"Wonderfully concise discussions . . . full of wit . . . It is nearly the perfect book for the noncomputer
scientists who want to learn something about the field."
--Nature
"Recommended as a general topics source for anyone interested in computer science. Dewdney's use of unusual
and practical examples and illustrations to explain the material makes his very readable prose even better."
--Choice
"A useful book of worthwhile diversions."
--Computer Books Review
Publisher Web Site, December, 2003
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.
Preface
Icons
ALGORITHMS Cooking Up Programs
FINITE AUTOMATA The Black Box
SYSTEMS OF LOGIC Boolean Bases
SIMULATION The Monte Carlo Method
GÖDEL'S THEOREM Limits on Logic
GAME TRESS The Minimax Method
THE COMSKY HIERARCHY Four Computers
RANDOM NUMBERS The Chaitin-Kolmogoroff Theory
MATHEMATICAL RESEARCH The Mandelbrot Set
PROGRAM CORRECTNESS Ultimate Debugging
SEARCH TRESS Traversal and Maintenance
ERROR-CORRECTING CODE Pictures from Space
BOOLEAN LOGIC Expressions and Circuits
REGULAR LANGUAGE Pumping Words
TIME AND SPACE COMPLEXITY The Big-0 Notation
GENETIC ALGORITHMS Solutions That Evolve
THE RANDOM ACCESS MACHINE An Abstract Computer
SPINAL CURVES Smooth Interpolation
COMPUTER VISION Polyhedral Scenes
KARNAUGH MAPS Circuit Minimization
THE NEWTON-RAPHSON METHOD Finding Roots
MINIMUM SPANNING TREES A Fast Algorithm
GENERATIVE GRAMMARS Lindenmayer Systems
RECURSION The Sierpinski Curve
FAST MULTIPLICATION Divide and Conquer
NONDETERMINISM Automata That Guess Correctly
PERCEPTIONS A Lack of Vision
ENCODERS AND MULTIPLEXERS Manipulating Memory
CAT SCANNING Cross-Sectional X-Rays
TIE PARTITION PROBLEM A Pseudo-fast Algorithm
TURING MACHINES The Simplest Computers
THE FAST FOURIER TRANSFORM Redistributing Images
ANALOG COMPUTATION Spaghetti Computers
SATISFIABILITY A Central Problem
SEQUENTIAL SORTING A Lower Bound on Speed
NEURAL NETWORKS THAT LEARN Converting Coordinates
PUBLIC KEY CRYPTOGRAPHY Intractable Secrets
SEQUENTIAL CIRCUITS A Computer Memory
NONCOMPUTABLE FUNCTIONS The Busy Beaver Problem
HEAPS AND MERGES The Fastest Sorts of Sorts
NP-COMPLETENESS Wall of Intractability
NUMBER SYSTEMS FOR COMPUTING Chinese Arithmetic
STORAGE BY HASHING The Key Is the Address
CELLULAR AUTOMATA The Game of Life
COOK'S THEOREM Nuts and Bolts
SELF-REPLICATING COMPUTERS Codd's Machine
STORING IMAGES A Cat in a Quad Tree
THE SCRAM A Simplified Computer
SHANNON'S THEORY The Elusive Codes
DETECTING PRIMES An Algorithm that Almost Always Works
UNIVERSAL TURING MACHINES Computers as Programs
TEXT COMPRESSION Huffman Coding
DISK OPERATING SYSTEMS Bootstrapping the Computer
NP-COMPLETE PROBLEMS The Tree of Intractability
ITERATION AND RECURSION The Towers of Hanoi
VLSI COMPUTERS Circuits in Silicon
LINEAR PROGRAMMING The Simplex Method
PREDICATE CALCULUS The Resolution Method
THE HALTING PROBLEM The Uncomputable
COMPUTER VIRUSES A Software Invasion
SEARCHING STRINGS The Boyer-Moore Algorithm
PARALLEL COMPUTING Processors with Connections
THE WORD PROBLEM Dictionaries as Programs
LOGIC PROGRAMMING Prologue to Expertise
RELATIONAL DATABASES Do-It-Yourself Queries
CHURCH'S THESIS All Computers Are Created Equal
Index
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