Truth Seeker

[Happy Man]

Truth Seeker

http://www.thisistruth.org/truth.php?f=TruthSeeker


No one is compelled to accept the truth, but it is certainly a shame
upon the human intellect when a man is not even interested in
findingout what the truth is!


Islam teaches that our Creator has given human beings the faculty of
reason. Therefore, it is incumbent upon them to reason things out
objectively and systematically for themselves to ponder, to question
and to reflect.


Nobody should press you to make a hasty decision to accept any of the
teachings of Islam, for Islam teaches that human beings should be
given the freedom to choose. Even when a person is faced with the
truth, there is no compulsion upon him to embrace it.


But before you begin to form an opinion about Islam, ask yourself
whether your existing knowledge about it is thorough enough. Ask
yourself whether that knowledge has been obtained through third party
sources who themselves have probably been exposed to only random
glimpses of Islamic writings and have yet to reason out on Islam
objectively and systematically themselves.


Is it fair enough that one should form an opinion about the taste of
a
particular dish just by a mere hearsay from others who may themselves
have not necessarily tasted the dish yet?


Similarly you should find out for yourself about Islam from reliable
sources and not only taste it, but rather digest it very well before
you form an opinion of it. That would be an intellectual approach to
the truth.


In making your next move to the truth, Islam continually reassures
you
that your rights to freedom of choice and freedom to use that God-
given faculty of thought and reason will be respected, for everyone
has that individual will. No one else can take away that will and
force you to submit to the true way of your Creator, you have to find
out and make that decision yourself!


May your intellectual journey towards the truth be a pleasant and
fruitful one... Amen

 

[arnuld]

hai all,

i am a beginner at algorithms. i was checking ACCU and this one caught
my attention:

"Introduction to Computing and Algorithms" -- Russell Shackelford


had anybody read this book ?

 

[Francine.Neary]

hai all,

i am a beginner at algorithms. i was checking ACCU and this one caught
my attention:

"Introduction to Computing and Algorithms" -- Russell Shackelford

had anybody read this book ?

I thing D. E. Knuth, "Art of computer programming" is the best book
I've seen on algorithms - it's very thorough. Can't say I've *quite*
read the whole thing yet, but little by little!

 

[arnuld]

I thing D. E. Knuth, "Art of computer programming" is the best book
I've seen on algorithms - it's very thorough. Can't say I've *quite*
read the whole thing yet, but little by little!

he is quite *academic*. i *forgot* to mention that academic books
never made any sense to me. i know Knuth's books are best out there. i
never read his books actually, except Concrete Mathematics.

i have also heard "Sedgwick" is academic too. i expected so as he
studies under Knuth.


another example of academic books is "How to Design Programs" [1]. i
have that book on my desk and i tried to get "introduction to
programming" through it (the purpose of the authors was introduction
to programming) and after reading 11 chapters, i did not make anything
out of that book.

same way i tried "The Little Schemer" as introduction but that too was
thrown into my "Hate'em" list. [2]

guess, from where i got my introduction to programming: from 2 places

1.) How to think like a computer scientist: learning with Python.
(this was a minor intro) [3]
2.) "Practical Common Lisp" (this one had major impact on my
thinking) [4]

i like and understand books written in "Practical Common Lisp" style.

K&R2 is a different style i love it too

so "Practical Common Lisp" and "K&R2" are 2 of my understood and loved
styles.


log post, sorry....

still the question remains:

have you read "Introduction to Computing and Algorithms" -- Russell
Shackelford

?


-- arnuld
http://arnuld.blogspot.com


[1] http://www.htdp.org/

[2] http://www.ccs.neu.edu/home/matthias/BTLS/

[3] http://www.ibiblio.org/obp/thinkCSpy/

[4] http://www.gigamonkeys.com/book/

 

[Keith Thompson]

i am a beginner at algorithms. i was checking ACCU and this one caught
my attention:

"Introduction to Computing and Algorithms" -- Russell Shackelford

arnuld, you posted this as a followup to a spam. If you want to start
a new thread, don't create it as a followup to another article; the
"References:" header still makes it part of the original thread even
if you change the subject.

 

[santosh]

arnuld, you posted this as a followup to a spam. If you want to start
a new thread, don't create it as a followup to another article; the
"References:" header still makes it part of the original thread even
if you change the subject.

I think he was trying to follow Beej Jorgensen's example elsethread,
in trying to "hijack" a spam thread.

 

[arnuld]

arnuld, you posted this as a followup to a spam. If you want to start
a new thread, don't create it as a followup to another article; the
"References:" header still makes it part of the original thread even
if you change the subject.

thanks Keith, i did not know that.

 

[arnuld]

I think he was trying to follow Beej Jorgensen's example elsethread,

i don't know who is "Beej Jorgensen"

in trying to "hijack" a spam thread.

YES, i amtrying to Hijack the spam-thread

but as advised by Kieth Thompson, it is not a good idea. I have
created a new thread for the same question.

 

[Beej Jorgensen]

i don't know who is "Beej Jorgensen"

Just some average Joe.

I picked a up a copy of "Introduction to Algorithms" by Cormen,
Leiserson, and Rivest. It's a thick volume (~1000 pages), but I find it
fairly easy to read and my used copy of the first edition was purchased
for US$13.

My only gripe is that the authors are tight-lipped about the solutions
to the problems, and I always like to find out if I've done something
wrong. (They know the book is used in many classes, so they don't want
to give away the answers to the students.)

(My other only gripe is that it's "only" 1000 pages, and I wish there
was more in there!)

I'd classify the reading of "Introduction to Algorithms" as "an
experience", and the reading of Knuth's AoCP to be "an undertaking".
But I can't claim to be a natural at reading that kind of stuff!
Nevertheless, all these volumes are on my shelf and all get picked
through from time to time.

I also have a C book called "Fundamentals of Data Structures in C" by
Horowitz, Sahni, and Anderson-Freed, 1993. This is a book I had in
school and I haven't cracked it in a long time, but I must have thought
it was worth keeping back then. Thumbing through the section on minimum
spanning trees, the text seems pretty decent.

(I see it's selling for US$100 on Amazon, so I guess at the very least
it was worth keeping as an investment. Take THAT, student bookstore
buyback program!

It gets 3/5 stars on Amazon, with one reviewer complaining, "This book
gets way too caught up in mathematical terminology and offers too few
actual code examples."

Which is interesting to me, since it's one of the least-mathy algorithm
books I have. (A quick sample showed 30% of the pages had some kind of
math on them, whereas a similar sample of "Introduction to Algorithms"
showed 100% of the pages with math. As for Knuth, I think all the pages
have math, and maybe 30% of the pages have some kind of English.

-Beej

 

[Keith Thompson]

thanks Keith, i did not know that.

It's an easy enough mistake to make. Some newsreaders, mostly older
ones, do threading by subject rather than by "References:" headers,
and wouldn't have shown your response as part of the same thread. And
if I hadn't happened to see both the spam and your followup in the
same session, I wouldn't have noticed it myself.

 

[Ben Pfaff]

I picked a up a copy of "Introduction to Algorithms" by Cormen,
Leiserson, and Rivest. It's a thick volume (~1000 pages), but I find it
fairly easy to read and my used copy of the first edition was purchased
for US$13.

My only gripe is that the authors are tight-lipped about the solutions
to the problems, and I always like to find out if I've done something
wrong. (They know the book is used in many classes, so they don't want
to give away the answers to the students.)

Because it's used in so many classes, you can search for
solutions online and usually find a few to compare to your own.

Personally, I've used some of the chapters so much (e.g. binary
heaps) that I've actually penciled in solutions to exercises so
that I don't have to re-solve them when I need to write code.

 

[Malcolm McLean]

Just some average Joe.

I picked a up a copy of "Introduction to Algorithms" by Cormen,
Leiserson, and Rivest. It's a thick volume (~1000 pages), but I find it
fairly easy to read and my used copy of the first edition was purchased
for US$13.

My only gripe is that the authors are tight-lipped about the solutions
to the problems, and I always like to find out if I've done something
wrong. (They know the book is used in many classes, so they don't want
to give away the answers to the students.)

(My other only gripe is that it's "only" 1000 pages, and I wish there
was more in there!)

I'd classify the reading of "Introduction to Algorithms" as "an
experience", and the reading of Knuth's AoCP to be "an undertaking".
But I can't claim to be a natural at reading that kind of stuff!
Nevertheless, all these volumes are on my shelf and all get picked
through from time to time.

I also have a C book called "Fundamentals of Data Structures in C" by
Horowitz, Sahni, and Anderson-Freed, 1993. This is a book I had in
school and I haven't cracked it in a long time, but I must have thought
it was worth keeping back then. Thumbing through the section on minimum
spanning trees, the text seems pretty decent.

(I see it's selling for US$100 on Amazon, so I guess at the very least
it was worth keeping as an investment. Take THAT, student bookstore
buyback program!

It gets 3/5 stars on Amazon, with one reviewer complaining, "This book
gets way too caught up in mathematical terminology and offers too few
actual code examples."

Which is interesting to me, since it's one of the least-mathy algorithm
books I have. (A quick sample showed 30% of the pages had some kind of
math on them, whereas a similar sample of "Introduction to Algorithms"
showed 100% of the pages with math. As for Knuth, I think all the pages
have math, and maybe 30% of the pages have some kind of English.

I am writing an algorithms book.
My policy has been to try to explain the maths in English, and then provide
complete working implementations of every function. Most of my algorithms
are not very numerical in nature, but it is difficult to avoid all maths.
Graphical routines need elementary geometry, for instance, and matrix
inversion leads you into deep waters.

I am very interested in what people want from an algorithms book.
Particularly if it cannot be obtained from elsewhere.

 

[Mark McIntyre]

YES, i amtrying to Hijack the spam-thread

Don't do that. Many people have spamfilters which will delete unread
spam, if you post nonspam to the thread it may defeat the filter and
force them to read the nonsense.
--
Mark McIntyre

"Debugging is twice as hard as writing the code in the first place.
Therefore, if you write the code as cleverly as possible, you are,
by definition, not smart enough to debug it."
--Brian Kernighan

 

[Erik de Castro Lopo]

Truth Seeker

http://www.thisistruth.org/truth.php?f=TruthSeeker

As an alternative:

http://www.news.faithfreedom.org/

Erik
--
+-----------------------------------------------------------+
Erik de Castro Lopo
+-----------------------------------------------------------+
"Re graphics: A picture is worth 10K words - but only those to
describe the picture. Hardly any sets of 10K words can be
adequately described with pictures." -- Alan Perlis

 

[Francine.Neary]

he is quite *academic*. i *forgot* to mention that academic books
never made any sense to me. i know Knuth's books are best out there. i
never read his books actually, except Concrete Mathematics.

i have also heard "Sedgwick" is academic too. i expected so as he
studies under Knuth.

I never really understand this point of view. If you're not going to
look at algorithms "academically" and understand the math, how are you
ever going to be able to decide whether an algorithm is good or bad in
a given situation?

another example of academic books is "How to Design Programs" [1]. i
have that book on my desk and i tried to get "introduction to
programming" through it (the purpose of the authors was introduction
to programming) and after reading 11 chapters, i did not make anything
out of that book.

same way i tried "The Little Schemer" as introduction but that too was
thrown into my "Hate'em" list. [2]

guess, from where i got my introduction to programming: from 2 places

1.) How to think like a computer scientist: learning with Python.
(this was a minor intro) [3]
2.) "Practical Common Lisp" (this one had major impact on my
thinking) [4]

i like and understand books written in "Practical Common Lisp" style.

K&R2 is a different style i love it too

so "Practical Common Lisp" and "K&R2" are 2 of my understood and loved
styles.

log post, sorry....

still the question remains:

have you read "Introduction to Computing and Algorithms" -- Russell
Shackelford

?

-- arnuldhttp://arnuld.blogspot.com

[1]http://www.htdp.org/

[2]http://www.ccs.neu.edu/home/matthias/BTLS/

[3]http://www.ibiblio.org/obp/thinkCSpy/

[4]http://www.gigamonkeys.com/book/

 

[CBFalconer]

I never really understand this point of view. If you're not going
to look at algorithms "academically" and understand the math, how
are you ever going to be able to decide whether an algorithm is
good or bad in a given situation?

I think you want "The Practice of Programming".

 

[CBFalconer]

As an alternative:

http://www.news.faithfreedom.org/

Please do not feed the troll.

 

[goose]

Please do not feed the troll.

If you had the time to respond to the message, you
didn't *really* have to leave the links intact, did
you?