Any opinions on Bellman's 1961 book publ. by RAND Corp? (I'm at a used
book store)
I don't know the book, but Googling on him, I'd expect it to be squarely in the area of optimal control theory, i.e. using a model of the environment to predict how the controlled variable will respond to an output, in order to choose a sequence of outputs that will optimise some measure of the predicted performance.
Here's a short paper by him on the subject from 1959:
http://www.pnas.org/content/45/8/1288.full.pdf+html
The "Discussion" paragraph at the end is, er, odd.
Any particular reason for singling out this old book?
···
At 11:30 -0800 27/1/09, Tracy Harms wrote:
Any opinions on Bellman's 1961 book publ. by RAND Corp? (I'm at a used
book store)
--
Richard Kennaway, jrk@cmp.uea.ac.uk, Richard Kennaway
School of Computing Sciences,
University of East Anglia, Norwich NR4 7TJ, U.K.
No good reason; browsing with a 4-yo interfered with normal assessment
efforts. Thanks!
···
On 1/27/09, Richard Kennaway <jrk@cmp.uea.ac.uk> wrote:
At 11:30 -0800 27/1/09, Tracy Harms wrote:
Any opinions on Bellman's 1961 book publ. by RAND Corp? (I'm at a used
book store)I don't know the book, but Googling on him, I'd expect it to be
squarely in the area of optimal control theory, i.e. using a model of
the environment to predict how the controlled variable will respond
to an output, in order to choose a sequence of outputs that will
optimise some measure of the predicted performance.Here's a short paper by him on the subject from 1959:
http://www.pnas.org/content/45/8/1288.full.pdf+html
The "Discussion" paragraph at the end is, er, odd.Any particular reason for singling out this old book?
--
Richard Kennaway, jrk@cmp.uea.ac.uk, Richard Kennaway
School of Computing Sciences,
University of East Anglia, Norwich NR4 7TJ, U.K.
Actually, on further googling, I think I short-changed Bellman. He was a major pioneer of optimal control theory, with a fundamental equation named after him.
Of course, round these parts, "major pioneer of optimal control theory" might be considered damning with faint praise. 
···
At 12:05 -0800 27/1/09, Tracy Harms wrote:
No good reason; browsing with a 4-yo interfered with normal assessment
efforts. Thanks!
--
Richard Kennaway, jrk@cmp.uea.ac.uk, Richard Kennaway
School of Computing Sciences,
University of East Anglia, Norwich NR4 7TJ, U.K.