F# for Scientists

By Jon Harrop

Book Overview

"This work strikes a balance between the pure functional aspects of F# and the object-oriented and imperative features that make it so useful in practice, enable .NET integration, and make large-scale data processing possible." --Thore Graepel, PhD, Researcher, Microsoft Research Ltd. Over the next five years, F# is expected to become one of the world's most popular functional programming languages for scientists of all disciplines working on the Windows platform. F# is free and, unlike MATLAB® and other software with numerical/scientific origins, is a full-fledged programming language. Developed in consultation with Don Syme of Microsoft Research Ltd.--who wrote the language-- F# for Scientists explains and demonstrates the powerful features of this important new programming language. The book assumes no prior experience and guides the reader from the basics of computer programming to the implementation of state-of-the-art algorithms. F# for Scientists begins with coverage of introductory material in the areas of functional programming, .NET, and scientific computing, and goes on to explore: Program structure Optimization Data structures Libraries Numerical analysis Databases Input and output Interoperability Visualization Screenshots of development using Visual Studio are used to illustrate compilation, debugging, and interactive use, while complete examples of a few whole programs are included to give readers a complete view of F#'s capabilities. Written in a clear and concise style, F# for Scientists is well suited for researchers, scientists, and developers who want to program under the Windows platform. It also serves as an ideal supplemental text for advanced undergraduate and graduate students with a background in science or engineering.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0470242116
• ISBN13: 9780470242117
• Release Date: August 2008
• Publisher: Wiley-Interscience
• Length: 368 Pages
• Weight: 1.40 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 6.2" x 9.5"

Customer Reviews

a concise view of F# from a vantage point of technical computing

A hallmark of this book is conciseness. (The book itself is fairly small and thin; and nicely hardbound.) This book is a gold mine of great information that could take years to fully digest! While the book is titled as a scientific book, and it is that; it also has much more to offer. It should be of great interest to scientists, mathematicians, statisticians, computer scientists, financial programmers, and any programmers who want to write good code. It features a well balanced selection of topics including: algorithms, data structures, visualization, graphics, threading, performance, and optimization. The use of DirectX is demonstrated. Some compilation techniques are also shown. A nice selection of recursive list algorithms are presented that showcase the kind of problem solving that can be done purely with recursion and list processing. These are classic idioms that are good to be exposed to; like power set, and substitution with replacement. Many of the examples are very much in the spirit of the Scheme Revised^n Reports, wherein the most gutted possible examples are used to demonstrate a given primitive or concept. Nothing extraneous to cause distractions. There is a complement to this book called "F# for Technical Computing" that can be purchased from the Flying Frog Consultancy here: [...]. The complementary book adds nicely to the material in "F# for Scientists"; with discussions on such topics as parallel computing and WPF. In addition, the complementary book features longer page sizes, a stay flat (music book style) binding, and color; all of which I really like. (I wish more technical books made use of color because code is much easier to read when you see comments in one color, keywords in another, etc..) Both books are gems. There are also counterparts to these books for OCaml programmers. Relevant software can also be obtained from the Flying Frog Consultancy (which has, as part of its logo: "Putting the fun in functional since 2005").

Pretty good book

Misleading title. There is nothing "scientific" in this book. This is more or less standard collection of basic data structures and algorithms. However, you do these differently in F# than in Java. If you want to program nontrivial problems in F#, you need this book all the time. The best F# book among available

Beautiful.Succinct.Functional.

I am brand new to functional programming and this is my 3rd book having gone through both Foundations of F# and Expert F# which details the language very well. However, I was blown away with this book. While it does have some technical elements/examples to it, I found that it helped me bridge the gaps in some topics I did not fully grasp from the other two books. This was written prior to the F# Sept 2008 CTP and due to changes in the language, one or two examples (again,let me stress just a few) needed to be modified in order to be compatible with the changes. I enjoyed all the topics immensely but without a background in DirectX or 3D programming, while the chapter on visualization is beautiful, it is challenging. My readings in WPF3D helped a lot in parsing what was going on here. In addition, while there is information on using Windows Forms, I wished there was a section (or two!) on WPF. However, the F# Journal (by the same author) does have a few articles on WPF which are also very excellent. The only thing is that, sometimes, the explanations for the examples are not very thorough, and it is a bit daunting as a beginner. One such example is the Powerset from 6.4.15 (p167) which took a while to work through. As such, I made a blog post just for this detailing how to get the solution for this. This is not a book to, per say, 'learn F#', the previous two are for that. F# for Scientsts is great if you already have the basics at hand. All in all, I HIGHLY recommend this book. It is an excellent resource/reference and in my opinion, it is one of those books you have handy -> Just in case. <br /> <br />Overall A+.

Outstanding work.

Being mathematically and scientifically oriented (and a fan of functional programming) I was destined to like this book. This book shows you how to use F# in a scientific context. The other F# books show you the mechanics, this one tells you how to drive it at full speed and take the corners. Numerics, Parsing, Visualization, it's all in here. The only two non-positive comments I can make about this book are: - I wish the visualization chapter used WPF3D instead of DirectX - I wish there was some tiny description for at least some of the arguments/variables used (p, q, f, n, w, etc). The reason being some of the subjects covered are non-trivial already and having to figure out the construction elements becomes time consuming. With that said, the book is wonderful and if you end up liking it as much as I did, there's a paid subscription to a journal by the same author where you'll get bimonthly articles along the same line of this book.

Very good

I found this book to be very useful. Before reading this text I had already read portions of Expert F#, and have an extensive background with the older SML language that F# and Ocaml are related to. As someone who works in scientific computing, I have always wished for a reference that would explain how to use this family of languages in scientific contexts. This book provides an excellent discussion of this topic. The examples are familiar if you come from a scientific computing background, and it is useful to see examples framed in a mathematical or scientific context instead of the more abstract or simple examples found in texts aimed at more general audiences. I would highly recommend this book - it's a pleasure to read, and has proven to be a useful reference for me so far.