Once Upon an Algorithm: How Stories Explain Computing
Language: English
Published by The MIT Press, 2017
- Hardcover
- Used
Seller: clickgoodwillbooks, Indianapolis, IN, U.S.A.clickgoodwillbooks
AbeBooks seller since July 5, 2024
Condition: Used - Fair
US$ 2.79
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Used - Acceptable: All pages and the cover are intact, but shrink wrap, dust covers, or boxed set case may be missing. Pages may include limited notes, highlighting, or minor water damage but the text is readable. Item may be missing bundled media.
Seller Inventory # 3O6WBH001TE3_ns
- Title
- Once Upon an Algorithm: How Stories Explain Computing
- Author
- Erwig, Martin
- Publisher
- The MIT Press
- Publication year
- 2017
- Condition
- acceptable
- Binding
- Hardcover
- Language
- English
- ISBN 10
- 0262036630
- ISBN 13
- 9780262036634
Picture a computer scientist, staring at a screen and clicking away frantically on a keyboard, hacking into a system, or perhaps developing an app. Now delete that picture. In Once Upon an Algorithm, Martin Erwig explains computation as something that takes place beyond electronic computers, and computer science as the study of systematic problem solving. Erwig points out that many daily activities involve problem solving. Getting up in the morning, for example: You get up, take a shower, get dressed, eat breakfast. This simple daily routine solves a recurring problem through a series of well-defined steps. In computer science, such a routine is called an algorithm.
Erwig illustrates a series of concepts in computing with examples from daily life and familiar stories. Hansel and Gretel, for example, execute an algorithm to get home from the forest. The movie Groundhog Day illustrates the problem of unsolvability; Sherlock Holmes manipulates data structures when solving a crime; the magic in Harry Potter’s world is understood through types and abstraction; and Indiana Jones demonstrates the complexity of searching. Along the way, Erwig also discusses representations and different ways to organize data; “intractable” problems; language, syntax, and ambiguity; control structures, loops, and the halting problem; different forms of recursion; and rules for finding errors in algorithms.
This engaging book explains computation accessibly and shows its relevance to daily life. Something to think about next time we execute the algorithm of getting up in the morning.
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clickgoodwillbooks
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