7 ms·

Peter Norvig's book reviews on Amazon

126 points by kbob 16y ago

mburney 16y ago
Definitely some books I will check out after reading this list ("Lisp in small pieces" for example). Also enjoyed the fact that Norvig is a Talking Heads fan. I always thought of Norvig as a new wave kind of guy.
rayvega 16y ago
From his 'On LISP' review: ...In Graham's prose, like his code, every word counts... Fascinating to read Peter Norvig describe ten years ago what most people tend to say about pg's essays and general writing style.
- asdflkj 16y ago
  Somebody should show this to people in #lisp. They uniformly worship Norvig and hate PG.
  - devinj 16y ago
    Hero worship is sadly not transitive.
    - billswift 16y ago
      The reason is that "hero worship" is what "respect" looks like when it is done by idiots.
  - corruption 16y ago
    What are the complaints against pg?
    - ableal 16y ago
      Searching for "Emo Phillips die heretic", besides amusing, may be enlightening. (Just an educated guess about the root of the problem, I have no idea of what goes on in IRC.)
    - l0stman 16y ago
      My gut feeling is that it has something to do with Arc. Some people tends to think it's just a regular Lisp with shorter keywords and that there's nothing really innovative in it. The problem is that pg kept the code private for too long while advocating publicly the power of the language and criticizing Common Lisp. So when he finally released it, some lispers were disappointed because they've been waiting for something really disruptive. And it backfired as most of the time, the harshest critics comes from your disappointed sympathizers. That being said, I don't hang that much on IRC so I have no real back-story supporting this.
      - asdflkj 16y ago
        It started long before PG released Arc. My theory is that because most of those people are very intelligent yet utterly ineffectual, they act as a kind of support group for one another. They view Lisp as a monastic order where in order to keep the tradition alive, one is forced by the circumstances to give up all his worldly ambitions. PG didn't buy it, and succeeded. So to keep the ideology consistent, you need to introduce the assumption that PG is not a "true" Lisper.
        deleted 16y ago
        [deleted]
    - tsally 16y ago
      PG doesn't actually like Common Lisp, which is what #lisp is dedicated to.
aaronkaplan 16y ago
His review of the Talking Heads CD set is dated July 27, 2001, but mentions "Sept 11." Conspiracy theorists take note.
- javert 16y ago
  That's actually pretty interesting and quirky. I wonder what happened. Could he have initially posted before Sept. 11 and then edited the post after? Or did Amazon screw something up with the dates?
  - pmichaud 16y ago
    In big systems like amazon's it's not uncommon to fudge something that's not critical. They probably lost data during a migration 8 years ago, or some similar disaster and decided to just rebuild a replica by generating plausible dates. That kind of crap happens all the time.
  - gahahaha 16y ago
    <Insert rant about software written in Perl here>
kev009 16y ago
His Dietel reviews are hilarious.
micheljansen 16y ago
I feel confident finding so many books I own for my studies are getting rave reviews by Norvig. Then again, we do use a book he wrote with Stuart Russell as well in one of the courses :)
- SapphireSun 16y ago
  Oh I LOVE that book. A Modern Introduction to AI / 2e right? The authors have such a relaxed tone and explain things so well AND they cover a huge amount of material.
  - abecedarius 16y ago
    There's a 3rd edition now. (AI: A Modern Approach, actually.)
ionfish 16y ago
His review of Black's 'Neural Networks for Pattern Recognition' made me chuckle, and accorded with my own experience of the book. To the reviewer who said "I was looking forward to a detailed insight into neural networks in this book. Instead, almost every page is plastered up with sigma notation", that's like saying about a book on music theory "Instead, almost every page is plastered with black-and-white ovals (some with sticks on the edge)." Or to the reviewer who complains this book is limited to the mathematical side of neural nets, that's like complaining about a cookbook on beef being limited to the carnivore side. http://www.amazon.com/review/RZ7FBFHHLJHYE/ref=cm_cr_rdp_perm http://www.amazon.com/review/RZ7FBFHHLJHYE/ref=cm_cr_rdp_per...
- akv 16y ago
  The author is Chris Bishop...
  - ionfish 16y ago
    Thanks for the correction, of course you're right. For some reason I always confuse the two names (this isn't the first time I've written one when I meant the other...). I'd edit my original comment to prevent future confusion but the editing interval appears to have elapsed.
  - tfh 16y ago
    The author is Chris Bishop... who wrote one of the "essential" machine learning books : http://www.amazon.com/Pattern-Recognition-Learning-Information-Statistics/dp/0387310738/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1275227337&sr=8-1 http://www.amazon.com/Pattern-Recognition-Learning-Informati...
mark_l_watson 16y ago
I had the very good fortune of having Peter Norvig as a technical editor of one of my books. Unfortunately there were a lot of problems with my book that needed fixed and I appreciated the precise way he told me what he didn't like. He is certainly one of the best computer scientists on the planet, and also a very nice guy.
deleted 16y ago
[deleted]

126 points by kbob 16y ago

Definitely some books I will check out after reading this list ("Lisp in small pieces" for example). Also enjoyed the fact that Norvig is a Talking Heads fan. I always thought of Norvig as a new wave kind of guy.

rayvega 16y ago

From his 'On LISP' review: ...In Graham's prose, like his code, every word counts... Fascinating to read Peter Norvig describe ten years ago what most people tend to say about pg's essays and general writing style.

asdflkj 16y ago
Somebody should show this to people in #lisp. They uniformly worship Norvig and hate PG.
- devinj 16y ago
  Hero worship is sadly not transitive.
  - billswift 16y ago
    The reason is that "hero worship" is what "respect" looks like when it is done by idiots.
- corruption 16y ago
  What are the complaints against pg?
  - ableal 16y ago
    Searching for "Emo Phillips die heretic", besides amusing, may be enlightening. (Just an educated guess about the root of the problem, I have no idea of what goes on in IRC.)
  - l0stman 16y ago
    My gut feeling is that it has something to do with Arc. Some people tends to think it's just a regular Lisp with shorter keywords and that there's nothing really innovative in it. The problem is that pg kept the code private for too long while advocating publicly the power of the language and criticizing Common Lisp. So when he finally released it, some lispers were disappointed because they've been waiting for something really disruptive. And it backfired as most of the time, the harshest critics comes from your disappointed sympathizers. That being said, I don't hang that much on IRC so I have no real back-story supporting this.
    - asdflkj 16y ago
      It started long before PG released Arc. My theory is that because most of those people are very intelligent yet utterly ineffectual, they act as a kind of support group for one another. They view Lisp as a monastic order where in order to keep the tradition alive, one is forced by the circumstances to give up all his worldly ambitions. PG didn't buy it, and succeeded. So to keep the ideology consistent, you need to introduce the assumption that PG is not a "true" Lisper.
      - deleted 16y ago
        [deleted]
  - tsally 16y ago
    PG doesn't actually like Common Lisp, which is what #lisp is dedicated to.

aaronkaplan 16y ago

His review of the Talking Heads CD set is dated July 27, 2001, but mentions "Sept 11." Conspiracy theorists take note.

javert 16y ago
That's actually pretty interesting and quirky. I wonder what happened. Could he have initially posted before Sept. 11 and then edited the post after? Or did Amazon screw something up with the dates?
- pmichaud 16y ago
  In big systems like amazon's it's not uncommon to fudge something that's not critical. They probably lost data during a migration 8 years ago, or some similar disaster and decided to just rebuild a replica by generating plausible dates. That kind of crap happens all the time.
- gahahaha 16y ago
  <Insert rant about software written in Perl here>

kev009 16y ago

His Dietel reviews are hilarious.

micheljansen 16y ago

I feel confident finding so many books I own for my studies are getting rave reviews by Norvig. Then again, we do use a book he wrote with Stuart Russell as well in one of the courses :)

SapphireSun 16y ago
Oh I LOVE that book. A Modern Introduction to AI / 2e right? The authors have such a relaxed tone and explain things so well AND they cover a huge amount of material.
- abecedarius 16y ago
  There's a 3rd edition now. (AI: A Modern Approach, actually.)

ionfish 16y ago

His review of Black's 'Neural Networks for Pattern Recognition' made me chuckle, and accorded with my own experience of the book. To the reviewer who said "I was looking forward to a detailed insight into neural networks in this book. Instead, almost every page is plastered up with sigma notation", that's like saying about a book on music theory "Instead, almost every page is plastered with black-and-white ovals (some with sticks on the edge)." Or to the reviewer who complains this book is limited to the mathematical side of neural nets, that's like complaining about a cookbook on beef being limited to the carnivore side. http://www.amazon.com/review/RZ7FBFHHLJHYE/ref=cm_cr_rdp_perm http://www.amazon.com/review/RZ7FBFHHLJHYE/ref=cm_cr_rdp_per...

akv 16y ago
The author is Chris Bishop...
- ionfish 16y ago
  Thanks for the correction, of course you're right. For some reason I always confuse the two names (this isn't the first time I've written one when I meant the other...). I'd edit my original comment to prevent future confusion but the editing interval appears to have elapsed.
- tfh 16y ago
  The author is Chris Bishop... who wrote one of the "essential" machine learning books : http://www.amazon.com/Pattern-Recognition-Learning-Information-Statistics/dp/0387310738/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1275227337&sr=8-1 http://www.amazon.com/Pattern-Recognition-Learning-Informati...

mark_l_watson 16y ago

I had the very good fortune of having Peter Norvig as a technical editor of one of my books. Unfortunately there were a lot of problems with my book that needed fixed and I appreciated the precise way he told me what he didn't like. He is certainly one of the best computer scientists on the planet, and also a very nice guy.

deleted 16y ago

[deleted]