Author: Tom Likens
Date: 07:19:16 09/25/02
I've recently come across two books on algorithms that this group
might be interested in:
"Selected Papers on Analysis of Algorithms"
by Donald Knuth
Published by CLSI
ISBN: 1-57586-212-3
Hacker's Delight
by Henry S. Warren, Jr.
Published by Addison-Wesley
ISBN: 0-201-91465-4
This first book contains Knuth and Moore's hard-to-find paper
"An Analysis of Alpha-Beta Pruning" first published in Artificial
Intelligence 6 in 1975. This paper is *the* seminal work on
explaining the correctness and operation of the basic algorithm.
It also introduced the idea of node types that we use today.
The book is worth the price of admission just for this paper,
but it is also filled with a plethora of interesting topics
and algorithms all rigourously proven.
The second book is not as rigourous, but it is an interesting
read none the less. One of its chapters covers the topic
of counting the number of one bits set in a word (with obvious
implications here). If you've ever puzzled over the code:
int pop(unsigned x)
{
x = x - ((x >> 1) & 0x55555555);
x = (x & 0x33333333) + ((x >> 2) & 0x33333333);
x = (x + (x >> 4)) & 0x0F0F0F0F;
x = x + (x >> 8);
x = x + (x >> 16);
return x & 0x0000003F;
}
Well, then wonder no more since an entire chapter is devoted to
explaining this and related algorithms.
regards,
--tom
P.S. And no, I am *not* affiliated in anyway with these books.
I just think they are excellent reads!!
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