BookReviews the specialist as well as a valuable text in advanced undergraduate and graduate courses in applied mathematics, mathematical physics and engineering. The bibliography consists of some important texts, treatises and tables. LOKENATH DEBNATH East Carolina University Greenville, North Carolina
REGRESSION AND THE MOORE-PENROSE PSEUDOINVERSE, by Arthur Albert. 180 pages, diagrams, 6 x 9 in. New York, London, Academic Press, 1972. Price not available. This well-written text should be of great value to engineers and applied scientists interested in applications to such fields as least squares theory, linear regression, recursive estimation and stepwise regression. The beginning chapters provide the necessary background material in the theory of linear mainfolds in finitedimensional Euclidean spaces, and the geometric and analytic properties of the Moore-Penrose pseudoinverse. The presentation is lucid and interestingly written, particularly the section on least squares minimization. Chapters 4 and 5 discuss the pseudoinverse of partitioned matrices, as well as sums and products of matrices. Four different methods of computing the pseudoinverse are given. Chapters 6-9 present statistical applications of the pseudoinverse, ranging over such subjects as the best linear unbiased estimation, constrained least squares estimates and the recursive computations of those estimates. Included is a highly simplified exposition of multiple regression for normal random variables which thus yields the Kalman filter as a simple corollary. The relationship between least squares estimates and conditional expectations is also derived in a simple manner. This is an interesting addition to the literature on the pseudoinverse, and is quite complementary to two other books Generalized Inverse on the subject: Matrices, by T. Boullion and P. Odell,
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Wiley (Interscience), New York, 1971; and Generalized Inverse of Xatrice.~ and Its Application, by C. R. Rao ancl S. K. Mitra, Wiley, New York, 1971. The overlap between this book and the other two is minimal. NARESH K. SINHA JIcMa.ster University Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
THE ERXERGINGTECHNOLOGY, by Roger E. Levien. 585 pages, diagrams, illustrations, 6 x 9 in. New York, McGrawHill, 1972. Price, $12.50 (approx. c5). Control engineers who are int,erested in the uses of computers in universities will find Levien’s book of value. Subtitled Instructiona.! Uses of the Computer in Higher Education, this book is the result of a major study of the Carnegie Commission on Higher Education. It will probably emerge as the single most important source of information on instructional administrative computer usage in colleges and universities during the next few years. The book begins with a comprehensive survey of existing uses of computers in academe. Institutions view instructional use of computers as having top priority; 98 per cent of the schools surveyed would spend half or more of new funds on instructional usage. While in the past, engineering and science have been the leaders in computer-based teaching, there is now an increasing tendency to offer computer-based instruction to students who have had little previous contact with it. The book has major implications for engineers interested in designing computer systems for universities. The fmal chapter, “Strategies for the Future”, presents a solid analysis of alternative patterns of computer usage which is a welcome contrast to the millennium of a computer for every student portrayed by so many articles. Levien recommends a natural-growth strategy with the establishment of a competitive market for instructional computer uses. He suggests improvements in the methods of providing computational services, distributing
Journalof The Franklin IrMtote
Book Reviews computer-based instructional materials and collecting payments for instructional computer usage ; establishing incentives for the improvements is the key issue. Levien sees a short-term (2-6 year) period of experimentation with terminals and computers, followed by a middle stage of 6-12 years of market development in a wide variety of materials, and concluding in an indefinite stage of widespread computer acceptance. He asserts that a
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competitive market for computer-based instruction can be based on centralized time-sharing computers, on separate mini-computers or on computer networks Levien sees this latter as t’he most likely final syst#em.
Electrical Michigan
M. E. SLOAN Engineering Department Technological University Houghton, Michigan
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