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| Author: John Martin
Publisher: McGraw-Hill Science/Engineering/Math
Category: Book
Buy New: $122.61
New (17) Used (13) from $80.00
Avg. Customer Rating:  23 reviews
Sales Rank: 100513
Media: Hardcover
Edition: 3rd
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 560
Shipping Weight (lbs): 2.3
Dimensions (in): 9.2 x 7.4 x 1.1
ISBN: 0072322004
Dewey Decimal Number: 511.3
EAN: 9780072322002
ASIN: 0072322004
Publication Date: August 6, 2002
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: All orders ship same business day via standard shipping (USPS Media Mail) if received by 1 PM CST.
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| Customer Reviews:
 Terrible book January 8, 2003
4 out of 11 found this review helpful
This book is awful. Hard to follow along with the reading. Poor examples, lacking and skipping many steps when there actually is an example. Answers to a few of the questions would have been nice, to know if the problems were done correctly. Must be a master of discrete mathmatics to have any understanding what is going on. I have seen many better books.
 Good textbook for computation theory starter December 29, 2002
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
I read this book during my preparation for a comprehensive exam, which includes materials about theory of computation. I was bad at theory all the time, but reading this book removes all my confusions. It looks like lots of math at first glance, but all the theorems explained clearly after the declarations. This book is also very helpful to understand the fundamental theory for programming languages. I recommend this book for all new graduate students of computer science.
Bad book. bad teacher December 19, 2002
2 out of 9 found this review helpful
If you are a professor wishing to find a book to use in class, look elsewhere.If you are a student at NDSU wishing to take this class, find a different teacher than Dr. Martin. The book, and teacher, poorly communicates the subjects at hand. The writing style is among the worst I've seen. Go with 'Introduction to the Theory of Computation' by Michael Sipser. Nuff said
Horrible book September 15, 2002
5 out of 9 found this review helpful
Only give this book to your students if you want them to appreciate you more as a teacher, or if you merely want to make them suffer. The book's writing style varies from chapter to chapter (chapter 3 manages to climb all the way to mediocrity in it's clarity), but all in all you can read this 100 times and still get very little out of it.The book proves theories with 2 lines of text stating "it's obvious this is true". Well heck, pigeon hole principle seems obvious, but that doesn't seem like a proof, just an observation. Many of the examples skip important steps, which means you spend extra time wondering "how'd he do that". All in all, this book fails miserably. It's too basic for anyone advanced in the subject. And the miserable writing style and horrible examples make this book pretty useless to the layperson. And teachers, unless you want your students to turn in proofs like the author (proofs... what proofs) then don't give this book to your students.
A Rigorous Introduction April 20, 2002
3 out of 4 found this review helpful
I've had the privilege of taking Prof. Martin's two-semester course from this text here at NDSU, and it has been quite enjoyable. The text provides a solid description and set of proofs for the more mathematically-minded students (such as myself). I think that the problem that many other reviewers seem to have faced is that their instructors fall short in their ability to teach this subject. Coupled with a good instructor (such as Prof. Martin) who gives very accessible and intuitive proofs in lecture (possibly by sacrificing rigor in favor of understanding), this text allows a student to have a solid understanding of the topic from a mathematically rigorous point of view.
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