From 6 to 666 hours to understand

books:

	• The New Turing Omnibus: Sixty-Six Excursions in Computer Science A. K. Dewdney Holt Paperbacks, 1993 - 480 pages average customer review:based on 5 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Panoramic for Computer Science

This book presents a clear panoramic for most of the computer science essential topics. I believe it is a demandable for CS student to start with. As a graduate student I find it very helpful for reviewing the computing theory.

Good overview of the basic ideas

The New Turing Omnibus is a gentle pass over many of the abstract concepts of computer science. It focuses on concepts, so if you want to learn to program in a given language, or if you want to master your Windows or Linux OS, look elsewhere. However, it does review all of the theoretical matters, from automata to logic maps, algorithmic analysis and beyond. It is a great read for a budding Computer Scientist, Electrical Engineer or Mathematician. Ideal readers would be younger students in Math or CompSci who want a gentle introduction to the real underlying concepts that govern all of Computer Science. Definatly a must for all CompSci book shelves.

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Brain Dessert

Dewdney is one of the most stimulating writers on applied thinking and computer science that I have had the pleasure to read. Where the standard CS textbooks are most stale, Dewdney is the most provocative. He illuminates the dark corners of abstract thought with practical puzzles and plain language. This book is written in small bite size chapters that grow in complexity around multiple ideas, one being the idea of the state machine (if you don't know what a state machine is, don't fret, Dewdney is here to help). For us programmers, he gives enough information to actually implement the algorithms and explore the universe he envisions. I was able to take two of his pages and use it as a coding exercise that turned out to be quite enjoyable.

The appeal to Dwedney and his book stems from the fact that everything he writes is game-like or puzzle-oriented; while reading him one gets the feeling that an enlightened child is guiding the learned to a new level of thinking. Dewdney takes Computer Science on an enjoyable walk through a park where he ends up teaching the discipline to rethink shortest paths and non-intersecting traversals. What's more amazing about this book is that it is perfectly suited for a coffee table where the uninitiated could accidentally pick it up and join the conversation. That is, a degree in computer science is not a prerequisite to this fascinating read. It is brain dessert.

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OmniBus: The only way to fly.

If you are a geek like me or want to be an armchair geek for an hour or so at a time, then this is the book for you. I loved it and I still reread some the chapters from time to time.

It is not only good for you but it's tasty too! :)

-- smerkdaddy

From 6 to 666 hours to understand

What you get out of the book depends upon how much you want to put into in. A reader of this book, could decide to just understand the general ideas, follow the detailed mathematics, or perhaps program on a computer (for example sorting routines, hashing and the like). Each of the excursions is well covered, sometimes witty, but at times I got bogged-down in the symbols. The chapter on "analog computation" coming in the middle of a book was a welcome relief presenting ideas of sorting, shortest path and minimum trees using spaghetti and strings without mathematics (and would be a good chapter to give to non-computer science friends if they ever make the mistake of asking you what sort of problems you think about). The chapter on neural networks, I thought was also clear. There are also some of the classic computer science problems presented such as the Tower of Hanoi, or "A man ponders how to ferry a wolf, a goat, and a cabbage across of river".

The 66 excursions cover a lot of ground, but often return to Turing machines, finite-state machines, and NP-completeness problems. I might have enjoyed more on algorithm analysis, computer languages, and game analysis. Additionally there are new topics since this 1992 publication, such as quantum computing, Bioinformatics, Internet related topics on virus and encrypting, and a raft of social questions including privacy. I hope the "Turing omnibus" refuels for another update.

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No other volume provides as broad, as thorough, or as accessible an introduction to the realm of computers as A. K. Dewdney's The Turing Omnibus.

Updated and expanded, The Turing Omnibus offers 66 concise, brilliantly written articles on the major points of interest in computer science theory, technology, and applications. New for this tour: updated information on algorithms, detecting primes, noncomputable functions, and self-replicating computers--plus completely new sections on the Mandelbrot set, genetic algorithms, the Newton-Raphson Method, neural networks that learn, DOS systems for personal computers, and computer viruses.

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