The Computational Beauty of Nature

Nate, resident Everything developer and consumate chef-and book reviewer has written a review of Gary William Flake's The Computational Beauty of Nature : Computer Explorations of Fractals, Chaos, Complex Systems, and Adaptation . This is an excellent book for those interested in more of the theory and philosphy behind nature, and is recommended for all geeks out there.

The Computational Beauty of Nature
author	Gary William Flake
pages
publisher	Mit Press
rating	10+/10
reviewer	Nate
ISBN	0-262-06200-3
summary	A remarkable and fascinating tour through aspects of Fractals, Chaos, Complex Systems, and Adaption.

The Computational Beauty of Nature is a major work, spanning and relating subjects as diverse as fractals, neural networks, genetic algorithms, infinite sets, and the game of life. Geek/Hacker Gary Flake introduces and explains these concepts in an informal tone, which makes reading it enjoyable and understandable.

A Labor of Love

The author refers to this work as a "labor of love," and it's plain to see that it is exactly that: the expression of a Computer Scientist's love for his work. If you've ever known the exhilaration of realizing a new computer science concept, this book will take you on a whirlwind tour of some of the most fascinating concepts in the field.

Difficulty

This book was engineered so that it can be approached at different levels. Anybody with a solid high school math background, or even a logical mind will be able to comprehend the concepts introduced. Reading this book from page one all the way through would be an ambitious project for a college-level course, but many of the sections are easily read independantly. As a senior Comp Sci major, the book was very enjoyable and easy to read -- though I had to stop reading it before bed because I never wanted to go to sleep. Readers who have not taken a Comp Sci Theory course will probably want to read the first chapter, which covers many of the fundamental ideas that are extrapolated on in later sections.

The author explains that if you hit a concept that you can't easily understand, you should skip and move on. The book is well written to give a good general view of a concept, but also provide specific details for the extremely CS literate. In addition, most sections have references to "further reading" in case you are completely smitten... The diagrams are also extremely helpful for visual learners, since many of the topics have basic graphic representations.

The Format

The book is in a standard textbook format, but this works well because it allows for a plethora of interesting digressions. Much of the time, a digression will reference another section of the book dealing with a completely different, yet strongly related topic. (Of course, in my ideal universe, this whole book would be browsable and hyperlinked, so I could stream-of-consciousness my way to my masters degree.) In addition, many of the examples have corresponding code examples are to play with. (I was impressed, there's even windows binaries...)

Summary

I enjoyed this book immensely, and would definitely recommend it to anyone with a lust for the science behind these ridiculous boxes. But you can't borrow my copy. It's staying in the basement next to my poof chair and my gun...

To buy this book head over to Amazon.

Visit the CBN Web Page which has more info...

--nate