"Fragments of Infinity: A Kaleidescope of Math and Art" is a compilation of beautiful examples of mathematical art. It will give the lay reader more than an inkling of the connection between advanced math and beauty -- a connection that is ordinarily very difficulat to convey. And it will give the mathematics professional something to savor as well.

Unfortunately, the book has two major flaws:

1) It entirely omits art from computer graphics, which is perhaps the largest source of extraordinarily beautiful mathematically-based art these days -- and it is art which translates to the printed page just as well as traditional sculpture or painting does, and

2) This book displays a shaky grasp of mathematical concepts by the author and most likely an absence of fact-checking by the publisher. For example, although the book's main mathematical topic is geometry/topology, the author shows on page 141 that he does not even comprehend what a Moebius band is, where he claims that the triangular but assymetric recycling symbol is a Moebius band (correct), but that the symbol having full 3-way symmetry is not a Moebius band (incorrect). Unfortunately, gaffes like this are widespread in the author's previous books as well.

Mathematics and art have many things in common, something that practitioners of both often go to great lengths to refute. In this book, Ivars Peterson, one of the truly great practitioners of the art of popular mathematical writing, shows us how intertwined they really are. The sculptures that he describes and explains are truly astonishing. I looked at some of the photos for several minutes, seeing many different things, even though I was limited to the two dimensional projection. Without a doubt, the piece itself must be truly breathtaking.
Many popular mathematics books have delved into the synergy of math and art, but never to this extent or with this effectiveness. This is by far the best book I have ever seen in this area and I recommend it to my artist friends as well as those who practice math.

Our family has really enjoyed this book. We homeschool our two children, ages 10 and 13, and have been reading this book to them chapter by chapter. The narrative appealed to our precocious but math-phobic ten-year-old, so that she wasn't even aware she was doing math. The topics and exercises appealed to our math nerd thirteen-year-old, who has taken on the task of disproving the four-color map proof. The exercises in the book are well-explained, and require only simple materials such as paper, pencil and dice. I provided the children with just a bit of background information. For example, we hadn't done much work in probability, and needed a little background before we played with weird dice. However, most topics (fractals, chaos theory, topology, etc.,)were so well explained, no further information was necessary. I recommend this book for all those who wish to interest their children in mathematics beyond the humdrum rote of math facts.

"The Unified Modeling Language User Guide" really starts from the beginning. Apparently the reader is assumed to be totally unfamiliar with object oriented design. The book starts with the very basics, and explains a reasonably complete set of UML. The really advanced and esoteric features are not explained.

Each chapter is written like a good lecture. It starts from the very beginning assuming no previous knowledge of OO. Then one aspect of UML is carefully explained. Every chapter ends with some concluding remarks and "hints and tips". This organization is mostly good, but it adds a lot of repetition to the book.

The language is smooth and easy to read. It might still be a struggle to get read the book simply because of the amount of text (and repetition).

I would recommend this book to the interested novice. However, if you are reasonably familiar with UML, or if you have a solid foundation in object oriented programming, then I would recommend you the combination of "UML Distilled" by Martin Fowler and "The Unified Modeling Language Reference Manual" by James Rumbaugh et.al.

In an industry rapidly being filled with books of dubious value on object modeling using the Unified Modeling Language (UML), the UML User Guide is a welcome addition. This book is written by the "3 Amigos": Grady Booch, Jim Rumbaugh and Ivar Jacobson, the originators of UML, so we know they have an intimate relationship with the language and object modeling

If you are going to use the Unified Modeling Language (UML) in your projects, this book should be on your desk if only because (a) it is based on the latest version of UML (version 1.3) and (b) it is very readable. But beyond these recommendations it has great value for newbies as well as experienced modelers.

Each chapter of the book has the same structure. "Getting Started" motivates the objectives and discussion of the chapter in non-technical terms. Then "Terms and Concepts" introduces the notation and terminology covered in the chapter. "Common Modeling Techniques" allow the authors to show how the concepts and notation are applied to specific modeling areas. Finally, each chapter ends with "Hints and Tips" such as the characteristics of a well-structured statechart, or how to use stereotyping to visually convey the intent of a relationship.

The layout of the notation examples is excellent if you want to use this book as a way of learning UML, although it is not strictly a tutorial on UML. Annotations on the notation examples are printed in blue color, which makes the notation diagrams very easy to understand. References to other sections of the book are also in blue in the margins of the pages, and the color separation keeps the pages from feeling cluttered.

Topically, the book progresses from basic and advanced structural modeling (primarily class and object diagrams), to basic and advanced behavioral modeling (i.e., interaction diagrams, statechart diagrams, use cases and use case diagrams, and activity diagrams). A lengthy section on Architectural modeling introduces component and deployment diagrams, and how to represent patterns and frameworks.

What you will not find here is the detailed and obtuse discussion of the UML 1.1 Semantics document (www.omg.org). While that one was written for tool vendors, the discussion of what each element of UML means is very accessible in this UML User Guide. My major wish for this book is that the authors had included a "cheat sheet" of the changes introduced from version 1.1 for those readers who have been working with UML for a while. For example, the notation examples show that the '^' to denote a send-clause on a statechart action has been dropped, and the <> stereotype has replaced the <> stereotype on use cases. Additionally, a generalization relationship has been added between use cases, and the semantics of the <> stereotype has changed subtly.

Although I do object modeling for a living--and that means I have to read the obtuse UML documents anyway--I am grateful for the accessibility of this book so more people can learn to use this modeling language in their projects. I don't agree with everything in UML, but at least this book will get more people involved in the "spirited discussions." Thanks, Amigos!

This is the best book on UML. An excellent book on all aspects of UML methodology. This book comes from those who framed the methodology and that aspect makes it more valuable to the reader, experienced or otherwise.

The book starts of with reasons for modeling with real world examples. For a novice, this will be the best introduction to modeling - why is it needed in the first place.

The book also describes the evolution of UML (best practises of OOSE,OMT and Booch) which will benefit people in all levels of software engineering.

Any modeling technique needs to address the following three components a) Structural b) Behavioral and c) Architecture.

This book contains explanations for all of the above three components in separate sections. Even advance behavioral/structural modeling is discussed.

The structural modeling is described with explanations on a) Objects & classes b) relationship between classes c) class diagrams

The behavioral modeling is described with explanations on a) use case diagrams b) interaction diagrams c) activity diagrams and importantly d) state charts to name a few.

The architecture modeling is described with explanations on deployment, collaborations and component diagrams to name a few.

I would recommend interested OO developers/managers to acquire this book as a reference material for OO development needs.

Popular science books seem to be in vogue-- great for any legitimate scientists that sincerely want to get something across to "lay" people. But hacks gathering together a bunch of stuff to amaze us is worse than Ripley.

I wouldn't pass this book on to to a 4th grader.

Since you are interested in only raves, I am sure that this missile will quietly disappear

I can't believe I'm the first to reviw this book! I have found the information and references in this book to be very good. In most cases Ivars Peterson is one of the best new science and mathematics writers that I know of! I'm interested in chaos and fractals, but mathematics also is in this book. There seems to be a little of everything. There is even work by Mandelbrot that I hadn't read about. I can only fault that he didn't put in enough of the equations and code to produce the examples. Also a glossary of terms would be helpful. But it is a very good buy in paperback!

....not evvybody shares my love of mathematics, statistics, games and chance. People say folks like me are a strange lot, hence, I have been relunctant to put many mathematical and game related book reviews in my repertoire. This, however, is an exception to the rule..."math book = dry reading". It shows how probability and stats and random number generating can apply to evvyday living.

Before I go on, I have the urge to type these:

"Ah, but to all the other monkeys in the world, maybe the ape sitting at the keyboard DID recreate the Gutenberg Bible."

"When travelling in Europe, be wary of non-bottled potable water and, apparently, buy one get three free cheeseburgers."

There, I've gotten those off my chest. What do they have to do with this review? Well, Peterson here deals with odds--Odds and their contexts, like in coin flips and dice outcomes and hot hands for pro basketball players and random number generators on slot machines and such. The Chapters on Brownian Motion entitled "Trails of the Wanderer" and "Lifetimes of Chance" are great because he talks about the lottery and winning the lottery, how stocks in the stock market have some type of Brownian motion, magnets, dominoes, roulette wheels at casinos--you know all the interesting things a man ought to be attracted to, described in a punchy, easy to digest manner...

Each chapter is forwarded with a quote or poetry verse gleaned from classic literature, for example, the Chapter "Complete Chaos" has a part of a canto from Milton's "Paradise Lost".

Also the Color Plates show some awesome sights like the one depicting vibrations on the membrane shaped like a fractal snowflake and the visual representation of the output from a high speed random-number generator.

A few lay types may be put off by his mentioning of some musty mathematician or statistician here and there but, to his credit Peterson does not try to lay some indecipherable equation on the reader when he describes what said math or stat person is to his basic text. Or, in other words, no need for math anxiety unless you're generally anxious about a lot anyways...this ain't rocket science, people!

Well, actually, yes it could be, but you would not know it from the way Peterson has presented it in this fabulous read....

I suppose that students at our school are representative for the worldwide population of cs students. This book is not at all an easy introduction to the unified process. Having been introduced to the principles of ooad in an earlier semester, and thus already knowing something about ooad, we were introduced to Jacobsons RUP. Their book contains a lot of knowledge, but unfortunately the authors are a) either not very good at explaining their knowledge b) hiding the knowledge to make it seem more intelligent than it really is or c) have written the book for people who already knows, at least something, about the unified process, or the objectory process that preceeded RUP. If you are looking for good illustrations and examples on how to model a system with uml and the added classifiers using the the RUP, then I suggest that you don't start with this book. You'll be disappointed. Working on our first project using the RUP, hearing complaints from nearly all students over the lack of understandable examples, I bought Jacobsons's earlier book - Object Oriented Software Engineering. In that book I found much better and concrete examples, which were very helpfull in understanding their latest book (but that shouldn't be necessary!). If you are looking for an easy introduction to the unified process, conveniently having things explained for you in an easy to understand way, then this is definitely not the book for you. Very poor examples - or should I say lack of good and understandable examples. On the other hand, if you don't know so much about ooad, has lots of time, likes to crack nuts, read between the lines and guess about this and that, then this book is for you. - I admit that after having gone through the hard process, gaining experience in RUP through a practical project, I have come to like the process and has found it very usefull. The principles of the RUP are sound and good. Now that I have gone through the struggle, and knows it better, I'm glad that I have it on my shelf. It contains a lot of usefull, but unfortunately poorly explained, and illustrated, information.

After mastering the Unified Modeling Language, it's a natural progression to apply UML in a documented and time-tested process. That's what the creators of UML set out to describe in this third book of the UML-Big-Three, "The Unified Software Development Process."

Getting through this book will be challenging, though. You'll be thirsty not for more material, but a glass of water by the time you're done. It is bone-dry.

The Unified process has five workflows (requirements, analysis, design, build, test) that repeat within four phases (inception, elaboration, construction, transition). There are unfortunately huge chapters devoted to each of the workflows and each of the phases separately, with only a smaller amount of material focusing on how the process is actually done, which is each workflow occuring in the context of each phase. As a result, the book seems a lot bigger than it needs to be. (I'm not panning the process, though, which does indeed work, just the presentation.)

There's a running example through the text of building an automated teller application. While running examples help unify ideas, they show a narrow view of how the process can work in practice. In applying the process to my projects, it's difficult to translate such a financial application to my work (which is scientific and library-based in nature). I'd like to see a lot more examples that give alternative viewpoints in addition to the running example that demonstrates the process as a whole.

Unlike the other two books of the Big-Three, the diagrams in this one are the best. They're clean, consistent, and easy to read, and there are a lot of them. It's professionally typeset and each page is pretty.

What we need is a book similar to Fowler's "UML Distilled" called "Unified Process Distilled." The process is great---it just shouldn't take 500 pages to describe it.

"The Unified Software Development Process" is the best comprehensive book written on the Unified Process. Known as the three amigos, Ivar Jacobson, James Rumbaugh, and Grady Booch are without a doubt the best leading experts on the UML and the Unified Process since they were the primary developers of the UML and tailored their combined development processes into the Unified Process, which makes the best use of applying and using the UML for specifying system blueprints for software intensive systems.

The Unified Process is appropriate for using the UML for modeling because it uses a use case driven, architecture centric, iterative/incremental life cycle that complements the main features of the UML.

If you want to learn UML, the best book to buy is "The Unified Modeling Language Users' Guide" by the three amigos. If you want to learn a modern day software development process that makes the best use of the industry standard specifications language, UML, then buy the "Unified Software Development Process", also written by the three amigos.

This "Ultimate Cyber Classroom" brought back those days in college where the instructor droned on and on using very precise language whose words had only meaning within the context of the class. (Why couldn't they use the word 'hidden' rather than 'elided'? Same number of characters...)

Be fair warned that the reading level of this course is over that of most people.

This would have been a far better course if it had spent more time on the why's and how's rather than almost totally on syntax.

I cannot install the CD, I am using Windows 2000. I clicked on the setup and nothing happened. Could I get some help.

Thanks

This product is basically a chapter by chapter monotone narration of the UML user guide that it is based on. It advertises a multimedia experience, when in reality it is a bunch of poorly written HTML pages with some animated slides. The animated slides consist of regurgitation, almost to the letter, of the text surrounding the slides you would have already read before hitting the play button to run the slide.

The practice tests were frustrating to say the least. They were riddled with: incorrect answers to questions, bugs (The wrong diagrams come up in some cases), annoying navigation and poor design. Probobly the worst design flaw was with its handling of incorrect answer feedback. When you got an incorrect answer, it was not specific as to why it was incorrect. It just linked you to the chapter where the topic is discussed. It is ironic that a class that is supposed to teach a tool for doing proper design/requirements gathering/use case creation etc. is so poorly designed from a user experience perspective. This looks like it was put together by a college student for a class.

Another flaw in this package is the fact that my virus protection software (Norton Anti Virus 2002) finds a virus every time I try to take the course (Called win95.corrupt). After closer examination of the contents in the box, there is a flyer stating that they are aware of this issue, and not to worry about it, there is no virus. They hint that there was once a virus, but they removed it. I guess its signature is still in the product but it is dormant. I have been purchasing software for 14 years and never have I seen a product present itself this way. Of the hundreds of software packages I have purchased in my career, never have I seen one with these symptoms.

So my final recommendation is to stay away from this course. It is boring, poorly written and a complete waste of money!!

I returned this product for a full refund.

This book is a total desaster. The main CD is full of viruses (W95.CIH.damaged & W95.CIH.corrupt). Its really frustrating to pay a fortune and to get such a bad piece of work.