The aim of this textbook is to present the central and basic concepts, techniques, and tools of computer science. The emphasis is on presenting a problem-solving approach and on providing a survey of all of the most important topics covered in computer science degree programmes. Scheme is used throughout as the programming language and the author stresses a functional programming approach which concentrates on the creation of simple functions that are composed to obtain the desired programming goal. Such simple functions are easily tested individually. This greatly helps in producing programs...

Much current research in computer science is concerned with two questions: is a program correct? And how can we improve a correct program preserving correctness? This latter question is known as the refinement of programs and the purpose of this book is to consider these questions in a formal setting. In fact, correctness turns out to be a special case of refinement and so the focus is on refinement. Although a reasonable background knowledge is assumed from mathematics and CS, the book is a self-contained introduction suitable for graduate students and researchers coming to this subject for...

A basic issue in computer science is the complexity of problems. Computational complexity measures how much time or memory is needed as a function of the input problem size. Descriptive complexity is concerned with problems which may be described in first-order logic. By virtue of the close relationship between logic and relational databses, it turns out that this subject has important applications to databases such as analysing the queries computable in polynomial time, analysing the parallel time needed to compute a query, and the analysis of nondeterministic classes. This book is written...

This text teaches the essentials of C programming, concentrating on what readers need to know in order to produce stand-alone programs and so solve typical scientific and engineering problems. It is a learning-by-doing book, with many examples and exercises, and lays a foundation of scientific programming concepts and techniques that will prove valuable for those who might eventually move on to another language. Written for undergraduates who are familiar with computers and typical applications but are new to programming.