Book Announcement: APL with a Mathematical Accent

Transcribed from the printed issue; not yet reviewed. Read it in the PDF of the issue, page 57

APL with a Mathematical Accent
Clifford A. Reiter and William R. Jones, Lafayette Collage

Publ. Brooks/Cole Publ Co., Pacific Grove, CA, USA
200 pp paperback
UK price approx £35 (Three-five ... no misprint!)

Provided that the reader is happy to stay within the bounds of APL1, this text lives up to all its claims. The format is paper covers with spiral binding, making for convenient use alongside a terminal. The page count of 200 belies the extent of the material contained: the publishers have managed to cram every page with information yet without any general feeling of clutter, and they use a heavy APL font which blends very pleasantly with the main text.

The audience is teachers who want to merge APL instruction with teaching maths, and this is the first text I have come across which addresses this objevtive. The maths reaches quite high levels, e.g. there are functions for eigenvector calculations, Rayleigh Quotionts, Gram-Schmidt orthogonalization, Hamming Codes, and adaptive integration - to mention just a few of the many topics covered.

This need not however deter those of lesser mathemetical accomplishments, to whom the bulk of the material is addressed. there are a generous number of exercises with answers, and the text is fully adequate for learning APL by self-study on the part of any mathematically motivated student. In short this is a book which deserves the notice of any maths teachers who seek to brighten the lives of their students with the gentle light of APL.