Brand Fortner's book, The Data Handbook: A Guide to Understanding the Organization and Visualization of Technical Data, is just what its subtitle states. One might call it the ``whole data catalog'' for organizing, analyzing, and visualizing large datasets gathered from computational research.
Definitely friendly to Macintosh and UNIX users, a ``Quick Tour''of how to get the most from the book is a useful part of its introduction. As one would expect, organization is paramount in this text. Readers are even guided to various levels of coverage: ``For Real Techies,'' ``For Serious Techies,''and ``For Ultra Techies.''
Aside from the point that almost everything a computational researcher would want to know about handling and visualizing data--from 1D to 6D--is included, some interesting facts are learned from the book as well. For example, one finds that ``An ASCII text datafile can take two to five times the disk space of a comparable binary datafile.''And: ``2D matrix datasets take up much less disk space than column datasets for data on a regular two- dimensional grid.''
Thoroughness is a hallmark of this guidebook. For instance, line and bar graphs (1D), scatter and parametric plots (2D/3D), and scatter matrix plots (6D) are all considered in Chapter 7, ``Column Data.'' Definitions of computer terminology are excellent as well.
Scattered throughout the text are examples that use data from five fictitious researchers--Judy ReSyrch, Michael Astroe, Dr. Tim Boans, Jeanne Beeker, and Wolfram Herth. They not only reinforce the book's concepts, but keep it from being dry.
This is one of the most engaging technical texts on the market today. Eric Peruvkhin's drawings of puffins (above and below) delightfully and appropriately introduce each chapter.
Supercomputing and the Transformation of Science, by William J. Kaufmann III and Larry L. Smarr, was recently published by Scientific American Library (distributed by W. H. Freeman and Company, New York and London). The book has been reviewed in a number of publications, including Nature and Science News. Dedicated to ``intellectual giants who made the digital world possible,'' it ranges from the historical development of supercomputing to over 100 exemplary descriptions of research in the computational sciences. It contains some 200 color images.
__________________________________________________________________
access / Spring 1993 / NCSA / pubs@ncsa.uiuc.edu