I have as of this writing passed through about half of the encyclopedia and found it to be of the highest value. It has helped me to gain insights into areas that I am foggy in and also expanded my knowledge of areas in which I hold some expertise.

Ron Davis MCSE, MCSD, MCDBA, MCP+I, MCP+SB, MCT, CIW, CI, CTT

Two words for you - David Hemmindinger - Can this man edit or what? Was Very excited about the release of this book, excellent reference material. I think Dinger needs to write a book of his own next! I know I'll read it.

Have been using this for the past 7 years before going to Stanford and still now.

I lost my original copy during my last move. Therefore, I was overjoyed that an inexpensive paperback version had been printed. A must for the numerical analyst's library.

This is a good intermediate text on numerical analysis. The development of the underlying real variable theory is much more rigorous than the closely related and more recent text "Numerical Recipes in C". Also, there is more attention paid to function theoretic considerations such as notions of continuity and compactness. This is basically an introductory numerical functional analysis textbook. There are numerous good examples sprinkled throughout the text. To get the most out of this book, you need a working knowledge of advanced calculus, real analysis and linear algebra.

This is the republication of the 2nd edition published by McGraw-Hill, 1978, with minor corrections. This Dover edition also includes 50 pages of Hints and Answers to Problems, which is very helpful. It is one of the 14 reference books listed in the Numerical Recipe in C: The Art of Scientific Computing, and the authors of the Recipe book says, of the 14 books, "These are the books that we like to have within easy reach." A. Ralston, of SUNY Buffalo, also co-wrote a book, Discrete Algorithmic Mathematics(DAM), which is easy and fun to read. But I am puzzled by the words - "Well-known and highly regarded even by those who have never used it." - on the back cover of the A K Peters edition of DAM. What do they mean?

I've taken only one course in programming (C++) and was hoping this book would provide me with a better understanding of algorithms. My biggest problem with this book is that they use their own notation based on older programming languages (such as Pascal) - I had a hard time moving from a C++ way of thinking to figuring out how they were expressing the same thing. It didn't work for me because of this... This book looks as if its over 25 years old and is very British. It has some odd English colloquialisms and is written for an English audience. I really don't think - in an object-oriented world, I could recommend this book - if you tried to move to C++ from this, you'd be very confused.

You know all those game players out there spending their quarters to play video games?

The people who wrote those games started out with books like this one.

Get this book and try writing your own sort algorithms, use the bubble sort, the ripple sort, and then when you've got them down pat, learn the shell sort and the tree sort.

You would think that sorting is boring, but you'd be surprised how useful they become when you want to design a game or puzzle using the computer.

And, when you learn tricks to tweak those skills, you'll be several steps closer to selling a game to Nintendo.

Get this book, and learn some good and useful programming techniques.

John Author of the first "Microcomputer Star Trek game" (released for the TRS-80 in 1978). Before 1978, you could only play Star Trek on teletypes and mainframes.

This book is utterly and completely useless. It does not progress in a logical manner. The author assumes you know everything he is talking about, and gives examples filled with topics that are not explained until later chapters. He explains things one way, yet his examples always seem to contradict what he says until you spend a good hour looking at them and realize he always uses some unexplained loophole in logic to derive his answers. This is not a useful book and I never would have bought it if it was not required at the college I attend.

I found this book to be truly extraordinary. Unlike the overwhelming majority of math texts, the authors describe the material in a manner reminiscent of an informal college lecture by gifted professors. They cover a lot of ground, but explain what's going on and why. I found it particularly striking that the authors sometimes present mistaken approaches to problems, follow them through to show what has gone wrong, and then show how to avoid the mistakes. This is particularly valuable when using the book for self-study. The exercises are carefully chosen and serve to expand on each section's material.

given what i know of john ralston saul and the blurb on the back, i expected much better from this book. decrying corporatism, positing it as a new ruling morality, is genuinely interesting, but i don't think this is an interesting way of presenting it. the story-line is conventional, the female characters stock and tiresome, and the morality tale unambiguous and predictable. this book reminded me of nothing so much as of an ayn rand polemic, harsh words to be sure. while coming at a world view from a diametrically opposite perspective, the writing is similar in its uninterestingness. like the idea, don't like the realization of same.