Greg Wilson

"This book describes the most useful data crunching techniques, explains when you should use them, and shows how they will make your life easier. Along the way, it will introduce you to some handy, but underused, features of Java, Python, and other languages. It will also show you how to test data crunching programs and how data crunching fits into the larger software development picture."--Jacket.

Practical Parallel Programming provides scientists and engineers with a detailed, informative, and often critical introduction to parallel programming techniques. Following a review of the fundamentals of parallel computer theory and architecture, it describes four of the most popular parallel programming models in use today - data parallelism, shared variables, message passing, and Linda - and shows how each can be used to solve various scientific and numerical problems. Examples, coded in various dialects of Fortran, are drawn from such domains as the solution of partial differential equations, the solution of linear equations, the simulation of cellular automata, studies of rock fracturing, and image processing. Practical Parallel Programming will be particularly helpful for scientists and engineers who use high-performance computers to solve numerical problems and do physical simulations but who have little experience with networking or concurrency. The book can also be used by advanced undergraduate and graduate students in computer science in conjunction with sources covering parallel architectures and algorithms in more detail. Computer science students will gain a critical appraisal of the current state of the art in parallel programming. The language used in the book, Fortran-K, is a subset of Fortran-90. It is described in an appendix and a compiler, for it is freely available from the MIT Press ftp site.

"Simulate a wide range of learning phenomena that are typically discussed psychology of learning courses. Explore all facets of operant and classical conditioning by training Sniffy using virtual food as reinformcement. The simple user interface enables you to set up events in Sniffy's operant chamber (skinny box) in much the same way research psychologist set up events for real animals."

How do the experts solve difficult problems in software development? In this unique and insightful book, leading computer scientists offer case studies that reveal how they found unusual, carefully designed solutions to high-profile projects. You will be able to look over the shoulder of major coding and design experts to see problems through their eyes. This is not simply another design patterns book, or another software engineering treatise on the right and wrong way to do things. The authors think aloud as they work through their project's architecture, the tradeoffs made in its construction, and when it was important to break rules. Beautiful Code is an opportunity for master coders to tell their story. All author royalties will be donated to Amnesty International.