MIT

This book is a must for anyone starting to program in Prolog or interested in logic programming.

A downsize of the book (if any) can be that it could have detailed more in the respect of Prolog's applications. The pleasant style of the authors would have made a wonderful introduction into these fields.

A real pleasure to read.

If you have previous programming experience, Prolog will be quite a challenge. Logic programming is very different from functional or imperative, and will definitely be a major culture shock.

The first part of the book introduces the concepts of logic programming at the right pace, giving you time to assimilate everything. The second part contains several applications of Prolog.

This is a great first book on Prolog and will certainly help you 'getting it'.

I bought this book for the cover (it's good enough to keep on a coffee table), and stayed for the code. My favorite part of the book is Part II, where the Prolog language is described. I learned Prolog from the Clocksin and Mellish book, but never really "got it" until I went through The Art of Prolog.

Oh, what a great read. They certainly don't write them like this any more. I certainly enjoyed the climax at the end of act 1. There is absolutely nothing I can criticise about this gem of a book. Before I read this book I was a bit of a loner, but now I live life to the full. Thankyou Friedrich!

I have also studied this book and I was so amazed by the sexual tension and excitement created by the characters. I would recommend it to anyone!

I have studied this book with great interest as part of my further education studies in the German language. I was thrilled by the use of dramatic irony and symbolism to portray the many themes and morals throughout the play. This book was a ray of light in my otherwise dull life.

Although I am only in my second semester of German, this book has been fairly easy to read. For English speakers learning German, this book will give you a better understanding of imperative sentences ---the little prince commands the pilot to do things. z.B: Draw me a sheep!

I have read the book several times in English, which of course, helps me to understand the story in German.

It is a wonderful story. I have searched the Internet, and the Amazon price on this book is very fair.

This book is simply to be kept at hand for a lifetime. Coming in a hardcover set, it will easily go through years of passionate reading. The story is halfway betwwen dream and reality. Providing readers with a child-like vision of life. For once it seems that adults might learn from children.... May Le Petit Prince (The Little Prince) also help you to see today's world from another dimension. With each new reading session you will discover a new angle, corresponding to your actual situation.... Multiple-side story, for a multiple-side lifetime.

If you ask me about my favorite book, the book that I would take to a lonely island, the book that I would recommend everyone to read: Here is it. I read Saint-Exupery's wondrous story of the little prince in the German translation, but translations cannot harm this wonderful, poetic book and cannot hide the deep thoughts that are expressed in this simple language that makes it sound like a book for children.

Le petite prince is not really a typical text of Saint-Exupery's. He was famous for his activities as a pilot (which presumably ended his life during WWII) and has written several books about this. There are also a few very complex texts (like "Citadelle" which I haven't managed to read completely), and then there is this strange book, which is for kids and not for kids, which contains so much wisdom and ongoing astonishment about the world around us.

The little prince lives on a very (extremely) small planet nearby with his vulcanoes and his flower. On his tour arond the solar system he meets many different people (kings, merchants, ...) until he finally meets with the author who had an emergency landing somewhere in the desert on Earth.

Read this - in what language ever - and be charmed by the little prince!

A clever title and a very clever book. Wide ranging in scope, with many unusual insights. At the present bargain price it is a must have. Makes you think, and not in the usual way you think.

Oceanomare of all feeling & thoughts connected with the pool, T.A.P. van Leeuwen, a teacher of mine, has written a book about all the different aspects of the swimming pool. TAP van Leeuwen manages to evoke new kinds of interesting emotions concerning water- and he manages to fill the pool with these emotions. After all, the pool, as he himself describes it, has no very interesting shape: it's just a floating boarding or a concrete hole-in-the-ground.

TAP van Leeuwen has made an excellent choice to show as much as possible in different media, all shattered around on the spread: notes next to the text next to pics. The very thorough and beautiful design of the book itself makes this possible- and points back to its archetype, the "Bauen in Frankreich"-book by Sigfried Giedion (a lifelong teacher for van Leeuwen). I liked very much the part about all the fifties-Hollywood-stars, sitting besides or floating atop of the water, in their expensive tweed costumes, afraid of the water and proud of their success (of owning a pool?). Let's all take a dive into the richness of this book, a book definitely not about architecture, only, architecture is the only housing into which these stories have a room.

This is the second in an anticipated series of four unorthodox books by a Dutch historian on architecture in relation to the classical elements: sky, water, fire and earth. The first volume, about the metaphysics of the American skyscraper, was published in 1988; while the third, which will focus on buildings destroyed by fire, is in preparation. This second volume, which is illustrated by more than 200 drawings, plans and vintage photographs, is a wonderful visual and verbal review of the origin and evolution of the domestic swimming pool, which is, as the author describes it, "the architectural outcome of man's desire to become one with the element of water, privately and free of danger." To swim in a hole in the backyard, he continues, "is a complex and curious activity, one that oscillates between joy and fear, between domination and submission, for the swimmer delivers himself with controlled abandonment to the forces of gravity, resulting in sensations of weight- and timelessness." This is a history of architecture, as exemplified by a single building type; while, at the same time, it is a rich, multi-faceted social history in which the behavior of humans toward water is shown in relation to religion, sex, art, psychology, engineering and architecture. (Copyright by Roy R. Behrens from Ballast Quarterly Review, Vol. 15, No. 1, Autumn 1999.)

I was writing a retrospective about my Dad when this book came to mind. We didn't have many books but scads of magazines. One book we always had around was this one. I read it at seven, ten, twelve and so on. Each time something new to learn. I've asked Amazon to find this out of print jewel for me.

"The Education of T.C. Mits" is a great book. It can change your view of the world. It deals with philosophical mathematics and mathematical philosphy, but it's not just for the intelligent. It is meant for "T. C. Mits - The Common Man In The Street." This book is must-read for anyone, no matter their interests.

This is not just a book about mathematics. It's a book that teaches the reader how to think in a scientific/mathematical manner. Every person in High School or College should read this book. It will change the way you look at the world and probably change your life!

This book mainly presents strategies to write effectively in real world engineering/science situations, assuring that what you write is really read. It shows how to present your ideas so that your target audience understands it. It describes the characteristics that a document aimed to a technical person, to a lay person and to a manager should have.

Besides, it shows how to write memos, letters, reports and even e-mails, explaining from the initial document outline, sentece/paragraph structure to the final polished form.

I wish I had read this book when I was an undergrad, I had to learn how to write effectivelly in the hard way.

This book helped me to effectively write my dissertation. The methods described facilitate organizing a difficult task and presenting the ideas in a clear format. I continue to draw on the wealth of information contained within the text.

The Massechussettes Institue of Technology has been host to the leaders of innovations in many fields: Artificial Intelligence, media and communication technology, open source development, and on and on. One of its lesser known areas of bleeding-edge innovation has been pranks and hacking. Well, Institute Historian T. F. Peterson is here to set that straight with Nightwork: A History of Hacks and Pranks at MIT.

Long before the term 'hacking' was associated with computers (and pejoratively by the popular press), it was an MIT institution. MIT undergrads used the term to describe any activity that took their minds off studying and stress. In Nightwork, the best of the best of the history of MIT hacks is documented, photographed, and explained in great detail.

Some of the best (and most visible) hacks at MIT involve The Great Dome. For instance, to celebrate the 2001 release of the movie The Lord of the Rings, MIT hackers made a gold ring around the dome with red Elvish script, "authentically inscribed with Tolkien's text." In the same spirit in 1999, two days before the release of Star Wars: The Phantom Menace, the dome was made up to look like R2D2 (pictured below).

Nightwork covers these more obvious hacks as well as the long history of pranks at MIT dating back to the 1940s: Interesting Hacks To Fascinate People. And lest the reader think this is all just mindless fun, a collection of explanitory and philosophical essays is also included.

Even if you're not a hacker or a prankster yourself, hack your bookshelf with Nightwork.

"Nightwork: a history of hacks and pranks at MIT" is a well-written documentation of the ingenious stunts engineered by the super bright, super creative students at MIT. The author doesn't lose any of the hilarity in his/her description of the student hijinks.

Kennedy's Guide to Econometrics explains econometrics more clearly than any other book I have read. This book will not make you into an econometrician. But, this is definitely the place to start your education on empirical methods in economics.

For a book of this size, he covers a lot of territory. He covers the CLR model and hypothesis testing well, and discusses a few other things too. This guide is hardly encyclopedic. However, it covers the things economists need to know most.

Kennedy does more than just explain econometrics. He spells out the limits of econometric analysis. Texts often pay little attention to the 'con in econometrics'. Not Kennedy. He discusses the limitations and defects in standard techniques, as well as their advantages.

The only thing wrong with this book is that it does not carry the reader along far enough. After reading this book, most reader's will likely move on to a standard (i.e. badly written) econometrics textbook. In contrast, this book is written so well that it almost makes learning econometrics fun!

This is the fourth edition of a very popular text for an introductory graduate level course in econometrics. Although designed for econometricians and economics majors, the book has a lot to offer the statistician (time series analyst). There is good coverage of both the classical econometric models and the classical ARIMA time series models. The difference, as Kennedy points out, is that most univariate statistical time series models use only the past history to model and forecast the future while the econometric models emphasize the inclusion of economic predictor variables and not the past history.

However, in recent years, and partly because in fair-fight forecasting competitions the Box-Jenkins time series methods have done better than the econometric models, the econometricians are beginning to incorporate the Box-Jenkins approach in their models. As Kennedy points out,the new theory of multivariate ARIMA models is providing the econometricians with a methodology that is similar to their simultaneous equation models.

One nice feature of the book is that it treats classical linear regression theory early, highlights the key assumptions and then provides specific chapters that cover how to deal with the violations of the assumptions taken one by one.

The book is clear, up-to-date and has an excellent bibliography. It introduces the structural econometric time series approach along with multivariate Box-Jenkins methodolgy. Advanced topics such as dealing with roots on the unit circle in Box-Jenkins models and cointegration are covered. Also robust estimation procedures are discussed. It even introduces bootstrap methodology and the Bayesian approach to inference.

There is some coverage and some warnings about neural networks. Models for count data, duration, linear structural equations and instrumental variables are all presented in an introductory way.

Emphasis is placed early on the concept of sampling distributions for estimators. A clear understanding of sampling distributions is essential to understanding classical frequentist statistical approaches. Much confusion can arise when these concepts are glossed over.

If you are taking a course in econometrics, graduate or undergraduate, there is no good excuse for failing to purchase this book. Kennedy has a tremendous gift for giving readers a vision for the "Forest" of econometrics, which is very handy for those readers trapped in the "trees" of Pindyck & Rubinfeld and William Greene's texts (both of which are excellent, but relatively technical).

Kennedy covers an amazingly broad selection of topics in his books. While those having difficulty understanding the field will definitely get a great deal out of the book, don't think for a second that the book is overly simplistic -- an econometrics primer. No, this is not a mere review of OLS for the Gauss-Markov impaired. Kennedy's text covers Bayesian Analysis, Vector Error-Correction Models, and even touches, albeit lightly for my tastes, on such subjects as Kalman filtering and recursive least squares. Kennedy's notes are also very insightful and bring up many issues that dominant textbooks skirt around.

With this book as a reference, several years ago my MBA team was able to take our B-plan to 2nd place in a national scholastic B-plan contest. I have referred to it annually since then to guide my on-going planning. I also use it as a playbook for developing new business plans. It helps focus your planning efforts on the key questions that investors want answered in a plan.

Each chapter addresses an aspect of the planning process and gives anecdotal examples of plans that were presented to the MIT forum. The summaries at the end of each chapter help expedite the annual review.

I cut my teeth on Mancuso's various B-plan guides almost two decades ago and this book, by far, gets you where you want to go in the most direct manner. If you only want one book on B-planning, this is it.

David Gumpert is a genius. His advice is sound, timely and simple to follow. I love his articles and books. This one is a classic.

This book was recommended to me by an executive with 30 years of experience and 8-digit net worth as the "bible" for starting a business. I have used this book twice during the past 6 years to assemble successful business plans. The lessons in the book are not industry specific or date specific, but rather the wisdom that applies to any business. Some of the insights in the book were later worth a lot of money to my companies. My compliments to the author for not just putting together templates or example plans, but rather teaching the entreprenuer how to think.

This book is a fairly low-level introduction to the theory of mechanical waves and vibrations. Granted, it is relatively old (published in the 60s), but the physics is still true. For the most part, the writing is clear, concise, and fairly accessible to anyone with a moderate mathematics and physics/engineering background. However, there are better books. For instance, the Bekefi and Barret book entitled "Electromagnetic Vibrations, Waves, Radiation," even though it deals with electromagnetic waves rather than mechanical waves, is much more sophisticated and contains far more material than does this book.

Chances are, if you are reading this review, you are a student of physics who needs this book for a class. You are not alone.

Oscillatory function is at the root of all natural phenomena. Comprehending this behavior as a mathematically pure process is a basis through which countless aspects of the sciences and the arts can be explained, described, and even creatively elaborated upon. The effects of the physical manifestation of waves, and the inevitable complexities resulting from their interaction with the environment, are essential considerations as well.

The pages of this work are information-dense, providing physical, geometric, and mathematical descriptions of vibrations. Introducing the sine-wave, vectors and complex-exponentials as the fundamentals of periodic motion, the topics then progress to combining vibrations, masses and springs, harmonic and torsional oscillation, forced vibrations, coupled oscillators, Fourier analysis, orthogonal functions, energy transporting, decay of free vibrations, nuclear and optical resonance, diffraction and inference patterns to briefly name but a few. Physical considerations and methods are discussed in detail as well, and exercises at the end of each chapter indicate what the reader is expected to have extracted from each section [selected answers are provided].

The text within each section is written in an extremely clear, systematic and enthusiastic manner and speaks to an intelligent, inquisitive beginner of the subject matter. The numerous excellent black-and-white illustrations diagrams and photographs supplement the written descriptions admirably. The typefaces and even the feel of the paper of the book are high quality and elegant.

This is an introductory work regarding oscillatory analysis, however some mathematical knowledge is assumed by implication. Within the first 15 pages alone are equations which include derivatives, vectors, polar coordinates, complex numbers, and infinite series. It is probably best treated as a supplementary work to an on-going effort in mathematics, the natural sciences, or engineering. Essentially a good foundation in calculus should be sufficient. Given such background so as to understand the crucial mathematics, this work provides an incredible array and range of topics. The preface indicates that this series, by MIT Press, was established to assist in the educational process specifically, and it was tested and evaluated with this objective. As such this book is inherently a supplementary work, and prepares the reader for further research in and comprehension of an incredible range of subjects. Quantum physics, music, human movement, engineering disciplines, the natural sciences, astronomy and more have oscillation as a common thread and basis of understanding. The mechanics of the vibrational processes underlying all of these are elaborated upon to an amazing level of detail and precision within this work.

This book gets my highest recommendation for the focused subject matter it so eloquently and successfully discusses.