Elements of the Theory of Computation (2nd Edition) Review

Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)This was one of my favorite textbooks from college. In fact, I still have it on my shelf. It is a fantastic textbook, attemtping to introduce the Theoretical Foundations of Computer Science, in essence the science. In covering this, it moves into topics such as Finite Automata, Parsing, and Turing Machines.
I feel the negative reviews are due to some confusion. This is not an algorithms book, or a programming book, or an "intro to AI" book. It's a Math textbook. It's language is one of theorems and proofs, and this would be hard going for someone not comfortable with a college-level abstract mathematics background.
For those of you who have such a background, this book covers a topic where mathematics can become elegant. A physics major friend of mine fell in love with it, and he had no interest in Comp Sci!!
For it's topic, a similar book would be Feynman's lecture notes on Physics. Both those volumes and this book were attempt to bring the highest levels of theory within the field to the undergraduate audience. Both succeed.

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Lewis and Papadimitriou present this long awaited Second Edition of their best-selling theory of computation. The authors are well-known for their clear presentation that makes the material accessible to a a broad audience and requires no special previous mathematical experience. In this new edition, the authors incorporate a somewhat more informal, friendly writing style to present both classical and contemporary theories of computation. Algorithms, complexity analysis, and algorithmic ideas are introduced informally in Chapter 1, and are pursued throughout the book. Each section is followed by problems.

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