The invaluable analytic skills developed through this innovative approach will appiv to anj, programming assignment-no matter the size of the problem or the language and macnine used. The book does not assume a high degree of familiarity with discrete mathematics-in fact, all mathematical concepts crucial to algorithm analysis are explained in the appendices. Each chapter centers on a basic problem and works through a variety of available . options for its solution rather than declaring a single best answer. Within the chapters, carefully orchestrated. 'Pauses'-helpful questions and strategy suggestions-point students to workable solutions and to increasinglv more advanced variations and applications. End-of-chapter 'Codas' restate each chapter's major themes and guide the transition into the next set of problems. Compared to What? will help students analyze problems, determine what needs to be optimized, and pinpoint inefficiencies and inaccuracies in their programs. Its fr-iendlv but challenging style, inventive examples 'and analogies, descriptions of state-of-the-art applications, and pragmatic focus will help you teach students to create algorithmic solutions-not merely memorize them.

    Every computer scientist has a copy of Knuth's works on algorithms on his or her shelf. Dexter Kozen, a researcher and professor at Cornell University, has written a text for graduate study of algorithms. This will be an important reference book as well as being a useful graduate-level textbook.

    When he brought out his astronomical Formulae for Calculators in 1979, it was practically the only book of its genre. It quickly became the "source among sources," even for other writers in the field. Many of them have warmly acknowledged their debt (or should have), citing the unparalleled clarity of his instructions and the rigor of his methods. and now this Belgian astronomer has outdone himself yet again! Virtually every previous handbook on celestial calculations (including his own earlier work) was forced to rely on formulae for the Sun, Moon, and planets that were developed in the last century-or at least before 1920. The past 10 years, however, have seen a stunning revolution in how the world's major observatories produce their almanacs. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California and the U.S. Naval Observatory in Washington, D.C., have perfected powerful new machine methods for modeling the motions and interactions of bodies within the solar system. at the same time in Paris, the Bureau des Longitudes has been a beehive of activity aimed at describing these motions analytically, in the form of explicit equations. Yet until now the fruits of this exciting work have remained mostly out of reach of ordinary people. The details have existed mainly on reels of magnetic tape in a form comprehensible only to the largest brains, human or electronic. But astronomical algorithms changes all that With his special knack for computations of all sorts, the author has made the essentials of thesemodern techniques available to us all.