review Æ eBook, ePUB or Kindle PDF Ó John MacCormick
F presenting computer science for a popular audience Ernest Davis SIAM NewsMost people know little and care less about how say electronic payments are kept secure or how movies are crammed onto DVDs But as MacCormick shows they re the result of often stunning ingenuity and creativity For insights into the thinking that can turn gigabytes into gigabucks start here Robert Matthews BBC Focus MacCormick masterfully uses everyday analogies in a way that gets to the heart of the ideas he calls them tricks that make the algorithms work While this is essential for readers without mathematical background the other lesson that jumps out is that this is a great way to introduce these algorithms to mathematics and computer science students who will go on toin depth treatments This excellent survey is an outstanding achievement and would make an excellent library acuisition Art Gittleman MAA ReviewsMacCormick leaves the reader with a sense of the engine that powers the networked world And at its best Nine Algorithms enables you to recognise the real world and begin to see those algorithms alive and kicking all around us Kevin Slavin New Scientist Nine Algorithms That Changed the Future is technically right on the money but manages to explain things in ways that are both understandable and fun Each chapter starts out very simply gradually building upcomplex examples until you reach a full understanding of the algorithm being explained The writing is excellent clear precise and fun I highly recommend this book to anyone curious about the ingenious mathematical and algorithmic ideas underlying some of today s most ubiuitous technology Brent Yorgey Math Less TraveledOne of the best things about Nine Algorithms That Changed the Future is that it is of interest to computer professionals and innocent bystanders non professionals alike The author doesn t attempt to baffle us with science or blow us away with his mathematical prowess Instead he employs simple analogies that we can all understand His use of mixing colored paints to explain the machinations of public key cryptography is frankly brilliant I highly recommend this book as a very enjoyable read that will be of interest to anyone who would like to understandabout the way in which the computer systems we use every day perform their magi.
John MacCormick Ó 8 summary
Nine Algorithms That Changed the Future The Ingenious Ideas That Drive Today's ComputersC Clive Maxfield EE TimesIt s been a long time since any book has given me the excitement I remember from reading Hawking and Feynman in my teens This book does exactly that It reminds me why I love computer science MacCormick s explanations are easy to understand yet they tell the real story of how these algorithms actually work This is a book that deserves not just to be admired but celebrated Andrew Fitzgibbon creator of Emmy winning camera software and consultant for the Xbox KinectThis book is for those who have wondered What actually goes on in my computer MacCormick clearly explains some of the algorithms used by hundreds of millions of people daily Not the simple algorithms like arithmetic and sorting butcomplex things such as how to determine the importance of web pages if and when we are justified in trusting a computer mediated conversation with another person and the puzzling issue of what cannot be computed I recommend it highly Chuck Thacker winner of the Turing AwardThis is a delightful exploration in layman s terms of nine beautiful algorithms that are essential to today s computers Using clever analogies MacCormick gives readers a greater knowledge of both the technology they use every day and the intellectual underpinnings of computing He combines a mathematician s appreciation of powerful ideas and an educator s skill at explaining them in an engaging way Sharon Perl GoogleMacCormick picks nine algorithms for his version of genius awards and they are good ones The reader comes away with a new sense of what genius in computer science looks like And MacCormick leaves room for a future genius perhaps inspired by this book to someday make it a top ten list William H Press coauthor of Numerical RecipesJohn MacCormick has taken many of the algorithms that we rely on every day and explained them in a way that you can understand even if you have a meager mathematical background I particularly like how he explains public key cryptography by analogy to mixing paint Thomas H Cormen Dartmouth CollegeMacCormick does a great job of explaining sophisticated ideas in a simple way and his analogies are wonderful I particularly enjoyed the thoughtful and detailed historical asides Amy N Langville coauthor of Google s PageRank and Beyond The Science of Search Engine Ranking.