Numerical Recipes in C: The Art of Scientific Computing

The encyclopedic scope of the book is also welcome. I am always stumbling into an area of numerical analysis that is new to me, trying to get something to work. Time and again I have turned to this book to give me a basic education in some topic (say, optimization of functions) as well as actual code that I can work from. I know of no other source for this kind of information.

The text is well written, in a lively style. I recommend it most highly.


Most useful book on my bookshelf   October 25, 2000
F. Edward Boas (Stanford, CA USA)
11 out of 12 found this review helpful

I'm a graduate student in biochemistry who frequently needs to solve numerical problems (FFT, least squares curve fitting, optimization, random number generation, eigensystems, etc.), and I can honestly say this is the most useful book on my bookshelf.

The code is simple enough to customize for your particular problem, and powerful enough to handle problems orders of magnitude larger than you could do in Matlab, Mathematica, or Excel.

The explanations are wonderfully clear, and even fun to read! They give you concise descriptions of theory, followed by a good dose of practical advice and editorializing.


Code IS compliant with ANSI and IS in ASCII format   April 3, 2000
17 out of 21 found this review helpful

The code you purchase separately IS definitely in ASCII format. For the Windows version, the authors have provided a "browser" (yes, some kind of .dll file) that allows you to look at individual routines before saving them to your disk. This method is much easier than just dumping 400-500 routines (including example driver programs) to your hard disk. As the authors point out in the help file, there are numerous routines where they WANT you to change things (e.g., platform-dependent definitions of machine epsilon), or at least inspect, for your application. The idea that the code would not be provided in a format that can be edited is completely at odds with what the authors talk about in the Preface (1st ed.), as well as other places in the book. You're SUPPOSED to tear it apart and put it back together. If the above-referenced reviewer's diskettes really do not have the ability to extract ASCII files, like mine, then they are surely defective.

Second, the code IS ANSI-C compliant, which is stated quite clearly in the book. The fact that it is different for different platforms probably (I'm guessing) has to do with the unwrapping program used to navigate through the source files. The Windows browsing file mentioned above is really just a clever application of the standard Windows ".hlp" file format. Obviously, you can't use that on Mac or UNIX. I saw yet another way to do it on DOS platforms with the first edition diskettes. There is no reason to suspect that the actual code is not IDENTICAL on all platforms, except, of course, that each platform defines a newline differently. That said, it is a clear violation of the user license to be porting the code between platforms.

Now, if anyone cares about my opinion of the book... I am not a numerical analyst by trade. I'm just an engineer who finds myself doing numerical analysis sometimes. If this description fits you, or you are a graduate student doing engineering/physics (especially experimental work) that sometimes requires numerical analysis, then this may be the only book you need. It is DEFINITELY the first book you should BUY. Yes, you get all the source code in the book and that's great. But, you get an outstanding introduction, all in one place, to techniques of numerical analysis for all different kinds of applications. It is not a text book, so you don't have to waste the first three chapters proving a bunch of junk about converging series and Rolle's theorem and blah blah blah. (Blah blah blah gives you insight, no doubt. Far be it from me to trash the academic approach. I'm just sayin' that sometimes people in the real world have deadlines with large sums of money at stake and they have to take their best shot with or without the right background.)

I signed up for, and promptly dropped, a numerical analysis course on three different occasions during my graduate career. It was just too boring. This book is fun, and usually gives me enough background to get going on a problem. (I'm sure numerical purists think it's incomplete; but, the authors are usually careful to tell you when they're giving you the "lite" version of some derivation. In those cases, they give you plenty of references.)

I'm not a geek (at least I hope not), but I do find myself reading this book from time to time late at night just for the heck of it. My copy is well-worn and falling apart.

Yes, some of the code is hard to follow, and sometimes it looks like they're making it that way just to be fancy. A couple of spaces here and there wouldn't hurt, and just because C lets you write stuff that can't be read by other people doesn't mean you have do it that way. And, yes, even though my one programming course was FORTRAN 77, I don't care at all for arrays that start at 1 in a language that fundamentally doesn't want to do it that way (even though it can). But, the authors give you a way around this (for 1D arrays, anyway...still waiting for a way to do it for 2D arrays.) It is not a big deal for many of the routines to just convert them to the zero-based assumption. I've there is definitely a productivity argument to be made (not just typing, but debugging). It's really not a big deal to type the code in (as I did for several years) IF you are careful, so you have to decide for yourself if you want to spend your OWN money on the source code.


simply the best   May 17, 2001
5 out of 5 found this review helpful

excellent book!

yes, the code is C and ugly C at that; yes, it's old fashioned and probably FORTRAN-like; and, yes, more often than not, I find myself editing the code to bring it to C++ level. however, it's not really the point of the book, is it?

make no mistake, this IS the book of recipes. in an unlikely event a reader needs to go beyond the level of sophistication of the book, he or she will be likely to understand what's going on. the opposite is true more often: you need a quick solution to get some insight into the problem, and the book gives you what you need and more. the authors really knew what they were doing, because in the situation where quick means bad they give their reader a high quality solution (case in point: random number generators). and though you can read the book online, having one on your table is very useful too.

the best book you can get on the subject!!! highly recommended.