Some TIME ago a group of mathematicians and computer scientists (including the editors of this volume) thought of making a scientific pilgrimage to the birthplace of al-Khw&rizmf, the outstanding ninth-century mathematician who gave his name to the word "algorithm". As his name indicates, al-Khwarizmi came from the Khorezm...

The accounting department is a cost center. It does not directly generate revenues, but, rather, provides a fi xed set of services to the rest of the company, and is asked to do so at the lowest possible cost. Consequently, the accounting staff is called on to process transactions, write reports, create new processes, or investigate old...

When I started HubSpot in June 2006 with my business partner, Dharmesh Shah, our experiences with marketing agencies led us to almost entirely avoid working with them. In fact, we designed our original business model around selling our marketing software directly to end customers, and developed an internal marketing team that would not be...

In Enterprise Software Delivery, IBM Distinguished Engineer Alan W. Brown guides...

I never thought I’d be writing a technical book. I have a MA in English Literature so I always pictured myself sitting in an oak paneled room surrounded by books and attentive students listening to me pontificating on the latest criticism of 19th Century novels. It didn’t take me long to realize though that path wasn’t for...

Few technical lerms have gained such rapid notoriety as the appela tion "NP-complete." In the short lime since its introduction in the early 1970's, this term has come to symbolize the abyss of inherent intractability that algorithm designers increasingly face as they seek to solve larger and more complex problems. A...