Artificial Intelligence Books - Page 5

Mathematica by Example

Martha L. Abell, James P. Braselton

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 3 Average rating: 3.5 of 5

Excellent Tutorial for Beginner/Intermediate 5 out of 5 stars.
14 of 15 people found this review helpful.

If you learn by example rather than by formalism, get this book. This presents the material in a logical framework with LOTS OF EXAMPLES. A companion volume is "The Mathematica Handbook", also by the same two writers. I used these books extensively in grad school. I remember standing in the university bookstore for 30 min comparing the handful of books available on Mathematica and these two books won out then and now still cover the fundamentals well. I still use them in my work today.

NOTE: The volume I have only covers up to Ver 2.2, but I noticed the latest has 1997 copyright, so might now cover later versions.

A must have for the newest version of Mathematica 5 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

I found this book to be easy to understand and simplifies all my calculations thus far. If you have the latest version of Mathematica, this is a must HAVE!

Editorial Review:

Completely updated to be compatible with Mathematica Version 2.2, this book focuses on the most often used features of Mathematica and gears its approach toward the beginning Mathematica user. The presentation is geared toward popular applications of mathematics within the various topical areas and includes step-by-step instructions.

Interaction Design

Jenny Preece, Yvonne Rogers, Helen Sharp

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 18 Average rating: 3.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

Accomplished authors, Preece, Rogers and Sharp, have written a key new textbook on this core subject area. Interaction Design deals with a broad scope of issues, topics and paradigms that has traditionally been the scope of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) and Interaction Design (ID). The book covers psychological and social aspects of users, interaction styles, user requirements, design approaches, usability and evaluation, traditional and future interface paradigms and the role of theory in informing design. The topics will be grounded in the design process and the aim is to present relevant issues in an integrated and coherent way, rather than assembling a collection of chapters on individual HCI topics.

KEY FEATURES:
* This truly integrated approach to HCI provides students with background information from psychology, sociology, anthropology, information systems and computer science
* Provides principles and skills for designing any technology through the use of many interesting and state of the art examples
* The author supported, highly interactive Web Site provides resources that allow students to collaborate on experiments, participate in design competitions, collaborate on design, find resources and communicate with others
* The accompanying Web Site also features examples, step-by-step exercises and templates for questionnaires

CONTENTS:
Preface
1. What is interaction design?
Interview with Gitta Saloman
2. Understanding and conceptualizing interaction
Interview with Terry Winograd
3. Understanding users
4. Understanding and designing for collaboration and communication
Interview with Abigail Sellen
5. Understanding how interfaces affect users
6. The process of interaction design
Interview with Gillian Crampton Smith
7. Identifying needs and establishing requirements
Interview with Suzanne Robertson
8. Design, prototyping and construction
9. User-centered approaches to interaction design
Interview with Karen Holtzblatt
10. Introducing evaluation
11. A framework for evaluation
12. Observing users
Interview with Sara Bly
13. Asking users and experts
Interview with Jakob Nielsen
14. Testing and modeling users
Interview with Ben Shneiderman
15. Doing design and evaluation in the real world: communicators and advisory systems
Epilogue
Glossary

Learning to Program with Alice

Wanda P. Dann, Stephen Cooper, Randy Pausch

Amazon Price: $55.80 List Price: $62.00 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Prentice Hall Amazon Marketplace: 64 new & used starting at $18.74

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 9 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Great service but misread item 4 out of 5 stars.
3 of 4 people found this review helpful.

I got the books quickly and in good shape. However, I did not see the Brief Edition explanation. The brief only has 5 of the 10 chapters. If I had seen this I would have ordered the full version.

Doesn't Teach Alice At All 1 out of 5 stars.
2 of 6 people found this review helpful.

I will admit, there are some good definitions in here for the different concepts in programming. However, this is NOT a good way to actually learn Alice.

The exercises are not explained in the text unless they are an extension of the chapter problem. The text teaches very little about how to use Alice. If the Alice interface wasn't so clunky, it would be easy to figure out. None of the examples relate to any of the actual exercises. A case in point is the fish problem in chapter 2. There is no explanation given on how a fish can supposedly "jump" in Alice.

The CD does not include a Mac version of Alice. If the computers being used in a course do not have internet connectivity, this is a problem for Mac users. Also, the index is poor and there is no glossary.

Don't waste your money on this excuse for a programming manual. Get yourself a real textbook on the subject.

Editorial Review:

This guide supports an innovative approach to fundamental programming concepts. The authors use program visualization to create an easy relationship between program construct and the animation action in a 3D world. Final release is in full color. For consistency with Java, C++, and other commonly used languages, "questions" are now "functions." Save and reload bugs have been fixed. Fonts can be scaled larger or smaller. High contrast mode is available for projection in the classroom. A much larger local gallery is now loaded with Alice; the CD with the book contains the complete gallery, so Internet access for downloading 3D models is no longer required. A useful how-to guide for programmers interested in learning Alice.

Computational Geometry: Algorithms and Applications

Mark de Berg, Otfried Cheong, Marc van Kreveld, Mark Overmars

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 15 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

This well-accepted introduction to computational geometry is a textbook for high-level undergraduate and low-level graduate courses. The focus is on algorithms and hence the book is well suited for students in computer science and engineering. Motivation is provided from the application areas: all solutions and techniques from computational geometry are related to particular applications in robotics, graphics, CAD/CAM, and geographic information systems. For students this motivation will be especially welcome. Modern insights in computational geometry are used to provide solutions that are both efficient and easy to understand and implement. All the basic techniques and topics from computational geometry, as well as several more advanced topics, are covered. The book is largely self-contained and can be used for self-study by anyone with a basic background in algorithms.

In this third edition, besides revisions to the second edition, new sections discussing Voronoi diagrams of line segments, farthest-point Voronoi diagrams, and realistic input models have been added.

Python Scripting for Computational Science (Texts in Computational Science and Engineering)

Hans Petter Langtangen

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 7 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

The goal of this book is to teach computational scientists how to develop tailored, flexible, and human-efficient working environments built from small programs (scripts) written in the easy-to-learn, high-level language Python. The focus is on examples and applications of relevance to computational scientists: gluing existing applications and tools, e.g. for automating simulation, data analysis, and visualization; steering simulations and computational experiments; equipping old programs with graphical user interfaces; making computational Web applications; and creating interactive interfaces with a Maple/Matlab-like syntax to numerical applications in C/C++ or Fortran. In short, scripting with Python makes you much more productive, increases the reliability of your scientific work and lets you have more fun - on Unix, Windows and Macintosh. All the tools and examples in this book are open source codes. The third edition is compatible with the new NumPy implementation and features updated information, correction of errors, and improved associated software tools.

Email Marketing: An Hour a Day

Jeanniey Mullen, David Daniels

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Editorial Review:

If the idea of starting an email marketing campaign overwhelms you, the authors of Email Marketing: An Hour a Day will introduce you to email marketing basics, demonstrate how to manage details and describe how you can track and measure results.  Case studies, step-by-step guides, checklists, quizzes and hands-on tutorials will help you execute an email marketing campaign in just one hour a day.  When you feel comfortable with the basics, learn how to use video and audio enabled email, implement tools like mobile devices and leverage social networks.

LEGO Mindstorms NXT Power Programming: Robotics in C

John C. Hansen

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Total reviews: 4 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

NXT Power Programming delivers everything you need to create the robot you've always dreamed about. This is the definitive guide to C programming by the developer of some of the most powerful and popular development tools for LEGO MINDSTORMS. John C. Hansen presents a comprehensive yet friendly set of tools that allow you to create almost any robot you can imagine.

Inside, you'll find an ingenious set of projects that explore the complete arsenal of NXT functionality. At the heart of these projects is Versa, a versatile mobile robot platform utilizing modular attachments.

Master the Art of:

• NXC, a C language for the NXT

• BricxCC, a full featured programming environment

• Sensors and Motors

• Utilities for Music, Sound Sampling, Graphics and more

• NBC, an Assembler Language for the NXT

• Building Robots without Bricks

• Handheld Arcade Games on the NXT

• An Intruder System using a Sphere Cannon

• NXT to NXT Bluetooth communications

• NXT to Bluetooth devices

• The latest sensors from HiTechnic and mindsensors.com

Concrete Mathematics: A Foundation for Computer Science

Ronald L. Graham, Donald Knuth, Oren Patashnik

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 31 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Great book... some reviewers simply don't get it. 5 out of 5 stars.
12 of 12 people found this review helpful.

I have the First Edition and came here to look into the Second Edition. There are several negative reviews and basically those folks have fundamental misunderstandings. So I'll add my review.

First, what kind of book is it? It is not an introductory-level math book with lots and lots of repetition. It is a book on hard math, done in a concise manner by brilliant teachers who assume students are very comfortable with calculus, probability, etc. You really cannot afford to skip around and dabble as if this were an introductory algebra course or something. (I'm not being elitist. I did not attend Stanford and don't consider myself a math genius and am not making this a "we versus the unwashed masses" issue, as I have really struggled with the material myself.)

Second, what is the book about? Several reviewers have theories on where the "Concrete" part of the title comes from, but the bottom line is that it's a book on the discrete math that you need to know for theoretical computer science. (For example, discrete calculus versus the continuous calculus we all learned in school.) Any Analysis of Algorithms course, for example, will confront you with recurrence equations and lots of discrete math.

Third, how is the book organized? At first, it appears rather disjoint. The authors have a sort of, "Hey, look at that flower," and "hey, look under this rock" kind of approach as you walk down a path but the path itself isn't really spelled out. None-the-less, the book does build step-by-step from examples of recurrence equations (Towers of Hanooi, Josephus) in Chapter 1, to Generating Functions in Chapter 7.

Perhaps they could have made the path more explicit, but I can't see how they'd organize it much differently. They could throw entire chapters into Appendices, but things build on each other in such a way that you'd simply have to skip around from the main chapters to the Appendix anyhow.

Fourth, what other books cover this material? I'm not well-qualified to talk about the entire universe of books, but I must say that the three Analysis of Algorithm books I have for my current class definitely give only the very basics of this material and really only present two possibilities: 1) fiddle around with the equation, possibly using a graphic representation, until you see a pattern and make a guess, then prove it by induction, or 2) if your algorithm is one specific class, plug some numbers into this 3-part formula and if one of the parts applies an answer will pop out for you. Concrete Math is gives you many powerful tools to solve such problems.

Fifth, what is the flavor of the book? The authors have an informal writing style -- outside of the very formal math and proofs -- and the book has marginal notes that were contributed by the "beta-tester students" as the book was being written.

Some reviewers have criticized the marginal notes, and I simply have to shake my head and be glad I don't have to work alongside them. Yes, many of the notes are puns or other humor, but those are a nice break from the heavy math. And many of the notes provide great hints and perspectives from students who are also learning the material. I wish all technical books had such notes, but only a Knuth could get a publisher to go to the trouble.

So that's my review. An excellent book that's very intense and covers a hard, very technical topic. It's like learning math from algebra to differential equations all over again in a different language, and perhaps the negative reviewers simply never understood this. If you're not a programmer who needs to rigorously analyze algorithms, skip the book unless you simply want to learn for the joy of learning.

Editorial Review:

This book, updated and improved, introduces the mathematics that support advanced computer programming and the analysis of algorithms. The book's primary aim is to provide a solid and relevant base of mathematical skills. It is an indispensable text and reference for computer scientists and serious programmers in virtually every discipline.

Probabilistic Robotics (Intelligent Robotics and Autonomous Agents)

Sebastian Thrun, Wolfram Burgard, Dieter Fox

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 8 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Robot Navigation 4 out of 5 stars.
6 of 7 people found this review helpful.

Uncertainty is an important issue facing intelligent systems.
Thrun, Burgard, and Fox have made important contributions to
this area of research. Probabilistic Robotics is a more narrowly focused text than the title might suggest. At 650 pages perhaps it could not be broader and yet do justice to the topics the authors want to cover. Perhaps the title should have been Probabilistic Robot Navigation. My other criticism would be the lack of executables

Editorial Review:

Probabilistic robotics is a new and growing area in robotics, concerned with perception and control in the face of uncertainty. Building on the field of mathematical statistics, probabilistic robotics endows robots with a new level of robustness in real-world situations.

This book introduces the reader to a wealth of techniques and algorithms in the field. All algorithms are based on a single overarching mathematical foundation. Each chapter provides example implementations in pseudo code, detailed mathematical derivations, discussions from a practitioner's perspective, and extensive lists of exercises and class projects. The book's Web site, http://www.probabilistic-robotics.org, has additional material.

The book is relevant for anyone involved in robotic software development and scientific research. It will also be of interest to applied statisticians and engineers dealing with real-world sensor data.

Communities of Practice: Learning, Meaning, and Identity (Learning in Doing: Social, Cognitive and Computational Perspectives)

Etienne Wenger

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 8 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

excellent conceptual thinking 5 out of 5 stars.
22 of 23 people found this review helpful.

For those grappling with the need to understand and talk about how people come together and interact beyond the org. chart, this book has a lot to offer. Theoretically-based, it focuses on a social theory of learning that is broad enough to cover a wide range of human activities, well beyond what we would normally consider to be 'learning'. 'Communities of practice' offers a comprehensive framework for understanding and analysing what people do in the context of their social milieu. The author includes many examples and uses a work-place vignette to illustrate the relevance and power of his ideas. If you are not afraid of theory and abstraction and are open to new concepts, this book may indeed be revolutionary.

Editorial Review:

Learning is becoming an urgent topic. Nations worry about the learning of their citizens, companies about the learning of their workers, schools about the learning of their students. But it is not always easy to think about how to foster learning in innovative ways. This book presents a framework for doing that, with a social theory of learning that is ground-breaking yet accessible, with profound implications not only for research, but also for all those who have to foster learning as part of their responsibilites at work, at home, at school.