Re: Books
- To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
- Subject: [mg4831] Re: Books
- From: "Harry A. Smith" <hasmith at nettally.com>
- Date: Fri, 20 Sep 1996 01:12:47 -0400
- Organization: Florida State University
- Sender: owner-wri-mathgroup at wolfram.com
richard j. gaylord wrote: > hi: > > i would suggest that for a beginner in the area of simulations, you look > at "MODELING NATURE: Cellular Automata Simulations with Mathematica" > first. > > the approach taken there requires MUCH less programming background than > my first simulation book. > > note: the second book is not simply an extension of the firstbook. the > first book is essentially a hodgepodge of interesting simualation > programs, each with its own approach. in contrast, the second book > presents as ingle unified approach to the type of simulation modeling > known as cellular simulations. > *snip* > -richard- > > -- > "if you're not programming functionally, then you're programming dysfunctionally" Just a few comments: 1. Richard's book is good for doing CA modelling and can be used with profit for learning to develop spatial models as well. I picked up a number of pointers on how to implement some tricky ideas. 2. However, for implementations of solutions to standard Differential Equations, Abell and Braselton's "Differential Equations With Mathematica" is still probably a good choice to understand how to do standard math of this type using mma. 3. A better choice would be to get both books and compare the techniques and implementations, then you will have the best of all worlds! As a final note: Richard's book comes with code on a disk, the Abell and Braselton book does not. ==== [MESSAGE SEPARATOR] ====