- Hardcover: 664 pages
- Publisher: Morgan Kaufmann; 1 edition (Mar 23 2009)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0123749425
- ISBN-13: 978-0123749420
- Product Dimensions: 23.9 x 19.6 x 4.1 cm
- Shipping Weight: 1.7 Kg
- Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (1 customer review)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #303,288 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- See Complete Table of Contents
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Product Details |
Product Description
Review
Within the last decade, Geometric Algebra (GA) has emerged as a powerful alternative to classical matrix algebra as a comprehensive conceptual language and computational system for computer science. This book will serve as a standard introduction and reference to the subject for students and experts alike. As a textbook, it provides a thorough grounding in the fundamentals of GA, with many illustrations, exercises and applications. Experts will delight in the refreshing perspective GA gives to every topic, large and small. -David Hestenes, Distinguished research Professor, Department of Physics, Arizona State University Geometric Algebra is becoming increasingly important in computer science. This book is a comprehensive introduction to Geometric Algebra with detailed descriptions of important applications. While requiring serious study, it has deep and powerful insights into GA's usage. It has excellent discussions of how to actually implement GA on the computer. -Dr. Alyn Rockwood, CTO, FreeDesign, Inc. Longmont, Colorado
Book Description
The first book on a new technique in 3D graphics
--This text refers to an alternate
Hardcover
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First Sentence
This book is about geometric algebra, a powerful computational system to describe and solve geometrical problems. Read the first page Browse Sample Pages
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index
This book is about geometric algebra, a powerful computational system to describe and solve geometrical problems. Read the first page Browse Sample Pages
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index
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Most helpful customer reviews
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
A new start for computer graphics,
By
This review is from: Geometric Algebra for Computer Science: An Object-Oriented Approach to Geometry (Hardcover)
The more familiar we are with a particular technique, the harder it is to see its limitations. For those who have taken the appropriate courses, the machinery of real and complex numbers, vectors, matrices, and so on, seem to be the inevitable "right" way of doing things. Yet there is another way, pioneered in the nineteenth century by Grassmann (1844) and Clifford (1878) and called (by Clifford) "geometric algebra" (GA). For over a century, GA was buried by the "standard" approach of Hamilton, Gibbs, et al., but it has recently been resurrected by a small but dedicated group of people, perhaps most notably by David Hestenes in "New Foundations for Classical Mechanics" (1999).The subtitle is misleading, as the authors admit in the Preface. This is a book about expressing geometric concepts algebraically, not about programming. (Nevertheless, programming examples, using C++, OpenGL, and the authors' libraries, appear throughout.) Part I (pp. 23-244) develops the main ideas of GA, including vector spaces, the geometric product, transformations, and differentiation. Part II (pp. 245-502) presents models of geometries, including vector space, homogeneous, conformal representations. Part III (pp. 503-584) discusses the software implementation of GA. The big problem is that a naive approach would be extremely inefficient, and so clever optimizations are needed. The authors' approach is to use generative programming: the user feeds parameters of the GA (dimension, metric, etc.) into a code generator, which then generates an optimized library (in C++) for that algebra. This is a challenging book. It contains a large amount of detailed material and assumes fluency in mathematics, programming, and graphics. If, as some expect and hope, GA takes over graphics programming, the book will be an excellent investment. If GA, like so many other good ideas, is passed over by the mainstream, the book will nonetheless be a fascinating read. In any case, if you are interested in graphics programming, get it. If you are also interested in physics, consider "Geometric Algebra for Physicists" by Doran et al.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta) Amazon.com:
4.5 out of 5 stars (4 customer reviews) 35 of 37 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
A reader from Los Alamos, NM,
By J. Hanlon "JH" - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Geometric Algebra for Computer Science: An Object-Oriented Approach to Geometry (Hardcover)
Geometric Algebra (GA) is a unifying mathematical language that should be taught instead of or at least in combination with traditional vector analysis. Most other books on GA are aimed at Physicists. This book is a better match for Engineers and Programmers. The authors are all active researchers in applications of GA. They have done a comprehensive and up to date job of collecting, organizing and presenting the material for both beginners and those who follow the development of GA on the web. The examples and problems use GAViewer, an easy to learn programming language with an Open GL view window that can be downloaded for free from the book website. Using GAViewer with the book is very good way to learn GA, especially the 5D Conformal model of 3D space. The authors hold nothing back. Between the book, the code and the website everything is there to make learning GA fun and useful. I highly recommend this book.
8 of 8 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
An excellent introduction to the subject.,
By Peeter Joot "Peeter Joot" - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Geometric Algebra for Computer Science (Revised Edition): An Object-Oriented Approach to Geometry (Hardcover)
The book Geometric Algebra For Computer Science, by Dorst, Fontijne, and Mann has one of the best introductions to the subject that I have seen.It contains particularly good introductions to the dot and wedge products and how they can be applied and what they can be used to model. After one gets comfortable with these ideas they introduce the subject axiomatically. Much of the pre-axiomatic introductory material is based on the use of the scalar product, defined as a determinant. You'll have to be patient to see where and why that comes from, but this choice allows the authors to defer some of the mathematical learning overhead until one is ready for the ideas a bit better. Having started study of the subject with papers of Hestenes, Cambridge, and Baylis papers, I found the alternate notation for the generalized dot product (L and backwards L for contraction) distracting at first but adjusting to it does not end up being that hard. This book has three sections, the first covering the basics, the second covering the conformal applications for graphics, and the last covering implementation. As one reads geometric algebra books it is natural to wonder about this, and the pros, cons and efficiencies of various implementation techniques are discussed. There are other web resources available associated with this book that are quite good. The best of these is GAViewer, a graphical geometric calculator that was the product of some of the research that generated this book. Performing the GAViewer tutorial exercises is a great way to build some intuition to go along with the math, putting the geometric back in the algebra. There are specific GAViewer exercises that you can do independent of the book, and there is also an excellent interactive tutorial available. Browse the book website, or Search for '2003 Game Developer Lecture, Interactive GA tutorial. UvA GA Website: Tutorials'. Even if one decided not to learn GA, using this to play with the graphical cross product manipulation, with the ability to rotate viewpoints, is quite neat and worthwhile. 0 of 1 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
very good text,
By T. Czyczko - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Geometric Algebra for Computer Science: An Object-Oriented Approach to Geometry (Hardcover)
This is the text I would first recommend to anyone involved in geometrical programming who would like to learn geometrical algebra.
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