Feynman Lectures on Computation

Rating:
Summary: An Excellent Overview of Computer Theory & Technology
Review: Feynman explains the fundamentals of computers--both themathematics and the physics at the heart of computing. He gives theappropriate amount of detail, enough to explain his points, but not so much that the reader gets bogged down. He also makes few assumptions about the reader's prior knowledge, so that anyone with a scientific or mathematical background can easily understand.

Rating:
Summary: Dissapointing
Review: I find this book dissapointing. It doesn't compare with the insight, clarity, and beauty found in the famous "Feynman lectures in physics". Basically what Feynman does in this book is simplify and coaches one though complex Computer Science/ Information Theory Concepts. The book may have the small size of a novel, but I find it to be more like a textbook; because it has many equations (even exercises in the first chapter), and also one has to be quite attentive while reading. I'm not saying this is a bad book, only that, if you liked the "Feynman lectures in physics" it doesn't automatically mean you'll like this book. This book is different, obviously in the sense that it doesn't deal much with physics, and secondly in the fact that it is not passionatly written, I think. Why is this book so expensive anyways?
Now that you got my warning. I can definitely recomend this book for people intereseted in things like:
-theoretical limits of computers (enthropy, energy)
-physical realizations of logic gates (transistors)
-quantum computers

Rating:
Summary: Dissapointing
Review: I find this book dissapointing. It doesn't compare with the insight, clarity, and beauty found in the famous "Feynman lectures in physics". Basically what Feynman does in this book is simplify and coaches one though complex Computer Science/ Information Theory Concepts. The book may have the small size of a novel, but I find it to be more like a textbook; because it has many equations (even exercises in the first chapter), and also one has to be quite attentive while reading. I'm not saying this is a bad book, only that, if you liked the "Feynman lectures in physics" it doesn't automatically mean you'll like this book. This book is different, obviously in the sense that it doesn't deal much with physics, and secondly in the fact that it is not passionatly written, I think. Why is this book so expensive anyways?
Now that you got my warning. I can definitely recomend this book for people intereseted in things like:
-theoretical limits of computers (enthropy, energy)
-physical realizations of logic gates (transistors)
-quantum computers

Rating:
Summary: the Feynman teaching skills shine through
Review: The book starts out at such a leisurely pace that one is fooled into thinking that it will be finshed in a few days read, but Feynman soon plunges into the much deeper aspects of computation. Some chapters are material that are covered by others much more extensively (such as theory of computation) but they are often treated in his unique approach, other topics (such as Quantum mechanical computers) are such rare gems that they alone would be worth getting the book for.

Rating:
Summary: ...It's R.P Feynman...what more can I say.
Review: The Feynman lectures on Computation (volume 1) takes into account an all-encompassing view of the underlying theories of computer science and electrical engineering as it relates to computer systems development. Volume 1 sets a solid foundation for advanced topics in the field and I would highly reccommend the book for any freshmen EE or CS student wishing to see what the next few years have in store for them. Being a computer systems engineer, I can't wait until volume 2 is released.

Rating:
Summary: a Feynman jewel
Review: This book is not easy, but like his physics lecture, the effort in following his lectures and working out the questions and problems that he poses make this, in my opinion, one of the most beautiful, albeit difficult and terse, books on computation I have come across in a long time. Certainly belongs in the library of anyone who is serious about the theoretical aspects of computation.

Rating:
Summary: Part showmanship, part genius
Review: This is the description given by Time magazine to Feynman's investigation on the cause of the Challenger disaster. And like other books by/about him, this one reinforces the statement. Recommended for physics and computer engineering graduates who want an overview of computer science using the tools of physics. Don't miss out on this smorgasbord of ideas and good stories!

Rating:
Summary: Computers a la Feynman
Review: This reference is derived from Feynman's lectures at Caltech between 1983-1986 for the course 'Potentialities and Limitations of Computing Machines'. This small volume introduces computers as a file clerk performing his tasks, moves on to show how the 'file clerk' can be built out of simple gates, how the gates can be built out actual transistors, discusses essential issues in computation theory such as computability and Turing machines, and then discusses essential issues in information theory such as data compression. The physics of computing from a thermodynamics context is then considered. If the general reader ignores the gas equations, this chapter is fairly easy to read and enlightening. The next chapter continues with a discussion of quantum mechanical computers. The final chapter discusses how real transistors function at the atomic level and fabrication techniques for real integrated circuits. Lectures given by invited experts on computer science topics such as vision, robots, expert systems, etc, are not included. Although this reference does not discuss alternative architectures for computation, such as the ones found in the brains of animals, this reference is ideal to introduce the motivated general reader to the concept of computation and the techniques used in commercial computers.

Rating:
Summary: Dissapointing is correct
Review: We physicists want a readable book on computability, degrees of computational complexity, and the like. Feynman would have been the writer to provide us with that. We're fortunate to have anything at all of what Feynman thought about the subject, but this book (taken from Feynman's rough lecture notes) does not do the job. E.g., in the first chapter we're presented with a description of RPF's joy in discovery and corresponding philosophy of how to understand anything: don't read about it, just work it out by yourself in umpteen different ways (nothing new about Feynman there!), but the examples provided of how Feynman actullally worked it out can be compared with some of Arnol'd's presentations of how he worked out mechanics problems in his text on Classical Mechanics (state the problem, then state the final result). So we still need a SYSTEMATIC 'written-for physicists' text on computability. Neverthless, we can be grateful to Hey and Allen for putting together these stimulating Feynman fragments for us, especially since they stem from his last days of life as a physicist.

By the way, Feynman certainly would not have agreed with S. Weinberg's extreme reductionist philisophy that asserts that once we've understood quantum theory and quarks then we've understood physics/nature, that 'the rest is mere detail'. On the other hand, he surely would have horselaughed the holists who proclaim that reductionism is dead, that physics will become more like 'poetry'. The lie in the latter nonsense is exposed by the entire field of genetics and cell biology, which is where the 'real' complexity in nature is to be found. Every physics student should be required to take a good class in molecular biolgy these days, a subject that's a lot more important and a lot more interesting than string theory (which, as Feynman more or less said, has degenerated into mere philosophy in the absence of experiments to test the ideas) .

Rating:
Summary: I like this book
Review: Yes, I think you can teach the theory of computation from this book. And you can learn it from this book. Some of the material isn't all that recent, but much of it doesn't need to be.

35 years ago, if one were teaching a course on the theory of computation, I'd have recommended Minsky's book (it came out in 1967). That was a great text. Nowadays, there are numerous choices. But one could still use books that originally came out well before Feynman's notes, such as Lewis & Papadimitriou or Hopcroft, Motwani, and Ullman.

The question boils down to the quality of what is in the book, as well as what material it has that other books do not, and what material it is missing that most other texts have.

This book is quite readable and preserves much of Feynman's teaching style. So let's look at what it is missing. First, it doesn't talk much about real neurons. Of course, even Minsky doesn't dwell much on that, and other computation books avoid that topic too. But now, there's a more serious omission. Feynman spends something like two pages on grammars! If you were using Lewis and Papadimitriou (first edition) there would be a chapter of over 70 pages on context-free languages alone. As a teacher or a student, would you really want to miss all that?

No, as a student, you would have to read up on all that material elsewhere. And as a teacher, you would have to use another book or write your own notes. That material is too much a part of most required curricula.

But that doesn't take away from the value of the book when it comes to the rest of the material. And the final four chapters, which discuss coding and information theory, reversible computation and the thermodynamics of computing, quantum mechanical computers, and some physical aspects of computation, are all useful material that you often won't see in other computation texts.

As a student, I'd read the book. As a teacher, I'd recommend it to my students. But as either, I wouldn't expect to use it as the only textbook.