Andy's Math/CS page

Monday, May 09, 2011

An exciting new textbook, and a request

Today I'd like to put out an appeal to readers. If you have a solid grasp of English and an interest in circuit complexity (no expertise required!), please consider helping proofread the forthcoming book "Boolean Function Complexity: Advances and Frontiers" by Stasys Jukna.

Stasys (whom I recently had the pleasure to meet at an enjoyable Dagstuhl seminar in Germany) is a talented researcher and a kind, gracious person; he's also worked tirelessly to produce high-quality textbooks for our community. I'm a long-time fan of his "Extremal Combinatorics: With Applications in Computer Science" which contains many gems of combinatorial reasoning in complexity theory.

His latest manuscript, to be published soon, promises to be a leading reference for circuit lower-bounds research. Although I've only read parts, it clearly achieves both depth and breadth; I really think anyone in the field could learn something new and useful here.

The main cause for concern is that Stasys (who hails from Lithuania) is not a native English speaker, and the text needs work in places to become grammatically correct and idiomatic. Also, it seems a full-time copy-editor is not available for this project.
So readers: by volunteering to proofread a chapter or two, you'll be doing a valuable service for present and future students of complexity theory. Language editing is the essential thing--you can skim over the equations, so it really doesn't take that long. (Of course, mathematical feedback is also welcome.)

The manuscript is available here; use the following login info:
User: friend
Password: catchthecat

You can email Stasys your comments. The text is long (500+ pages), so if you do or are planning to do some editing, please enter your name, the chapters you'll edit, and a timeframe in the comments below. This will allow others to maximize our coverage of the draft.

Thanks in advance for your help!

Labels:

6 Comments:

  • I see that volunteers are stepping up--great! Stasys's book page has the information on which chapters are being looked at; guess there's no need to duplicate that here.

    By Anonymous Andy D, at 2:42 PM  

  • Thanks, Andy, for this your blog message. Several people have already taken chapters, and I have even obtained first corrections! This will definitely help students loving (circuit) complexity theory. I am and future readers will be thankful for their volunteer work.

    B.t.w. instead putting a comment, people write directly to me what chapter they would like to look at. At the web page of the book is a table of the actual progress.

    By Anonymous Stasys Jukna, at 1:42 PM  

  • I have printed out Chapter 11 and will
    proofread it but I don't seem to be able to either email Stasys or put this info on the chart.

    GREAT use of the blog to get this organized!

    By Anonymous GASARCH, at 2:20 PM  

  • Thanks, Bill, a lot! I have "locked" Chapter 11 on the chart (web page of the book) as taken by you.

    P.S. You can also send your comments to Andy.

    By Anonymous Stasys Jukna, at 11:32 AM  

  • I am going to print out chapter 11 to, great blog and post this....Thanks

    By Anonymous bristol plasterer, at 10:08 AM  

  • Forgot to say how fantastic the whole blog is and thoroughly enjoyed reading the chapters. Thankyou

    By Anonymous Bristol Plasterers, at 9:49 PM  

Post a Comment

<< Home