| Introduction to Languages and the Theory of Computation |  | Author: Martin
Publisher: McGraw Hill Higher Education
Category: Book
This item is no longer available
Avg. Customer Rating:  23 reviews
Sales Rank: 5296160
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 128
ISBN: 007040772X
EAN: 9780070407725
ASIN: 007040772X
Publication Date: December 1, 1991
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Amazon.com Review
Even those with little mathematical background will be able to understand this user-friendly book, which focuses on formal languages and models of computation. (The author devotes an entire chapter to induction and recursive definitions.) Introduction to Languages and the Theory of Computation weaves numerous examples and highly readable discussions of the key ideas--and how they fit into the larger picture--in between rigorous proofs of the theorems.
Product Description
This book is an introduction for undergraduates to the theory of computation. It emphasizes formal languages, automata and abstract models of computation, and computability. It also includes an introduction to computational complexity and NP-completeness.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 18 more reviews...
The explanations could have been better June 22, 2008
The material covered in this book, if you expected to prove what you are doing is correct, is challenging. There were several times in this book, where the explanation from the book was not enough for me to grasp the concept. I am not talking about cramming for the test, I am talking about repeatedly reviewing the concept in the book over several days before giving up and going for extra help.
This is surprising, not because of my shear genius, but because the concepts in the book are not all that hard to grasp after the fact. For this reason, I think the book could be better written, by either including examples of more of the concepts or clearer language explaining the concepts.
 if you have to teach yourself i would not get this book February 22, 2008
i am currently part of an online course, there is no teacher and all we have to learn from besides this text (which was assigned) is maybe 2 or 3 examples posted on a website for each chapter - almost all of which are entirely too simple to offer any real help. if you have to teach yourself this course this is definitely NOT a good book.
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-there are no solutions to the problems
-the writing is not on an introductory level &
-the questions escalate in difficulty way too fast from the examples
-the examples are circular
-the examples actually say "at this point its obvious that"
-the examples offer little to no help for complicated problems like any of the one's we get on homeworks & tests
..
i think the worst part of this book is the fact that generally after i do a problem i look back just to check if i got the right answer .. since i can't do this i have no real security of whether or not i'm doing anything right. then when i look back through the chapter when i need help i realize that the examples skip the steps that i need and the writing frustrates me more than it teaches me.
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it's kinda like trying to learn calculus and the very first problem you ever see asks you to prove green's theorem.
Less than elegant November 27, 2006
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
As far as basic ideas of automata goes, this book will do. It's not phenomenal, and it's not awful. It is merely sufficient. The main problem is that it lacks elegance in a number of places. In many places, it feels sloppy. Definitions are almost arbitrary, and often lack rigor. Techniques are long, tedious, and not very interesting. (This is nowhere more evident that the finite automaton -> regular expression conversion from Ch. 4, which has a really neat solution that this book does NOT give.) Yet, despite all this, it conveys the important ideas nevertheless.
As far as developing skills for more advanced concepts of theory of computation, things don't look so good. This book's approach can be described as attempting, by sheer force, to make automata problems fit into rather vanilla proof techniques that readers will probably have already learned. The result is likely to do little more than convince readers that the subject is hard.
Lacks educational value January 18, 2004
5 out of 7 found this review helpful
During the course this book has been anything but helpful. The introductory part is a laugh as it takes for given you as a reader is very deep into mathematical lingo and proofs. Indeed the poofs are some of the worst written, many of them using statements as "Clearly it is..." and "It is now easy to see...", well, no, it isn't easy and mostly seems like a shortcut from the author to excuse himself from actual explanations.Even worse is the examples where solutions reference something form an excercise, here's a hint to Mr Martin, students don't solve all the extremly many excercises unless asked to, so saying something will be clear after a certain excercise doesn't work, how will we ever know if we're right or wrong? The educational value is very low due to the authors way of writing, never really getting the point across and always assuming the reader knows exactly what's going on. This is certainly not the way to teach people rather complex things. All in all anyone should look elsewhere to have a chance.
 Breadth Of Information November 25, 2003
2 out of 4 found this review helpful
I normally don't write reviews. Couple of not very positive reviews could not stop me writing one for this title. In my opinion, this book really presents a breadth of information
on the subject. If one is considering to buy this book, one should have due background in Discrete Mathematics.
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