Complexity and Information (Lezioni Lincee)

Rating:
Summary: a wonderful little book, a lot packed in a few pages.
Review: I found the book a good introduction to IBC(informatin based complexity)and highly readable. The author raises a considerable number of interesting problems and questions and sketches out some interesting results. This is an excellent book for anyone interested in numerical methods around integration, complexity, computability,tractability, ill posed problems in general. An amazing number of open problems are discussed for anyone looking for research projects and these range from problems that may be doable to those that look virtually impossible. I found the use of a real-number model of computing a powerful change from Turing model. The overall strength of the book is the exposure to new ideas involving computational models, and how these ideas can help one solve and approach computational problems of both a theoretical and a practical nature -- particularly those involving "real" numbers.