Book Description

This text on the increasingly popular topic of chaos is accessible to a varied undergraduate audience. Gulick is co-author of a successful calculus book and is an excellent expositor. His recent interest in teaching chaotic dynamical systems to undergraduates produced a set of class notes that developed into this text. ... Read more

Reviews (3)

Not too bad
In the field of chaotic dynamics, does there exist _the_ standard textbook for undergrads? I think not. Still, in most colleges, _chaos_ is a subtopic you briefly go through (most of the time just `skipped' through) while studying differential equations, mathematical physics or classical physics. To be competely honest, my impression is that those ``subtopics'' usually don't make a good intro to chaotic dynamics, either. I have read some textbooks targeted at undergraduates and Gulick's was not too bad to skim through what we have in chaotic dynamics. However, Gulick pays too much attention on the basics (analysis and differential equations) and this may seem such a waste of space given the limited number of pages (some two hundreds). Naturally, his explanations are not detailed and gives the impression that things are done rather hastily. But, I must say, this book is superier to some other books that spends time neither on the basics nor the analytic aspects of chaotic dynamics.

Only Okay
I had to use this book for a class I took at Bryn Mawr college called "Chaotic Dynamical Systems". There are some mistakes in the book, although I don't remember specifically what they were, and my instructor had to point some of them out. The book, to my knowledge, only covers discrete dynamical systems, and contrary to what the above reviewer says, there is some real analysis involved: i.e. some proofs and definitions involving epsilon and delta. That's about all I can say because I don't remember the book very well, and we only got through about half of it. I recall that most people in my class didn't like the book very much either.

Fantastic Resource for Undergraduates
Denny Gulick opens here a direct access to the mathematical technics for understanding chaotic phenomena. Any undergraduate with some pre or calculus knowledge, little algebra and very few differential equations (rich introductions to these topics are included in every chapter)can access the basics of this growing "Chaos Theory", that is beeing applied to dynamics in all fields. Professor Gulick makes an outstanding aproach with this book. He makes accesible this field to beginners, self-students or newcomers to mathematics, covering so a huge gap in the literature. It is full of examples, detailed exercises and explained in a very comprehensible and student-friendly way, without losing rigour and technic. It has a companion booklet to order separately that includes "all the solutions to the exercises, done step by step and a true Basic software for Pcs or Macs. ... Read more

Book Description

Contents

1 Quarks and Leptons.2 Particle Interactions in the Standard Mode.3 Electromagnetism as a Gauge Theory.4 Relativistic Quantum Mechanics.5 Quantum Field Theory I.6 Quantum Field Theory II: Interacting Scalar Fields.7 Quantum Field Theory III: Complex Scalar Fields, Dirac and Maxwell fields; Introduction of Electromagnetism.8 Elementary Processes in Scalara and Spinor Electrodynamics.9 Deep Inelastic Electron-nucleon Scattering and the Quark Parton Model.10 Higher Order Processes and Renormalisation. 11 Appendices.Index

Synopsis

This book provides an accessible, practical and comprehensive introduction to the three gauge theories of the 'standard model' of particle physics: quantum electrodynamics (QED), quantum chromodynamics (QCD) and the electroweak theory. For each of them, the authors provide a thorough discussion of the main conceptual points; a detailed exposition of many practical calculations of physical quantities; and a comparison of these quantitative predictions with experimental results.

For this two-volume third edition, much of the book has been re-written to reflect developments over the last decade, both in the curricula of university courses, and in particle physics research. On the one hand, substantial new material has been introduced which is intended for use in undergraduate physics courses. New introductory chapters provide a precise historical account of the properties of quarks and leptons, and a qualitative overview of the quantum field description of their interactions, at a level appropriate to third year courses. The chapter on relativistic quantum mechanics has been enlarged and is supplemented by additional sections on scattering theory and Green functions, in a form appropriate to fourth year courses. On the other hand, since precision experiments now test the theories beyond lowest order in perturbation theory, an understanding of the data requires a more sophisticated knowledge of quantum field theory, including ideas of renormalisation. The treatment of quantum field theory has therefore been considerably extended so as to provide a uniquely accessible and self-contained introduction to quantum field dynamics, as described by Feynman graphs. The level is suitable for advanced fourth year undergraduates and first year graduates.

These developments are all contained in the first volume, which ends with a discussion of higher order corrections in QED; the second volume is devoted to the non-Abelian gauge theories of QCD and the electroweak theory. As in the first two editions, emphasis is placed throughout on developing realistic calculations from a secure physical and conceptual basis.

Readership

Graduate and senior undergraduate students taking courses on the standard model of particle physics. Postgraduate students and researchers in particle physics. ... Read more

Reviews (2)

If you are having trouble with QFT - BUY THIS BOOK!
This book (2nd edition) has 15 chapters . I have just finished chapter 4 entitled QFT and I am compeled to write this review! After a year of studying of QFT informally I can report that this is the way to introduce yourself to the topic. I've been through Mandl & Shaw, Peskin & Schoeder, Ryder, Weinberg and a few others and this is heads and tails the BEST intro available. In 42 pages, Aitchison & Hey make the transistion from classical to QM and from QM to QFT as gracefully as I can conceive. For example, the transition from the discrete Lagrangian to the field Lagrangian is very explicit. One benfit of this is that the dependence of L on partial of phi wrt x is clearly motivated leading to the manifestly relativistically invariant form of L. They explicitly develop physical intuition at every step of the way - for example, this is the only book that I have found that explicitly asks the question where is QM's wavefunction in the QFT formalism? Answer - The vacuum to one-particle matrix elements of the field operators. The transistion from free fields to interacting fields is far clearer than any other treatment I've seen. I also appreciated that the problems were used to basically fill in details left out of the text. I was able to 'practice' the various kinds of manipulations that are required.

Amazingly clear introduction to the subject
This book is the best book I've seen on the subject. The qualitative description of qunatum field theory in particular are amazingly lucid for the subject. The only possible flaw in the book is that the problems at the end of each chapter are both few in number and for the most part do not challenge the student at all; for the most part they are just rote calculations. ... Read more

Reviews (1)

examples and activities give you a real feel for chaos
As a teacher attempting to introduce chaos theory into high school physics and mathematics classes, the book gave many examples of practical activities. It also gave many examples of how chaos could and would become useful. There are currently so many false methods being used to integrate subject matter in education; chaos theory has great potential to demonstrate clear connections between arts, sciences, and social sciences, and Peak and Frame in a simple manner bring this to light. ... Read more

Book Description

No matter what field you are working in or studying, Advanced Systems Thinking, Engineering, and Management offers you a comprehensive understanding of systems ideas and methods to help you achieve unmatched success with your challenging projects. This unique resource helps you add a systems-scientific grounding to systems engineering enterprises, showing you how to solve intractable problems, design systems to accommodate complex environments, and manage both creative and operational systems. You learn how to conceive, design and manage a systems engineering process for optimal results. ... Read more

Book Description

This book presents the genuine essence of engineering of fuzzy sets. It includes sound theory, a general methodological framework, efficient algorithms, and detailed validation schemes. Fuzzy Sets Engineering offers discussions in a top-down fashion, with general methodology followed by specific domains which rely strongly on the methodological foundations. Based on this methodological framework, the book then provides a careful, in-depth exposure to very diversified areas. Numerous application-driven examples are included.It discusses general modelling methodology of fuzzy sets then describes useful ideas of neurocomputations. Self-contained chapters allow readers to customize their reading by selecting any of these essential design topics: fuzzy controller, fuzzy control, or information processing with recurrent systems such as fuzzy flip-flops or fuzzy Petri nets. Topics can be investigated in a variety of orders. This versatile format makes this an ideal textbook or reference source for both novices and experienced individuals. ... Read more

Reviews (1)

This is a very good book for researchers on fuzzy sets
I liked the book very much specially for the chapters on neurofuzzy computations (chapter 3 and 4).The last chapter on fuzzy Petri nets is also interesting. ... Read more

Book Description

A virtual prototype is a major interim step towards the creation of a virtual environment. This book explores the simulation, interaction,concepts and tools of virtual prototypes and environments. Itprovides a mixture of state-of-the-art, advanced research andindustrial papers. ... Read more

Book Description

"Do we see the world as it really is, or is the world of our experience mere illusion?" That question has fascinated reflective people since ancient times. Modern neuroscience has finally provided the definitive answer -- it's both -- and The World According To Homo Sapiens explains how this comes to be so.

Aimed primarily at a sophisticated general readership interested in how the human brain works, Homo Sapiens is written in a good-humored conversational style, using only the occasional well-explained technical term. At the same time, however, it clearly has innovative things to say to specialists in the theory-of-mind.

Homo Sapiens deals with three pivotal issues of the new brain-science, each selected because of its inherent interest to general readers: PART I focuses on our systematic human illusions about 'What Is'; PART II develops a biologically based grounding for human moral choice; and PART III addresses the unresolved enigma of human consciousness -- how we are to account for the presence of this amazing property in the naturalized world of modern science.

Book Description

This text gives a thorough presentation of the foundations of linear time-invariant dynamic systems theory. It goes from classic analysis in the time and frequency domains to the modern state-space techniques, while interweaving both continuous-time analysis and treatment of discrete-time and digital computation methods. ... Read more

Reviews (13)

The Physics of History
CERTAIN complex systems, under certain circumstances, have been discovered to behave in mathematically simple, similar ways. In 'critical states', there is no reason to look for specific causes of great events. The smallest force can have gigantic effects and sudden upheavals can strike seemingly out of nowhere. The approximate frequency of such upheavals can be predicted, but not when they will happen or what size they will be.

Mark Buchanan's book reviews the current work on the subject to highlight a deep similarity between the upheavals that affect our lives in both physical and human systems. The book warmly communicates this novel way of thinking without compromising scientific integrity. This is made possible because the author is not only a science writer but also a physicist.

Buchanan starts by discussing the principle of ubiquity which is that one should focus on the simplest mathematical game belonging to a same universal class. Details are not important in deciding the outcome because things in a critical state have no inherent typical scale in either time or space. The important issue which this book highlights is that in a critical state, something known as a 'power law' comes into play to reveal a hidden order and simplicity behind complexity. A power law means that there is no such thing as a normal or typical event, and that there is no qualitative difference between the larger and smaller fluctuations.

Buchanan illustrates this with the following example. If one takes a handful of rice (or sand) and drops the grains one by one on to a table top, a pile of rice is built soon. The pile will not grow taller for ever, though. Eventually the addition of one more grain will cause an avalanche. Such a grain is only special because it happened to fall in the right place at the right time. The addition of a single grain may have no effect, precipitate a small avalanche, or collapse the whole structure. One can predict the likely frequency of the avalanches, but not when they will happen or what size each will be. It may come as no surprise that big avalanches occur less frequently than small ones. What is surprising is that there is a power law: each time the size of an avalanche of rice grains is doubled, it becomes twice as rare.

The book reveals that power laws have been discovered for events ranging from forest fires and earthquakes to mass extinctions and stock market crashes. This is the power law for forest fires: when the area covered by a fire is doubled, it becomes about 2.48 times as rare. If the size of an earthquake is doubled, these quakes become four times less frequent. The bigger the quake, the rarer it is. The distribution is scale invariant, that is, what triggers small and large quakes is precisely the same. A power law for the distribution of extinction sizes (that fits the fossil record well) happens to be identical to that for earthquakes: every time the size of an extinction (as measured by the number of families of species that become extinct) is doubled, it becomes four times as rare. Interestingly for economists, a power law has been discovered in the stock market. Price fluctuations in the Standard & Poor 500 stock index were found to become about sixteen times less likely each time the size is doubled.

Not only that, but other human-influenced events come under the same 'natural' laws. Wars seem to strike with the same statistical pattern as do earthquakes or avalanches in the rice-pile game. What is more, the forest-fire game seems to capture the crucial elements of the way that conflicts spread. A war may begin in a manner similar to the ignition of a forest. Statistics over five centuries have uncovered a power law for wars. Every time the number of deaths is doubled, wars of that size become 2.62 times less common. Such a power law implies that when a war starts out no one knows how big it will become. There seem to be no special conditions to trigger a great conflict. Likewise revolutions are moments that got lucky...

This view of history will make no one feel any safer or happier. After all, wars and revolutions could strike out of nowhere. But it is comforting that the tumultuous course of mankind need not be the outcome of human madness, but of simple mathematics. At the end of the book, one feels excitement about ubiquity. It seems that a profound breakthrough in our understanding of history is coming up. I experienced it. Join me. Read the book.

The real ubiquity is complexity itself
Let's begin with a counter-thesis, namely that the "ubiquity" found in simplistic computer models ("games") which are then related to real world systems such as earthquakes, sandpiles, the stock market, political and social history, etc., may be an artificiality and a whole lot less significant than Buchanan supposes.

The fact that the games are, as Buchanan reports, tinkered with so that they yield a "power law" similar to that found in natural phenomena reveals the artificiality. What this "power law" really amounts to is something like "the frequency of a big change is at least two times and maybe four times (or more) less than the frequency of a small change." The "power" in the "power law" is nothing more than an exponent, as in something-squared, or something-cubed, etc. It's simply a power of a number as a measure of difference. Now, if the differences fell exactly on two times or four times, etc., then perhaps there would be some great significance. But when something is 2.14 times less likely (as it is when the avalanche is doubled in the sandpile game [p. 45, p. 57]) or 1.19 times less likely (as it is for magnets pointing in the same direction in the Onsager and Kaufman experiment [p. 129]) then calling the differences an example of a "power law" at work seems a bit forced and, at any rate, trivial.

Incidentally, the word "history" as used in this book refers to a past that is different than now in a way that cannot be exhaustively unraveled. This idea comes from complexity theory and owes something to information theory. Buchanan attempts to apply it to a wide variety of phenomenon with varying degrees of success.

But what is really being asserted here is the mundane fact that a big change is less likely than a small change in a complex system near the edge of chaos. Such systems: forests, the geological earth, the stock market, the international political arena, etc., are seen as having "self-organized criticality," and it is this sort of complexity that they have in common, and this is what is significant, not some artificially derived "power law."

Another key idea in the book is that the immediate "cause" of a big event in such systems is no different (or so it seems to our discernment) than the cause of a small event. This is an idea from complexity theory, and an exciting one. What it means is that such systems are in principle impossible to predict. In the sandpile game, for example, we don't know when we drop the latest grain whether it will trigger a big avalanche or a small one or none at all. This is similar to the "butterfly effect" in complexity theory in which it is thought possible that the flap of a butterfly's wings in the Sahara Desert, for example, may affect the amount of rain that falls on Cuba.

Where I think Buchanan goes astray here is in making unwarranted connections between systems by using superficial and forced similarities. For example, one of the ideas from the study of earthquakes is that there is no typical size for an earthquake. In his desire to generalize Buchanan tries to find the same sort of phenomena in the interesting study Sidney Redner did on the fate of scientific research papers. Buchanan writes on page 200 that there was "no typical number of citations for a paper, and, by extension, no typical magnitude for the reshaping in the network of ideas that any paper ultimately entails." However on the previous page Buchanan has already reported that there was indeed "a typical size." That size was zero. Of the 783,339 papers published, 368,110 had no citations at all.

Buchanan also asserts on page 169 "...there is no size for a city in the United States or elsewhere, and no reason to see special historical or geographical situations behind the emergence of the very biggest." I agree there is no typical size for a city, but to ignore the effect of rivers, lakes and protected harbors as well as other factors such as nearby mineral and other resources in the growth of cities is silly. Chicago, for example, is a big city not by happenstance but because of its location on a great lake and because of its proximity to the middle of a great, growing country. Similar arguments can be made about other great cities in the US and around the world. The historical and geographical circumstances are special and they really are crucial.

Buchanan further extends the thesis to include social and political revolutions. This makes for lively reading and there is no doubt that there are similarities between the critical state of a nation before a revolution and that of a sandpile before an avalanche or a forest before a fire, but the stresses are of an entirely different sort. He sees the readjustments of governments as a way to prevent the maladjustments that lead to revolutions as similar to the small forest fires that forest managers start to prevent a large forest fire as similar. (p. 209) Whether these similarities are more than conceptional analogies is another matter. Buchanan himself notes, still on page 209, "None of this is meant to be fully convincing." And on page 230, when seeing similarities between the "behaviors of the mass of humanity" and the "wild fluctuations of the magnet poised between its...phases," Buchanan adds, "It goes without saying that nothing I have mentioned in the past few chapters proves this. The message is simply that this is a real possibility." I agree, and I think these statements really could apply to the entire book.

In conclusion, I disagree with the notion that the world is simpler than we think. I believe the opposite is manifestly true, and I found nothing in Buchanan's very interesting arguments to prove otherwise.

Pareto is ubiquitous
In the book Ubiquity by Mark Buchanan, processes as diverse as forest fire size, stacking rice grains, market fluctuation, scientific paper citations, species extinction history, epidemiology, sizes of wars and earthquake severity are said to generate occasional catastrophic behavior following similar statistical behavior. Buchanan presents these arguments in a very readable style at a level that can be grasped by the layman. I found the physical descriptions of the processes fascinating. The phenomena is, indeed, ubiquitous. Repeatedly, we find that, if X measures severity and f is the frequency histogram of occurrence, then numerous processes containing a catastrophic component adhere to a linear log-log plot with negative slope. Although unsaid in the book, probably to allow access to a wider audience, the underlying probability density function of the ubiquitous process is a Pareto random variable with probability density function f(x)=(a/b)*(b/x)^(a+1) for x>b and zero otherwise. The enormously fat tails of this distribution allow the outlier-like catastrophic events described in the book. Taking the log of both sides of the density function gives log[f(x)] = -(a+1)*log(x) + constant which is a line of negative slope on a log-log plot. If U is a uniform random variable on (0,1), then X=b*U^(-1/a) is a Pareto RV. Using this, plots similar to the time series and log-log plots in Ubiquity can be straightforwardly simulated. Googling "Pareto distribution" gives a plurality of interesting web accounts, many mathematically deeper, of this remarkable phenomena made wonderfully accessible by Buchanan.

A new kind of hype?
There is no physical theory that explains history, economics, etc. The wary reader should beware that wishful thinking has won over scientific criticism in this book. To be more specific, sandpile models do not explain earthquakes, turbulence, economics, and so on. Sandpile models are an interesting way of trying something new and stimulating in statistical physics but certainly cannot be elevated to the level of explaining the world. Fluid turbulence is not like dynamically an earthquake, financial markets are not like sandpiles, and Hitler is not explained by any model of statistical physics (need one really say this!?). The historians and biologists need not pack their bags and go home...

(A physics professor)

Can my small comments make a change?
This is not one of my favourite reads. In some ways I found it a labour as it went over the same material again and again, albeit in very diverse areas. I understand the power law that Mr Buchanan describes and its implications, but it seems to be such an after-the-event view that can have little material impact on modern endeavours. It proves futility. It is as if what is ubiquitous is our necessary failure to achieve. But I'm sure we do do better than that.

On the other hand there was one revelation in this book that truly fascinated me. I have always been interested in the dinosaurs and their extinction. Books like 'The Dinosaur Heresies' by Bakker and 'Hot-Blooded Dinosaurs' by Desmond developed a genuine need-to-know-more. But the matter of extinction is so challenging. There are strong suggestions that an impact of an asteroid caused such havoc that the dinosaurs became extinct - all of them, the small ones, the large ones, the carnivores, the herbivores, the pterosaurs (flying dinosaurs) and the plesiosaurs (sea-going dinosaurs). And yet, for all that, other animals - notably mammals - did survive. What allowed them through the window of extinction? In my reading I have encountered this debate many times and most writers do have a preference for one theory or another. But even those who do support the impact theory do not have evidence of an impact associated with each of the great periods of extinction that have occured through time. So, the thesis of 'Ubiquity' does provide an alternative - that sometimes the effect of even a small change will cause monumental alterations to the world according to the ubiquitous power law. What was the small change that extinguished the dinosaur SPECIES but allowed others to survive, and in the absence of the dinosurs, thrive? It seems to me that knowing what this small change was would fundamentally advance our knowledge of what the dinosaurs really were.

The most powerful voice in the campaign for popularising the impact theory of dinosaur extinction is Alvarez who discovered the site of the impact that occured 65 million years ago just about the time the last dinosaur walked on the Earth. What Buchanan points out, that so few other writers do is this ....

'...the bulk of the long 1980 paper by Alvarez and his colleagues was 'confined to the geological and physical evidence for an impact, and the physical results of the impact. The discussion of the biological results of the impact occupies only half a page. (quoted from M. Benton) The reason is simple: no one really has much of a clue about what an impact would really do to life all over the planet.'

This is perhaps the strongest argument I have read against the impact causing the extinction of the dinsoaurs. Not that it couldn't have, but that the opinionated science community is so set on Alvarez' findings that they have taken the most tenuous suggestions from Alvarez' paper to support their theories. ... Read more

Book Description

Demonstrates how a basic knowledge of chaos theory can be used to evaluate chaotic experimental time series data and how to apply the presence of chaos to achieve practical goals. After familiarizing the reader with fundamental concepts of chaos, the text introduces the important topics of dimension, symbolic dynamics, Lyapunov exponents and entropy. Contains extensive reprints from major papers on the subject and concludes with a research bibliography of articles directed toward coping with chaos. ... Read more

Reviews (9)

Good Introductory book
Introductory book for operations research. But after you get what OR is about, you should learn Linear, Non linear and Integer programming separately.

This book tells how to solve a Linear programming problem but not why this way? I strongly recommend Bazaara 's Lp book to know the mechanism of Simplex method. But the discussion about various OR topics like transportaion, Assignment problems is excellent.

I got interested in OR reading this so I am sure all of you will like it.

I used since 1985
The book of Taha has used it for but of 15 years in my courses of operations research has been of great utility in the career of Industrial Engineering, in the system of technological institutes in Mexico, personally I believe that professors Taha, Hillier and Liberman have been a very important support for the teaching of this part of the application of the mathematics, besides other, to all my recognition, the details if there are errors and if the contents are or non frontier of the science, is to each professor's approach that she/he teaches and she/he investigates, to make emphasis in some or others.

This book is simple with good examples
I studied just the first 6 chapters in this book. From them i can say that this book is a good one. It is simple and presents the ideas in a step by step manner. The examples are for wide applications: industries, facility layout, aircrafts, carperntryshops, resturants... It is true that in some places such as in the transportation problem the steps were not clear. Moreover, not all the possible problems and tricks were explained clearly in this chapter. But i think this guy Hamdy Taha cared more about giving you a concept of how you can apply OR in a wide range of applications in a lot of places-more than you can ever think of. To be frank i found this book not so bad as those guys say in their reviews. This book when used with another book will be wonderful

Easy to understand and helpful.
Although it is true that the book has some errors, it was very helpful to me in understanding operations research at a graduate level course without having taken the undergraduate course. The examples are self explanatory as well as the theory that's explained with them. I found the book to be one of the easiest to understand from all the books I have used during my college career.

Menual Salutions
I want to manual salutions Chapter no. 2,3,4,5,6 of Operations Research by Hamdy A Taha.

Awaiting your reply by email. Thanks. ... Read more

Book Description

Informational Macrodynamics (IMD) presents the unifiedinformation systemic approach with common information language formodeling, analysis and optimization of a variety of interactiveprocesses, such as physical, biological, economical, social, andinformational, including human activities. Comparing it with thermodynamics, which deals with transformationenergy and represents a theoretical foundation of physical technology,IMD deals with transformation information, and can be considered atheoretical foundation of Information Computer Technology (ICT). ICTincludes but is not limited to applied computer science, computerinformation systems, computer and data communications, softwareengineering, and artificial intelligence. In ICT, information flowsfrom different data sources, and interacts to create new informationproducts. The information flows may interact physically or via theirvirtual connections, initiating an information dynamic process thatcan be distributed in space. As in physics, a problem is understanding general regularities of theinformation processes in terms of information law, for the engineeringand technological design, control, optimization, and development ofcomputer technology, operations, manipulations, and management of realinformation objects. Information Systems Analysis and Modeling: An InformationalMacrodynamics Approach belongs to an interdisciplinary sciencethat represents the new theoretical and computer-based methodology forsystem informational description and improvement, including variousactivities in such interdisciplinary areas as thinking, intelligentprocesses, management, and other nonphysical subjects with theirmutual interactions, informational superimpositions, and theinformation transferred between interactions. Information Systems Analysis and Modeling: An InformationalMacrodynamics Approach can be used as a textbook or secondarytext in courses on computer science, engineering, business,management, education, and psychology and as a reference for researchand industry. ... Read more

Book Description

From the first edition: "This book combines the techniques of an introductory text with those of a monograph to introduce the general reader to lattice theory and to bring the expert up to date on the most recent developments. The first chapter, along with a selection of topics from later chapters, can serve as an introductory course covering first concepts, distributive, modular, semimodular, and geometric lattices, and so on. About 900 exercises and almost 130 diagrams help the beginner to learn the basic results and important techniques. The latter parts of each chapter give deeper developments of the fields mentioned above and there are chapters on equational classes (varieties) and free products. More advanced readers will find the almost 200 research problems, the extensive bibliography, and the further topics and references at the end of each chapter of special use." In this present edition, the work has been significantly updated and expanded. It contains an extensive new bibliography of 530 items and has been supplemented by eight appendices authored by an exceptional group of experts. The first appendix, written by the author, briefly reviews developments in lattice theory, specifically, the major results of the last 20 years and solutions of the problems proposed in the first edition. The other subjects concern distributive lattices and duality (Brian A. Davey and Hilary A. Priestley), continuous geometries (Friedrich Wehrung), projective lattice geometries (Marcus Greferath and Stefan E. Schmidt), varieties (Peter Jipsen and Henry Rose), free lattices (Ralph Freese), formal concept analysis (Bernhard Ganter and Rudolf Wille), and congruence lattices (Thomas Schmidt in collaboration with the author).

This is an unchanged reprint, in softcover, of the second (hardcover) edition of this classic book on lattice theory by one of the leading figures of the field. Appendices cover the recent developments. ... Read more

Book Description

The complexity of systems studied in distributed artificial intelligence (DAI), such as multi-agent systems, often makes it extremely difficult or even impossible to correctly and completely specify their behavioral repertoires and dynamics. There is broad agreement that such systems should be equipped with the ability to learn in order to improve their future performance autonomously. The interdisciplinary cooperation of researchers from DAI and machine learning (ML) has established a new and very active area of research and development enjoying steadily increasing attention from both communities. This state-of-the-art report documents current and ongoing developments in the area of learning in DAI systems. It is indispensable reading for anybody active in the area and will serve as a valuable source of information. ... Read more

Reviews (1)

Excellent Book!
This is one of my favorite maths books. My interest in it is not so much for the discussion of chaotic systems, but more for that on stochastically perturbed systems. As far as this topic goes, this is the best book I've found in the field by far. The treatment is careful and self-contained, and the proofs are clear throughout. Lots of intuition is given with each result.

As a caveat, note that the approach is based on analysis in general and functional analysis in particular. If you prefer probabilistic arguments look somewhere else. ... Read more

Book Description

This best-selling introduction to operations research now features the Windows versions of LINDO and LINGO.(LINDO, GINO, and LINGO software packages are also available with the book in Macintosh or DOS versions).Forward thinking in approach, this book emphasizes model-formulation and model-building skills.Winston includes material for a three-semester course, organized into self-contained units that provide flexibility in selecting material.Requiring a background in calculus, linear algebra, and statistics, OPERATIONS RESEARCH offers comprehensive coverage for applications-oriented courses in linear or mathematical programming and stochastic and probabilistic models and processes at the undergraduate and graduate level. ... Read more

Reviews (6)

Good writing style
I am in my first semester of an MBA program. The required text for my OR/MS class (An Introduction to Management Science, 10th ed., by Anderson, Sweeney, Williams) left something to be desired. I work with the SAS programming language, and happened to be discussing the SAS/OR product with a SAS technical support rep. He recommended this Winston text. I think it explains concepts much better than my Anderson text and has helped me a lot in my OR/MS class.

From Deterministic to Stochastic
This is one of the excellent industrial engineering books. From deterministic and simple linear programming to stochastic systems such as queueing models or dynamic programming, you may read and "learn" lots of things about OR. However, for stochastic cases you will need extra help for its matematics. But if you want to learn something about industrial engineering or something related with it, that is the book you must buy.

A great book for undergraduate engineering students
I have used this book for five years in my Operation Research classes. Its emphasis is in the mathematical modeling. The explanations are complete and clean. But, the exercises are the best part: a lot of examples and modeling exercises. A very good book for engineering students.

Another great text by Dr. Winston
A wonderful compendium of Ops algorythms. It has everything from linear programming to queing theory.

Very good for beginners in OR
You might have realized that the world is viewed by some scientists as a linear space. This book will justify this believe for you. I have completed my Bachelor's degree in Mathematics and Statistics without a little knowledge about Optimization. Fortunately, I came across this book. This book has played a big role by creating for me a career in Operations Research. It contains many industrial problems to demonstrate the usefulness of the subject. It replaces the instructor by its good explanatory texts. With this book, you are guaranteed to have a break through in the area of Operations research. ... Read more

Reviews (1)

Agent-based modeling in medicine
Design Principles was written by a collection of authors specializing in diverse fields from computer scientists, theoretical biologist, pathologist, chemists and neurologists. The book began as a workshop held at the Sante Fe Institute in 1999 by the same name. While it is not a collection of abstracts and papers from this workshop, it did serve as the motivating factor to write the book. Design Principles starts with a description of the immune system that serves as a basic introduction both to the topic and to the biases of the multiple authors. Steven Hofmeyr offers a "gentle introduction to the immune system for researchers who do not have much background in immunology." (p.3) The chapter is titled "Introduction to the Immune System". Right off the biases of the book are exposed as Hofmeyr has a Ph.D. in computer sciences with a focus on information detection and distribution. Hofmeyr does an excellent job describing very complex biology without assuming that the reader has a background in either immunology or systems. While the author is gentle in his presentation the chapter is very dense with information which one hopes will be reiterated as one needs the information further in the book. Overall, I would recommend this book to anyone who is interested in pursuing agent based modeling of biological systems. This book would be particularly interesting to those pursing interests in modeling the process of immunity. My final criticism would be that the title is a bit misleading as I would suggest that the book only gives limited mention and thought to other types of autonomous systems with the exception of Bonabeau's description of control mechanisms learned from social insects and Gordon's chapter titled, "Task Allocation in Ant Colonies." ... Read more

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Reviews (6)

A Disorganized Jumble Of Disconnected Thoughts.
Please, please, do yourself a favor and don't buy this book. I was so excited to read it, then after 50 pages, I was so excited to throw it away. I just threw it in the trash.
The book is just a bunch of disconnected thoughts with no organization, no style, no interesting revelations, no coherent,readable paragraphs. The fact that this book's editor let it get published means the editor needs to be replaced. - You want to read a good book you can't put down, read 'Complexity'.

It is obne of the best ones
I need to find this book of Capra in spanish. Would you please help me? Thanks,

Useful introduction to systems thinking
I was delighted by the initial sections of the book - the first time I have seen 'systems thinking' properly defined, and also a very useful sketch of the historical development of these ideas. I will therefore be recommending it to my students - it really is a useful book. But do I agree with it? I think the whole thesis falls down in the application to ecosystems; here the evidence gets really shaky and I wasn't convinced.

Good Intro to a Dying Movement
While I found this book very readable and a good survey of ideas from so called systems theory, I often wondered to what extent it was a subjectively revised version of what could be more objectively portrayed. What I found most telling in this regard was the fact that although he admits that systems thinking has died as an academic movement, he fails to mention the significant community of scientists (many of them Nobel prize winners) that have gathered at the Sante Fe Institute to study complex adaptive systems. Capra even very selectively mentions Kauffman's work without acknowledging the thriving academic community he is involved in (except in one sentence as a kind of afterthought). His intuitive synthesis is interesting but like most systems thinking an appealing guess that never seems to amount to much without the science to back it up.

A Flawed Masterpiece
If you can put up with the author's ego and the many small errors in his examples (Most of his examples in economics are incorrect), this book is one of the best overviews of modern systems thinking that you can read. Highly recommended ... Read more

Book Description

Hierarchy theory, rooted in the work of economist Herbert Simon, chemist Ilya Prigogine, and child psychologist Jean Piaget, offers a revolutionary new scientific approach to questions about complexity in nature.A series of straightforward cases from the world around us, accompanied by more than eighty illustrations, help define the fundamental principles of hierarchy theory, such as filters, surfaces, stability, nesting, and the integration of disturbances into systems. ... Read more

Reviews (2)

Cutting through complexity, without oversimplifying
How do we approach complex problems and situations ?By controlling behavior and tightening down tolerances, by intervening through steering before things go too chaotic, by trying to get the initial conditions exactly right, by repeating what works, even if we don't understand why it works.

Hierarchy Theory is a profound interdisciplinary approach to analyzing complex circumstances which builds on the alternate approach of taking a step back and redefining problems, largely by altering the role of the observer.When we stop taking the observer for granted, we can change the boundaries and interpretation of the observations.

The role of hierarchy theory is to focus on areas where collecting more data doesn't help, where we have to look at the frame within which the data was gathered, and change our view.It makes levels of organization and levels of observation explicit.The "bounded rationality" of Herbert Simon, and modern complexity theory are used as a foundation, but they don't intrude on this explanation, which stands on its own.

Along with nature and nurture, does hierarchy really matter in nature ?Probably.It certainly has mattered historically, and there is no indication that we've solved all of the complex problems through a final vision of nature.

Is this theory of practical value ?I have no idea.But this book does a very fine job of explaining and illustrating it in a way that makes you think about complex problems in a new way.

Hierarchy Theory: A Vision, Vocabulary and Epistomology
At first glance, Ahl and Allen's book appears to be for the unsophisticated reader - a disservice done by the illustrations. Upon reading it, however, one quickly discovers that it cuts right to heart ofwhat hierarchy theory is and why it is important. Fitting to the subject,the book hovers between philosophy, ecology and the scientific method.Itwould be nice if the book were a little bit more mathematically oriented . Other works in this area also lack in this regard (Salthe's "EvolvingHierarchical Systems" ) This book will be of interest to readers whoenjoyed such works as "Goedel, Escher, Bach", John Holland's"Emergence" or Robert Rosen's "Life Itself".Allen's"Toward a Unified Ecology" is also a closely related work. ... Read more