurbain

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 3 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Excellent! 5 out of 5 stars.
21 of 21 people found this review helpful.

I bought this book to get a better idea of how to safely interface my own circuits to the Lego Mindstorms NXT. In my opinion, you can't find a better book for this purpose. "Extreme NXT" contains the pinouts and proper usage of the NXT motor and sensor ports. It also provides a large number of the most useful homebrew sensor implementations, right down to parts lists containing part numbers for common component suppliers like Digikey and Radio Shack.

My background is in engineering, with an emphasis in control systems. The first book I read in the field of hobbiest robotics was "Mobile Robots: Inspiration to Implementation" (Jones and Flynn). In those days, the 6811's were king for these sorts of projects. I spent many a happy day with my MIT Handyboard (a simple 6811 robot controller board). Things have come a long way. Nowadays NXT is available, and this book is the modern day equivalent to that excellent text for those who want to dig in and find out what the NXT is capable of. The book is written in a format that is easy to understand for the novice, but also supplies plenty of content to allow the more advanced user to be able to push the NXT envelope. The organization is superb, commonly used charts and tables are easily found. I have been finding myself referring most often to the pinout tables for the NXT connectors, and these are very conveniently found towards the front of the book.

Chapters are broke down into sensor and output types, starting with the more basic and easily contructed passive sensors up to more advanced and expandable I2C sensors. Motor control, h-bridges, etc are also covered in detail. Both the construction of the circuits, and the NXT code to run them, are covered. Code is provided in it's most basic form first, NXT-G, which every NXT user will be familiar with. Examples proceed to more complex compilers, such as NBC, for sensors or circuits that are better suited to those implementations.

The appendix provides complete source code listings, useful websites and links categorized by chapter. There is also a great tutorial on prototyping with breadboards and perfboard for the uninitiated. With this book, any skill level in electronics should be enough to do some cool things with the NXT kit.

This book will become a very useful addition to any hobby robotics library. For me, it will be the goto book for designing circuits to safely interface to the Lego NXT. Highly recommended!

Editorial Review:

Extreme NXT: Extending the LEGO Mindstorms NXT to the Next Level is for intermediate-level users of NXT who would like to advance their capabilities by learning some of the basics of electronics. Plenty of examples are provided, and easy-to-follow instructions are included for building over 15 different sensors.

This makes a great reference for the NXT hardware interfaces. Examples even come complete with multiple, alternative NXT languages. The book is also abundant with illustrations.

An Introduction to Information Theory

John R. Pierce

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 16 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Good intro but dated 3 out of 5 stars.
6 of 8 people found this review helpful.

The update of this book should have been updated. While it is understandable that at the time of the first print of this book in 1961 the author saw little or no practical use for Shannon's information theory (other than perhaps his channel capacity theorem) it was well known by the second printing in 1980 that it has profound implications in studying biology (and modern technology). For instance in an article published in Nature in 1967, A. L. MacKay showed how the genetic code is highly optimal using Huffman's algorithm. More recently Ardell and Sella (with summaries available on the net) have 'demonstrated that the code's present structure was also shaped by natural selection (though non-Darwinian, see below). In this process, the codons - the triplets of nucleotides that map a particular nucleic acid sequence into proteins - are arranged to minimize the negative effects of genetic error, and to optimize the process of 'readout' of genes during protein synthesis. By permuting all 20 amino acids across all possible codon sets, both groups found that the 'universal' genetic code - the one found in nearly every organism on earth...-falls in the best .0001% of all possible codes and perhaps even better, in terms of its capacity to be an error-correcting code...' By showing modifications are possible in one generation the evidence points away from Crick's thesis of the genetic code being a 'fozen accident' but instead possible Lamarckian beginnings with horizantal gene transfer leading to Carl Woese's early RNA World hypothesis before Darwinian vertical descent begins.

The author also tends to perpetuate the widespread misunderstanding (generally by physicists who tend to contort the meaning away from Shannon's into 'available' states or choices such as with Black Holes) that information is uncertainty; he confuses (readers potentially with) surprise versus information by not taking into account the other half of the necessary equation for information transmission, being noise. He says "The amount of information conveyed by the message increases as the amount of uncertainty as to what message actually will be produced becomes greater." [pg 23] While he clears this up in a later chapter on noise it becomes so technical that it appears most readers of Shannon's theory have been mislead. At this point the scientists (usually physicists who actually work with a different concept of 'available information') typically equate the uncertainty with Kolmogorov complexity and assume that maximum information and complexity is randomess.

For instance consider Philip Nelson's comment in his book Biological Physics that 'random messages carry the most information!' In one footnote of his nearly 600 page book he effectively dismisses all of Nobel Prize winner Shannon's information achievements.

Much of the trouble is with terminology. We think of noise as impure sound. Shannon tried to avoid this problem by introducing the term 'equivocation' but on the other hand this seems to have no intuitive meaning in this context. One really has to go to the math to sort it out. The critical equation to potentially eradicate the confusion does not appear in the book -
R = Hbefore - Hafter
H is an entropy-like formula without Boltzman's constant; however the concepts are very different. (Reportedly Von Neuman told Shannon in the 1940's to call his uncertainty 'entropy, as noone will know what you mean!' Apparently this is still working!) Entropy of the universe apparently increases under the 2nd law of thermodynamics (at least ignoring gravity and extensivity), information begins and ends with life (one needs a recognizer to measure it). A random message in fact carries no information as there is no resolution (reduction) of uncertainty. This is all explained at molecular biologist's Dr. Tom Schneider's website, I know of no other comprehensive source and certainly no book that gets it right. (As yet! 'Hope springs eternal!' A. Pope; 1688 - 1744)

Editorial Review:

Covers encoding and binary digits, entropy, language and meaning, efficient encoding and the noisy channel, and explores ways in which information theory relates to physics, cybernetics, psychology, and art. "Uncommonly good...the most satisfying discussion to be found." — Scientific American. 1980 edition.

Introduction to the Theory of Computation

Michael Sipser

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 52 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

dont buy this version 2 out of 5 stars.
6 of 10 people found this review helpful.

Go buy an international version which is a lot cheaper than this, and they have the same contents. This version is also printed in Black and White and the paper is really cheap. Don't make a mistake like me buying same product for 90$ more. Again, the only difference between hardcover and softcover(international ver) is the price.

Don't be afraid of the proofs 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

This is a great book. The topics are covered in a clear and interesting way. I came to this book after having been exposed to NFA's and DFA's in a compiler course and this exposition is much more enlightening. The proofs in this book are very well written in my opinion, very clear. Studying proof techniques in a book such as Solow's "How to Read and Do Proofs" will prepare you well to understand the proofs in this book.

Editorial Review:

Michael Sipser's emphasis on unifying computer science theory - rather than offering a collection of low-level details - sets the book apart, as do his intuitive explanations. Throughout the book, Sipser builds students' knowledge of conceptual tools used in computer science, the aesthetic sense they need to create elegant systems, and the ability to think through problems on their own.