Fundamentals of Natural Computing: Basic Concepts, Algorithms, and Applications

Fundamentals of Natural Computing: Basic Concepts, Algorithms, and Applications (Chapman & Hall/Crc Computer and Information Sciences)
Natural computing brings together nature and computing to develop new computational tools for problem solving; to synthesize natural patterns and behaviors in computers; and to potentially design novel types of computers. Fundamentals of Natural Computing: Basic Concepts, Algorithms, and Applications presents a wide-ranging survey of novel techniques and important applications of nature-based computing. This book presents theoretical and philosophical discussions, pseudocodes for algorithms, and computing paradigms that illustrate how computational techniques can be used to solve complex problems, simulate nature, explain natural phenomena, and possibly allow the development of new computing technologies. The author features a consistent and approachable, textbook-style format that includes lucid figures, tables, real-world examples, and different types of exercises that complement the concepts while encouraging readers to apply the computational tools in each chapter. Building progressively upon core concepts of nature-inspired techniques, the topics include evolutionary computing, neurocomputing, swarm intelligence, immunocomputing, fractal geometry, artificial life, quantum computing, and DNA computing. Fundamentals of Natural Computing is a self-contained introduction and a practical guide to nature-based computational approaches that will find numerous applications in a variety of growing fields including engineering, computer science, biological modeling, and bioinformatics.

Customer Review: Great book

I have to study about data mining and the professor recommended this book. After reading it, I think it's a great one. No wonder why the professor likes it.

Introduction to Algorithms (MIT Electrical Engineering and Computer Science)

Introduction to Algorithms (MIT Electrical Engineering and Computer Science)
The first edition won the award for Best 1990 Professional and Scholarly Book in Computer Science and Data Processing by the Association of American Publishers. This edition is no longer available. Please see the Second Edition of this title.

Customer Review: The best textbook on algorithms, but it is not a programming book.

I used this book for a graduate level Algorithms course, and I really liked it. It is packed full of content on a wide range of topics. While this book does provide some high-level implementations of algorithms in pseudo-code, you will not find any examples of how to program algorithms in this book. That's really not what this book is meant for anyways.

I found the reading to be easier than Knuth on similar topics, but you still need to have sufficient mathematical background in order to keep up (statistics, discrete math, some calculus). Also, unlike many technical books I've read recently, I did not find any mistakes, not even a typo.

Some people are not aware that the MIT Open Courseware website has some excellent free video course lectures that use this book. I highly recommend at least viewing the first three or four of those lectures if you are new to this topic because they compliment this book very well. Make sure you understand the first four chapters of this book before moving on to other topics.

Also, since it had been a while since I had the math as an undergraduate, I was relieved to learn that this book had several appendices that provided a review of the math topics required by the book.

The only negative about the book is that it does not provide answers to any of the exercises at the end of the chapters, so you really need to use this book in conjunction with a course in order to be able to check your progress and how well you are learning the information. If you're not using this book with a course, check the MIT Open Courseware website that I mentioned previously. It has some sample assignments you can use.

Customer Review: This version has NO CD

There are three versions of the second edition, only one of which has the CD:

The first one is published by the MIT Press, with the title "Introduction to Algorithms". This one has no CD. This is the one Amazon currently carries, so if you buy from Amazon, you get no CD.

The second one is published by McGraw-Hill, also with the title "Introduction to Algorithms". This one also has no CD.

The third one is published by McGraw-Hill too, but has the title "Introduction to Algorithms and Java CD-ROM". This is the one with the CD. It's much more expensive than the other two.

The CD in the third version contains implementations of the algorithms in Java.

To find someone that carries the CD version, search for this ISBN-13 number: 9780072970548 , or for "Introduction to Algorithms and Java CD-ROM" .

Note: Some listings that come up for the ISBN number will not be the correct version. Look carefully for "and Java CD-ROM" before buying.